6 ms·

This is extremely misleading. YC still backs Canadian founders (and other international founders). There must have been one too many painful experiences investi

This is extremely misleading. YC still backs Canadian founders (and other international founders). There must have been one too many painful experiences investing in companies based in Canada. Creating or converting to a US-based entity is a standard ask for most international founders who want to participate YC and I suppose something has changed such that Canada is no longer an exception to that.

tptacek 8mo ago
Important added context here: the list went from US, Cayman, Singapore, Canada to US, Cayman, Singapore. It's not as if YC was generally investing in non-US based entities before. Canada was an exception and isn't anymore. We're a global employer, and just employing people in different jurisdictions is kind of a nightmare (totally worth it, though). I can't imagine how much of a pain it must be to try to manage investment stakes in foreign corporations.
- trollbridge 8mo ago
  It's a weird change though. Canada is one of the most investor-friendly and startup-friendly jurisdictions I can think of. If you want to grow quickly, you need to be thinking about how to get an office set up in places like Calgary (lots of machine-learning talent there), Toronto, and Vancouver, and when you do so you'll find the government incentives and lower wages lead to you spending about half on total compensation versus a typical American startup hub. I worked at a place that expanded into Calgary and picked up a bunch of ML engineers with oil-and-gas backgrounds (who were eager for something outside the energy sector) and the government picked up half of the payroll tab for several years. There is also, of course, no health insurance benefits to worry about.
  - sbarre 8mo ago
    > There is also, of course, no health insurance benefits to worry about. Uhh, we don't have universal coverage for everything health up here, we still have private benefits that our employers pay for as part of our compensation plans. Life insurance, dental, vision, prescriptions, physio, mental health, critical illness etc.. It might be less than in the US, but it's not "no health insurance benefits to worry about".
    - jleyank 8mo ago
      Well, it's fully possible to be self-insuring in these areas. Prescription assistance is probably the one significant benefit as physio, mental health and the like can be of limited reimbursement (judging from what I've seen). The key issue is that the core of one's health insurance is not dependent on the employer or even being full-time employed. This provides tremendous flexibility. And I suspect not having things like pregnancy being seen as preexisting conditions is a big win for parents-to-be. Age or low-income (I think) provide provincial or federal assistance independent of employment also. Medical expenses are also far easier to deduct on taxes in Canada vs. the US.
      - tptacek 8mo ago
        Doesn't it seem likely that tax treatment has more to do with this than benefits? People are reading this like YC isn't investing in companies HQ'd in Canada, but there's no evidence of that! I look at a set {US, Singapore, Cayman} and what I think is "this is about taxes". Maybe especially tricky for YC since such a huge fraction of their portcos are pre-revenue.
        jleyank 8mo ago
        The key question is whether they make non-US-ians move to the Valley to participate. Or, rephrasing, leave their home country to move to whichever piece of YC is cutting the check.
        tptacek 8mo ago
        Again: there were 4 countries, total, in the standard YC deal terms. Now there are 3. There are many hundreds of YC companies headquartered overseas. The standard move in this situation is that you form a US Delaware C Corp and make your HQ a subsidiary.
        walterbell 8mo ago
        Delaware vs. Cayman for LatAm startups: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686745
  - tokyobreakfast 8mo ago
    > Canada is one of the most investor-friendly and startup-friendly jurisdictions I can think of. Other comments in this thread make it sound like an absolute nightmare. So which is it?
    - gucci-on-fleek 8mo ago
