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I don’t think you’re wrong about the lack of VC funding having an effect on the European startup scene. That said, I’m a little baffled that Ottawa can produce
by Pandabob 6y ago
I don’t think you’re wrong about the lack of VC funding having an effect on the European startup scene.
That said, I’m a little baffled that Ottawa can produce a behemoth like Shopify which has a market cap ($130bn) larger than Spotify (~$60bn) and Adyen (~55Bn) combined.
- cambalache 6y agoDont underestimate being next to America, having a FTA, same language and same timezone,among many other advantages for Canada compared to say France or Italy
- 908B64B197 6y agoThe thing is, Shopify isn't a new business model. We've had payment processors for years. If you missed on Stripe, PayPal or Square then Shopify sounds like a pretty good investment. Same thing with them building online shopping websites; Amazon and Etsy already did the market research for them. It's either go with Amazon, setup your online sales infrastructure really fast or get crushed. Now, in terms of market defining companies like Google or Apple, Canada has none. BlackBerry got crushed and failed to innovate. Nortel was wiped by Cisco and Huawei. Finally Bombardier's flagship plane was pretty much gifted to Airbus by the Trudeau administration who immediately submitted to the Trump administration.