A good direction seems to be Waterloo/Velocity->YC->Seed round->Main office in Canada There's a ton of advantages of having your main office in Canada, but the

A good direction seems to be Waterloo/Velocity->YC->Seed round->Main office in Canada There's a ton of advantages of having your main office in Canada, but there are many disadvantages as well. Seed round pretty much has to be done in SV as Canadian investors are notoriously cheap and horrible [1]. So you get your seed money in SV and then work for cheap in Canada. The downside is that not having "close" communication with your investors may impact follow-on financing, though that remains to be seen. Also, for certain types of companies being surrounded by a bunch of other startups can be very useful. No matter what, if you're going to be in the tech industry it's usually a good thing to have some contacts and relationships in the valley. If you're a first time founder then doing everything from Canada is going to be difficult. If you've been around the block a few times, then the downsides aren't so bad, and the upsides are major. [1] Unconfirmed, but I heard a stat recently that BDC takes controlling interest in 75% of their pre-Series A deals.