Canadian Government Makes Call to Foreign Startups for New Startup Visa | Hacker News Reader

Canadian Government Makes Call to Foreign Startups for New Startup Visa

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56 pointsjoeyczikk131 comments

This is a good move, though I'm not sure how much good it will actually do.

Canada's software engineering industry has a massive brain drain problem, bigger than the mainstream media knows, and bigger than even many tech insiders know. Of the people I graduated university with the people who are still in Canada are the minority, a notion that still boggles the mind.

The bulk are in the US, and almost everyone I know who works on "startupy" things are in the US. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of people I know, still in Canada, working on startupy tech. The vast majority of my peers who remain in Canada are working in BigEnterprise, not exactly a talent pool well fit to encourage startups.

Without making meaningful strides at reversing the brain drain, I feel like any policy changes are just bandaids over a gaping wound. Can there be a startup revolution when the bulk of your engineering talent is busy diving across the border?

I am someone who has stayed behind, and works at a startup. As a full-stack web (Rails+JS) developer I certainly haven't seen any shortage of demand. Although I would say that about 25% of the recruiting messages I receive are from US companies - often acknowledging me being Canadian and in some cases even playing off of it with message subjects like "Hate the winter? Come south" or what have you.

There are some distinct advantages to staying up here though. First, at least in Toronto, the cost of living is substantially less than that in San Francisco. To maintain my standard of living, I estimate that I would need to earn 35 - 40% more in Cali, which would be at the upper end of most salaries I've seen. Second, "standing out" career-wise is much easier when there aren't 100,000 people with a duplicate skill set.

Does that cost of living includes healthcare?

Yes - the tax rate difference would essentially cover the cost of the premiums if I had to pay them myself. I suspect though that any company I were to join in SF would be covering that for me.

Getting the money and basic policy right is the easiest part. The fact is that it's really really hard to compete with California's intrinsic benefits. If Canada wants to develop its own SV, they need to figure out how to develop single region that's extremely attractive to a wide demographic range of the highest achieving among us. This means cultivating a place with a sophisticated and edgy culture, an awesome lifestyle, and compelling geography.

If I were a Canadian policy maker, I'd probably work from the intrinsic potential of Vancouver. Pour money and talent into UBC and/or SFU, set up hundreds of live-work artist studios, sponsor the construction of maker spaces and publicly accessible wet labs, liberalize drug policy, and set up a visa program to bring in and house the best and the brightest from all over (South America, Europe, Asia), and direct them all to a relatively small and extremely fun area.

And perhaps most of all, avoid "Made in Canada/BC" provincialism.

"Of the people I graduated university with the people who are still in Canada are the minority, a notion that still boggles the mind."

^ This has been my experience as well.

Screw this new start-up visa -- what we should really be doing is providing subsidies to companies as an incentive to hire junior developers and/or paying Canadian developers of all levels what they're actually worth. The problem with Canada's start-up culture isn't that we're low on talent. We generate plenty of talent. Canada's problem is a problem of retention.

Freshly minted Canadian C.S. grad here. I'm passionate about my craft, did well in school and I've done several very cool (I think) "for fun" personal projects. I've even successfully shipped one. For what it's worth, this is my perspective on the current climate.

As it stands, we do have a bit of a start-up culture up here (see http://startupnorth.ca/). However, there are some major problems which desperately need to be addressed before any real growth can happen here:

1) Probably about 90% of the "startupy", or relatively interesting, coding gigs are located in Ontario. Not situated in, or interested in moving to, Toronto/Waterloo? Guess you're SOL. Oh, what's that? You are interested in relocating? Well, there's plenty of cheap talent here in Ontario from UT and/or UW that won't cost us anything in terms of relocation. We're probably just going to go with them instead. Thanks for applying, though.

2) Junior developer positions are practically non-existent. There are a few that are advertised as "junior" positions. They're not. Canadian employers: "two years of professional experience in a production environment" for a "junior" position is two years too many. Junior developers are recent grads. Recent grads who head south because of your ill-conceived, rigid criteria.

3) Setting aside my own gripes, it seems that even senior developers are being undervalued. I caught this the other day: http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/rds/sof/3705649489.html. Not cool, Canada.

For now, I'm currently working in systems administration. While I still really, really want to pursue a career in software development (or even just an intern position for now), I can't even get my foot in the door for an interview with anyone in Canada. I'd really rather not relocate to the US, but it's looking increasingly appealing with each passing day.

This [1] article stated that there are 350,000 Canadians currently living in SV. That's around 1% of our entire population. Considering most of these are members of a small minority of skilled software people (no idea what the exact percentage might be) it's likely to be pretty a huge chunk of the total.

It's a little surprising me how bad it is considering how much the Canadian government offers to tech startups (IRAP, SRED, etc.). However, the wages I see most established software companies paying let alone the startups probably has a lot to do with it. The lack of good software companies likely has more to do with the brain drain than anything else does.

