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As someone that's grown up in Waterloo and Toronto and also worked in SV for about a year it's a little annoying when writers compare one city to all of SV. SV
by OmarIsmail 16y ago
As someone that's grown up in Waterloo and Toronto and also worked in SV for about a year it's a little annoying when writers compare one city to all of SV. SV is the corridor that runs from and includes San Fran down to San Jose. This is quite similar to how the Toronto to London corridor is setup. Except in Canada's case you have the 401 instead of the 101, no Caltrain equivalent, and there's quite a bit more farmland in the middle.
Overall though the past few years has seen a huge number of new and exciting tech companies pop in this corridor. Primarily In Toronto and Waterloo.
What'll truly make this place a force to be reckoned with is if we have two or three more big corporate HQs. Right now it's really just RIM. The problem is that as soon as a company starts getting pretty big they get bought out by an American for lots of cash. That's not a problem for the people doing the company of course, but that common path prevents a huge company growing here, and I doubt any major Corp is going to move their hq here.
For reasons why Canadian companies are more likely to sell out than try to make it big on their own I'd have to guess it's a combination of more conversative attitudes and the lack of big vc financing. It's just a different culture here. Most of the successful companies in this area are not VC financed. We like to blame that on the VCs but I have a suspicion that the entrepreneurs here are also less VC friendly in general.
Either way it's an exciting time to be here and this place is going to be very different in 5-10 years. Waterloo especially.
- faramarz 16y agoWell said. One thing I really agree with is the point in the article about needing a big Canadian buyout. the money will trickle down to a new generation of startups, much like the Paypal ecosystem. Freshbooks, Shopify, Tripharbor are on that track IMO. Also, it's worth nothing the Bumptop acquisition by Google basically validated our new VC regulation changes which passed few months ago. Edit: Worth noting... not nothing. typo.
- paulgb 16y ago> Also, it's worth nothing the Bumptop acquisition by Google basically validated our new VC regulation changes which passed few months ago. Faramarz, can you elaborate on this?
- faramarz 16y agoSorry for the typo, I mean worth noting I'm referring to the tax break for foreign investments and streamlining the acquisition process by outsiders (where as before, it would take months and months to do the paper work) Read about it here http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/canada-now-somewhat-less-anti-startup/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/canada-now-somewhat-less-an...
- paulgb 16y agoInteresting, thanks for the link. I actually misread it as noting anyway, so our errors canceled out :-).
- mikeryan 16y agoNot to pick a nit but as someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, San Francisco is very tech heavy but is separate from silicon valley. I put the Northern most edge of SV at the Oracle complex in Redwood Shores. But back during the bubble that was too far north for some. Also SF seems to be gaining more traction with Web 2.0 then with the 1.0 trend so my statement may be facing a shift with companies like twitter and digg making their homes in SF proper.
- jojopotato 16y agoThere are tons of tech companies that are north of that Redwood Shores complex, virtually all the programmers I know work north of there actually.
- mikeryan 16y agoI'm not actually disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that at some point there's an edge of SV and it does not actually reach as far north as SF. Wikipedia at least seems to agree (though of course it doesn't have an edge instead saying "Southern Peninsula") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley Also remember the term actually didn't refer to software companies originally it referred to the semi-conductor and chip makers who pretty much stayed in santa clara county.