500 Startups shuts down its Canada fund | Hacker News Reader

500 Startups shuts down its Canada fund

techcrunch.com

66 pointsjanober27 comments

Really too bad. Especially with the situation in America right now I know a number of founders that had decided not to do the "move to California" strategy.

From the article:

Last month, a number of women came forward to the New York Times, alleging misconduct by McClure and others in the venture community.

That to me sounds like not really too bad but instead about f'n time.

It's possible to not feel particularly bad for 500 Startups themselves, while still feeling bad for the Canadian entrepreneurs who will have fewer options available to them.

ohh, the company/startup is called "500 Startups", for a while there i thought canada is falling apart .. and a count of 500 startups were shutting down

As if we have 500 startups...

It's nice to see that they have a better than industry average score of supporting women co-founders but now you really have to wonder if that's tainted or not. McClure did himself and the companies they invested in no favors.

the really bad part, some Canadian minority founders will have to search for seed funding elsewhere.

There's plenty of government grants for minority-founded businesses, especially if they're recent immigrants.

Why don't they just give this to everyone? Canadian government really loves to favor the new Canadians over the old ones. I don't think it should matter...

The government doesn't "favour new Canadians over old ones." That's crap.

The government offers funding to new immigrants because they lack many of the social networks that people who were raised and educated here possess. Also, it's a pretty good investment, as immigrants have a stronger entrepreneurial bone than the average Canadian, due to self-selecting as go-getters (i.e. emigrating).

Sorry, immigrants make better entrepreneurs? Is this a fact or just something you pulled out of thin air? Not to mention the fact that allowing only immigrants to benefit from this is discriminatory and directly contradicts your first sentence. What about all the potential native entrepreneurs that might not get their chance to shine due to not being given the same advantages as the foreigners? You should work for government, I think you would fit right in.

A wild guess: immigrants arrive in a new country with very little support from family with existing savings, homes and the like. They often need more of a "leg up" than someone whose family has been in the country for generations.

we've an extremely weak, hyper image-conscious liberal government... what are you expecting?

Sorry, but I don't like Hacker News turning into reddit threads where unproven speculation gets read as truth.

Care to provide some substance to your claims with examples of precisely what kinds of funding supports (in $$$) the Canadian government actually gives to new migrants?

There's a common meme out there that refugees get more money than welfare recipients, and it's outright false. (Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/do-government-assisted-refug...)

grants are very diferent to seed stage financing and normally preced it.

Could you link to some government grants for recent immigrants? Thanks!

citation needed

What a tragedy

Or, you know, build a business based on their profits.

Heaven forbid. A business with positive cash flow is so not cool!

Pursuit of positive cash flow for it's own sake and before the time is right can also be a stupid decision.

And yet a great majority of successful businesses are bootstrapped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com