dquail

8 ms·

61.
by dquail 14y ago
Yup, you're essentially right (I wrote the post). The gist of the article really could have been "Why you should start your startup outside of the valley" ... but choosing Canada has a few specific advantages I never really delved into wit
62.
by dquail 14y ago
I run an internship program placing Canadian interns in the valley, and have interviewed plenty of students from US schools. There's some amazing students coming out of Waterloo and UBC in particular. Waterloo grads are as competent and h
63.
by dquail 14y ago
Us Immigration sucks. But if you're a talented engineer ... You can get down there. But there's plenty of Canadians that would to prefer to stay.
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by dquail 14y ago
Why does everyone seem to think you need to raise money from Canadian investors? We raise from US investors in our first startup. We were Canadian nobodies with nothing but a beta as a pitch deck. Yes, it's easier to raise if vc's can driv
65.
by dquail 14y ago
Vancouver has exceptional talent, a shared time zone with the valley, and ski hills minutes away. Grow labs and launch academy are also seeding and launching legit companies. All this adds up to a pretty strong scene. I'm not aware of in
66.
by dquail 14y ago
Yes, a lot of big companies were once ridiculous ideas. The founders where tenacious, and would have succeeded regardless of any synthesized hype. I argue there's more companies hurt because of this than there are that thrive.
67.
by dquail 14y ago
That's consistent with my experience. Not only onerous paperwork; but very poor advice wrt how to build a business. This is federal money not intended for high risk high reward opportunities. The advice I got was "you should focus more on
68.
by dquail 14y ago
The great Canadian startups I know don't look incredibly highly of government programs (namely SR&ED and IRAP). They're great, but can be distracting, taking you away from building value in your startup and into filling out meaningless
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by dquail 14y ago
* Disclaimer - I wrote the post Thanks for suggesting I look young :) I have a hard time taking advice from young people too. Well ... until Brian Wong, schooled me during a tech conference we were both panelists for. A lot of super smart
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by dquail 14y ago
* Disclaimer - I wrote this post. Totally agree, Canada is incredibly diverse so this article is a bit overgeneralizing. Starting in Waterloo / Toronto / Vancouver / is night and day to Winnipeg (nothing against winnipeg). The main take aw
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Why Startups Should Choose Canada Over Silicon Valley(techvibes.com)
131 points by dquail 14y ago|106 comments
72.
by dquail 14y ago
The energy, collaboration, exposure to new technology, people, ideas, creativity … far outweighs the cons here. No one’s forcing you to stay until 5AM and eat nothing but skittles and trail mix.
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Mobile first vs web first? Try "product market fit first"(dql.me)
1 points by dquail 14y ago|0 comments
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by dquail 14y ago
I think the comment should be "don't believe techcrunch" ... rather than "don't read techcrunch" There's a lot of value in keeping a pulse of what's going on. But you need a filter ...
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by dquail 14y ago
First spend less time reading hacker news and more time talking with actual people who might feel pain in the online education space.
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Please celebrate raising money(davidquail.com)
1 points by dquail 14y ago|1 comments
77.
"Broken doesn't begin to describe US Immigration for startups"(davidquail.com)
5 points by dquail 15y ago|0 comments