4 ms·
[disclosure: I'm a personal friend of the author of this article.] I lived in Montreal for three years, or four winters, depending upon how you count. I belie
by bravura 16y ago
[disclosure: I'm a personal friend of the author of this article.]
I lived in Montreal for three years, or four winters, depending upon how you count.
I believe that Montreal has the most important element necessary to become an open-source startup hub, namely a lot of good talent. The language barrier exists, but is not strong enough that it has hindered any open-source efforts in Montreal (as far as I've seen).
The main hurdle to Montreal becoming any sort of startup hub is cultural. IMHO, Montrealais are not very opportunistic in starting and pursuing business.
I don't think this is Montreal-specific in any way, many cities are like this.
I think people are inspired most of all by other people they meet in their day-to-day lives, not images on TV or in media. The current difficulty is that Montrealais have very few positive role models around them, to show how it's done. In SF or NYC, you could easily move in a social circle that contains a successful business entrepreneur. "Oh, if he could do it, then I can do that too!" But most people in Montreal don't happen to know a successful tech entrepreneur, not even as an acquaintance in passing.
Note that I have found that Montrealais ARE very opportunistic when it comes to social entrepreneurism. Witness social events The Strip Spelling Bee http://stripspellingbee.blogspot.com/ http://stripspellingbee.blogspot.com/ (and other productions by Perpetual Emotion Machine Productions, like Slow Dance Night), musical innovation particularly in low-fi and DIY subgeneres, and non-profit activism like Head and Hands.
But business ambition is regarded with skepticism at best, and is generally considered a form of elitism and lack of social consciousness.
- delano 16y agoThere is no shortage of business ambition in Quebec in general. But we do need to develop a better culture of aggressively going after a target market.
- arach 16y agoYou've made some pretty awesome observations. Having said that :) I'd like to point out that there were more than 700 attendees at StartupCamp last month. A relatively good portion of those people were not skeptical at all about business ambition. They have embraced entrepreneurship! They are opportunistic! I think what happens when you have a social circle that contains successful entrepreneurs is you get better at business development and salesmanship by osmosis. You are more likely to pitch a million dollar deal if you're friends with a guy who did that a week ago. Another commenter pointed out, Montreal use to compete on price and probably still does. I think it will take a while for the low cost crap to leave our bones. But that's already starting to happen ... so we'll see. >>>Note that I have found that Montrealais ARE very opportunistic when it comes to social entrepreneurism. Witness social events The Strip Spelling Bee http://stripspellingbee.blogspot.com/ http://stripspellingbee.blogspot.com/ (and other productions by Perpetual Emotion Machine Productions, like Slow Dance Night), musical innovation particularly in low-fi and DIY subgeneres, and non-profit activism like Head and Hands. Hell yeah!
- p90x 16y agoi don't understand the purpose of the article, or of your post. if the city has what it takes it will happen. if it doesn't it won't. everything else is conversation. that is how i look at it, what am i missing?