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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Whether it's significant or not, YC's basic model of seed funding with ~$100k could be reproduced in Canada with $10MM or less. Unsure how this is a problem.

If Canada wanted to be serious about startups it could make trivial changes to enable it. However it's committed to becoming a dutch diseased resource colony with no value add and a macquiladora for US software companies. Relative to capital and assets, it's the least productive place on earth. The whole thing runs on riding the coattails of like 5 undergrad profs at waterloo, and a certain bank everyone knows launders cartel money and facilitates capital flight out of China.

Judging by its impact, YC is one of the greatest companies of all time. Canada isn't in that game imo.

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What are the trivial changes Canada could make if it wanted to be serious about startups?

briefly: cap gains reductions. at will employment. competitive top line corporate rates that attract HQ's and IP the way Ireland did. reduce the public sector talent tarpit, tariff goods from countries that use slave labor. abolish the dairy, wheat, and syrup boards and other agriculture cartels. enforce money laundering laws against retail businesses to normalize commercial rents. reduce immigration to levels where people can integrate and actually want to make things for each other and to take the pressure off home prices. pro natal policies that create more young people with a stake in their country. make math education a national project. to name a few.

if you talk to anyone in canada who is from here and doesn't work in the public sector, the conversation quickly turns to whether they're planning to leave and how far along they are. the way it's going, they're going to have to bar the exits.

> if you talk to anyone in canada who is from here and doesn't work in the public sector, the conversation quickly turns to whether they're planning to leave and how far along they are. the way it's going, they're going to have to bar the exits.

It sounds like that is just your bubble. I live in Vancouver, BC, and am a Canadian citizen. Yes, lots of people agree that things could be (and should be!) better - but I don't know many folks that are actively planning to leave.

Same for me and most people I work with in Vancouver as well.

These days I'm finding people are very much against relocating to the USA more than 4-5 years ago.

All Canadian jurisdictions, as far as I am aware, are at-will employment. Unionized environments are an exception because they have layoff procedures in their collective agreements, but that's the same in the US.

we have at will employment here in Canada, do you know much about Canada? Most of the things you have mentioned are not real issues here.

Canada could risk 1:22 odds of a startup return, or get near certain double digit growth from real-estate, and revenue-property holdings.

People are just far too risk-averse up north to actually properly fund a real startup. =3

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