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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

It really is. I’m very familiar with that as well.

It’s truly embarrassing how much hand-holding those guys have received from angels, investors, the government, etc. To the point where the same investors they’re going to pitch to are preparing their slides, telling them what to say during the presentation, and then approving them for even more funding afterward, lol.

That government part is corruption and illegal, by the way.

Actual usage on many of their APIs/models is painfully low, like in ... hundreds of DAUs. I don't blame them for this, but this is a "company" that should have died 2 years ago.

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this is just one of the many weird stuff I hear out of Canada that always surprises me, I've compiled a list:

- the wife of a professor I knew in canada apparently makes 400k/year for some Aboriginal art gallery that gets like two visits a year. They kicked out small businesses in that building so they could have a 6000 sq ft for an art gallery that sits empty with the weirdest "art" that nobody has heard of.

- canadian coworker said around 2020 there was like 3 developers that charged the Canadian government $70 million for some flutter app that had ONE screen to check in and out of places due to quarantine and it didn't even work.

- ten million here and there to raise diversity and LGBTQ in African countries that don't even have running water or electricity and other brow raising spend of tax money

- a founder raised money for a SaaS but was shut down by the Canadian government after not being issued license. Same exact SaaS was funded and the person running it had political connections.

A country with 8 times smaller population and 15 times smaller economy than USA somehow has 7 times more tax employees. It's unclear what the end game is for Canada.

>[...] charged the Canadian government $70 million for some flutter app [...]

I met one of these guys. Some parts of Canada are massively corrupt. If you're in the inner circle, the amount of things you get for free is unimaginable. If you're not, then you get the privilege of a 50%+ tax bill.

also I find the salary is atrociously low in Canada for the exact same role

> It's unclear what the end game is for Canada

The Liberals can never lose an election because the amount of people who rely on them for handouts outnumber the people who work in private enterprises and don't get handouts.

It's the Argentinian Peronist strategy...

Sure, and OpenAI, Anthropic, Grokkk are totally self-made and profitable.

Well, the level of tech is at least on a whole different level at those companies than whatever cohere is doing.

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