[1]: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazi...

I know mostly folks going the other direction, moving to Toronto and Montreal from the US (and a few from Scandinavia) to start or expand businesses. But that's mostly in videogames, where it seems both Quebec and Ontario currently have very generous support programs (both outright grants and tax incentives).

I live in Waterloo and know a large handful of startups that have gone to the valley and then came back (bufferbox, vidyard, thalmic, to name a few). Waterloo is a specific case, but I'm not sure it's as bad as you're presenting it to be.

That's been my experience as well. Those of us left in Canada are those who have not yet made the move to the US. Given the option, I know precisely where I'd be, and it's not here.

>In order to apply for the program an entrepreneur or startup must first have secured a minimum investment of $200,000 if the investment comes froma designated Canadian venture capital fund or $75,000 if the investment comes from a designated Canadian angel investor group. Applicants will also need to meet general program requirements, such as language proficiency and academic experience.

This is just silly. Especially the "academic experience". A good chunk of the people that do startups of this nature, probably won't have "academic experience" - so that's a self-selecting, self-defeating bias right there.

If it's anything like other visa problems the academic experience is probably a little flexible. I was involved in getting a visa for someone from Microsoft who didn't have official "academic experience" however his position and history with MS was considering sufficient to justify it.

That said, I completely agree it's a stupid requirement to place on this.

The academic requirement is just one year of post-secondary, even an abandoned degree would work.

TL;DR: If you can get funding from a Canadian VC or Angel fund, it'll be easier to get a Canadian visa. No links to the Government site to confirm details but this seems to be the official details: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/backgrounders/...

"In order to apply for the program an entrepreneur or startup must first have secured a minimum investment of $200,000 if the investment comes from a designated Canadian venture capital fund or $75,000 if the investment comes from a designated Canadian angel investor group. Applicants will also need to meet general program requirements, such as language proficiency and academic experience."

The problem we face is that Bay Street is startup-adverse, and there's not really a VC ecosystem outside of that. We've got a few YC clones, and then we have a few VCs doing series B type investments, but not a whole lot that bridges the gap.

Canada lifted this idea from the US. Americans have had this scheme sitting idle for about 3 years now because congress is totally useless and has been blocking everything.

The academic requirement is only 1yr post secondary but doesn't say if you need 1yr in a recognized "western" school or if your university of Bangladesh degree will be accepted.

> Canada lifted this idea from the US.

Umm, I'm not sure why you decided that this was an American idea that Canada "lifted". Isn't it just a little possible that the Canadian government had this idea first?

To paraphrase fake Mark Zuckerberg. "If you had invented Facebook. You would've invented Facebook."

Because the Canadian government actually said they lifted the idea from the Americans who's similar program has been stalled in congress for years due to infighting about immigration.

Hmm apologies if they actually said they "lifted"the idea from the US.

I think you'll understand if i ask that you back up your claim with a valid source:). Any links?

It's worth noting that here in Canada investments of over $200K in tech startups are far from common.

That is dependent on location. Seed investments of $200k+ are not uncommon in Waterloo, Toronto, Vancouver. Montreal & Calgary are also active. Its all about who you know.

Its all about who you know

Yeah that last part sounded a little bad, like nepotism-bad.

Canada has long had great incentives for firms seeking to employ engineering talent (as long as your firm is already in Canada). It's about time we reduced boundaries for founders to come here and take advantage of the inexpensive engineering talent.

Anything I read on April 1st, I am having to think twice if this is for real.

Beat me to it. Have never really thought of the Canadian government caring about entrepreneurs, other than token support to get votes.

> Beat me to it. Have never really thought of the Canadian government caring about entrepreneurs, other than token support to get votes.

Really? SHRED was all about helping new tech companies get started in Canada.

Not to mention the R&D tax credit, which is transferable and instantly adds value to even failed startups. Being able to buy a startup for micenuts simply so you can write off 30% of their salaries (while still getting their employees) is pretty attractive for a lot of established companies.

SRED is the R&D tax credit: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/

If nobody goes to Canada, it does not cost them anything.

Could it a sign that a startup bubble is forming?

On its own? No more than the sun coming up in the morning.

Which isn't saying "it's as certain as the sun coming up that there's a startup bubble.". I'm mean that, as far as startup-favorable actions go, this seems way too benign to signal much of anything. It could be driven by clueless end-harbinging followers try to cash in, but, on this article alone, it could just as likely be a small progressive victory, with the Canadian federal government doing something for a relatively voiceless potential constituency.

The Canadian government rarely leads anymore on "progressive" matters, so perhaps if you could trace the influence that got this policy through it would point to something that could better answer that question. I am not personally familiar with the opposing parties involved.

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