      Much like the US, the regulations and culture varies depending on which province (state) you're in, so someone starting a business in Alberta could have a very different experience than someone in Ontario.
      - 1attice 8mo ago
        Somewhat. Our provinces have fewer rights, powers and responsibilities than US states. The experience is more homogenous. It's only a nightmare if you hate all taxes and labour rights. So, you know, YC
        tptacek 8mo ago
        You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs --- you can just go to the YC directory and select for EMEA, LATAM, APAC, &c. There's hundreds of them. Since this is purely about ownership structure and equity governing law, I'm curious what the intersection you're seeing between these terms and "labour rights" are. We're a US company with employees in Europe (not even an HQ in Europe, just employees there), and I've learned more about European labor law idiosyncracies over the last few years than over the whole rest of my career, because I've had to.
        gucci-on-fleek 8mo ago
        > You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs Having a Canada-registered company is usually required to get government grants and loans from Canadian banks, although that's probably not very important to VC-backed companies. There are also some tax advantages to running a Canada-registered company if you're based out of Canada, plus it's much easier to find a local professionals (lawyers, accountants, etc.) familiar with Canadian corporations than US corporations. None of these issues should cause too many problems, but if given a choice, as a Canadian I'd certainly prefer to run a Canada-registered company over a US-registered one.
  - curmudgeon22 8mo ago
    There are definitely still health insurance benefits (I'm Canadian). Yes, our doctor and hospital visits are covered, but many things are covered by employer paid insurance (or not at all): - prescription medicine - dental - vision - mental health - things like physiotherapy
    - trollbridge 8mo ago
      Yeah, correct, but it's not going to be a $4000/mo line item expense for the employer per employee. I don't have to deal with this as we are a (very) small business but it's a major headache for larger small businesses. Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business.
      - chris_wot 8mo ago
        If only there was single-payer universal healthcare, huh?
      - lotsofpulp 8mo ago
        >Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business. It is for most large employers as it helps depress salaries and reduce competition from startups. Employees will want to work for a large employer that lets them pay for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, among other tax advantaged benefits that having a well funded HR department can provide. And employees cannot easily compare compensation at other employers so they are more likely to stick around than shop around, reducing the need to increase pay to keep up with the market. Employers can also tweak compensation by modifying deductibles/out of pocket maximums/healthcare provider networks, and most people's eyes will glaze over before they can figure out if they got an increase or decrease in their total compensation.
      - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
        I live and work in Canada. My very generous healthcare coverage for optional stuff including dental is ~$5300 CAD. I've got kids / dog / spouse / etc. and usually opt for the extra coverages including life insurance. Work covers about half of that. 4% tax (which funds the socialized medicine) plus the 2k, call it 5.5% of salary and I get good healthcare in a large Canadian city. My US benefits were middling in terms of coverage and package when working for a large F500 and went about $16k USD on a 180k salary -- converted is about $19k CAD at todays rates. Including co-pays and fees it's like 10% of salary. At the time I was in a big city with great hospitals and doctors, but not noticeably better than Canada even at the higher price.
JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago
[flagged]
- wilson090 8mo ago
  The only mental gymnastics required are those to make this about "recent events"

tptacek 8mo ago

Important added context here: the list went from US, Cayman, Singapore, Canada to US, Cayman, Singapore. It's not as if YC was generally investing in non-US based entities before. Canada was an exception and isn't anymore. We're a global employer, and just employing people in different jurisdictions is kind of a nightmare (totally worth it, though). I can't imagine how much of a pain it must be to try to manage investment stakes in foreign corporations.

trollbridge 8mo ago
It's a weird change though. Canada is one of the most investor-friendly and startup-friendly jurisdictions I can think of. If you want to grow quickly, you need to be thinking about how to get an office set up in places like Calgary (lots of machine-learning talent there), Toronto, and Vancouver, and when you do so you'll find the government incentives and lower wages lead to you spending about half on total compensation versus a typical American startup hub. I worked at a place that expanded into Calgary and picked up a bunch of ML engineers with oil-and-gas backgrounds (who were eager for something outside the energy sector) and the government picked up half of the payroll tab for several years. There is also, of course, no health insurance benefits to worry about.
- sbarre 8mo ago
  > There is also, of course, no health insurance benefits to worry about. Uhh, we don't have universal coverage for everything health up here, we still have private benefits that our employers pay for as part of our compensation plans. Life insurance, dental, vision, prescriptions, physio, mental health, critical illness etc.. It might be less than in the US, but it's not "no health insurance benefits to worry about".
  - jleyank 8mo ago
    Well, it's fully possible to be self-insuring in these areas. Prescription assistance is probably the one significant benefit as physio, mental health and the like can be of limited reimbursement (judging from what I've seen). The key issue is that the core of one's health insurance is not dependent on the employer or even being full-time employed. This provides tremendous flexibility. And I suspect not having things like pregnancy being seen as preexisting conditions is a big win for parents-to-be. Age or low-income (I think) provide provincial or federal assistance independent of employment also. Medical expenses are also far easier to deduct on taxes in Canada vs. the US.
    - tptacek 8mo ago
      Doesn't it seem likely that tax treatment has more to do with this than benefits? People are reading this like YC isn't investing in companies HQ'd in Canada, but there's no evidence of that! I look at a set {US, Singapore, Cayman} and what I think is "this is about taxes". Maybe especially tricky for YC since such a huge fraction of their portcos are pre-revenue.
      - jleyank 8mo ago
        The key question is whether they make non-US-ians move to the Valley to participate. Or, rephrasing, leave their home country to move to whichever piece of YC is cutting the check.
        tptacek 8mo ago
        Again: there were 4 countries, total, in the standard YC deal terms. Now there are 3. There are many hundreds of YC companies headquartered overseas. The standard move in this situation is that you form a US Delaware C Corp and make your HQ a subsidiary.
        walterbell 8mo ago
        Delaware vs. Cayman for LatAm startups: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686745 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686745
- tokyobreakfast 8mo ago
  > Canada is one of the most investor-friendly and startup-friendly jurisdictions I can think of. Other comments in this thread make it sound like an absolute nightmare. So which is it?
  - gucci-on-fleek 8mo ago
    Much like the US, the regulations and culture varies depending on which province (state) you're in, so someone starting a business in Alberta could have a very different experience than someone in Ontario.
    - 1attice 8mo ago
      Somewhat. Our provinces have fewer rights, powers and responsibilities than US states. The experience is more homogenous. It's only a nightmare if you hate all taxes and labour rights. So, you know, YC
      - tptacek 8mo ago
        You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs --- you can just go to the YC directory and select for EMEA, LATAM, APAC, &c. There's hundreds of them. Since this is purely about ownership structure and equity governing law, I'm curious what the intersection you're seeing between these terms and "labour rights" are. We're a US company with employees in Europe (not even an HQ in Europe, just employees there), and I've learned more about European labor law idiosyncracies over the last few years than over the whole rest of my career, because I've had to.
        gucci-on-fleek 8mo ago
        > You can still run a company from Canada under these terms, the same way every international YC batch company runs Having a Canada-registered company is usually required to get government grants and loans from Canadian banks, although that's probably not very important to VC-backed companies. There are also some tax advantages to running a Canada-registered company if you're based out of Canada, plus it's much easier to find a local professionals (lawyers, accountants, etc.) familiar with Canadian corporations than US corporations. None of these issues should cause too many problems, but if given a choice, as a Canadian I'd certainly prefer to run a Canada-registered company over a US-registered one.
- curmudgeon22 8mo ago
  There are definitely still health insurance benefits (I'm Canadian). Yes, our doctor and hospital visits are covered, but many things are covered by employer paid insurance (or not at all): - prescription medicine - dental - vision - mental health - things like physiotherapy
  - trollbridge 8mo ago
    Yeah, correct, but it's not going to be a $4000/mo line item expense for the employer per employee. I don't have to deal with this as we are a (very) small business but it's a major headache for larger small businesses. Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business.
    - chris_wot 8mo ago
      If only there was single-payer universal healthcare, huh?
    - lotsofpulp 8mo ago
      >Basically, as an employer it simply isn't fun to be forced to be in the "providing access to healthcare" business when that's not your core business. It is for most large employers as it helps depress salaries and reduce competition from startups. Employees will want to work for a large employer that lets them pay for health insurance with pre-tax dollars, among other tax advantaged benefits that having a well funded HR department can provide. And employees cannot easily compare compensation at other employers so they are more likely to stick around than shop around, reducing the need to increase pay to keep up with the market. Employers can also tweak compensation by modifying deductibles/out of pocket maximums/healthcare provider networks, and most people's eyes will glaze over before they can figure out if they got an increase or decrease in their total compensation.
    - red-iron-pine 8mo ago
      I live and work in Canada. My very generous healthcare coverage for optional stuff including dental is ~$5300 CAD. I've got kids / dog / spouse / etc. and usually opt for the extra coverages including life insurance. Work covers about half of that. 4% tax (which funds the socialized medicine) plus the 2k, call it 5.5% of salary and I get good healthcare in a large Canadian city. My US benefits were middling in terms of coverage and package when working for a large F500 and went about $16k USD on a 180k salary -- converted is about $19k CAD at todays rates. Including co-pays and fees it's like 10% of salary. At the time I was in a big city with great hospitals and doctors, but not noticeably better than Canada even at the higher price.

JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago

[flagged]

wilson090 8mo ago
The only mental gymnastics required are those to make this about "recent events"