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Comment by memracom | Hacker News Reader

Former Waterloo student here...

It's a shame that more Waterloo folks don't stay in Canada and build their businesses here. Unlike when I was at UW, nowadays there is plenty of investment money available in Canada and significant tech hubs in Vancouver, Toronto and Waterloo itself. Not to mention the fact that even in less major Canadian cities (or the US Midwest) there actually is a tech scene happening and people are starting new businesses. It is no longer necessary to move far from home to build a tech business.

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Every time I've looked into it in detail, I feel Canada's VCs/angels are essentially bankers. Too much risk minimization going on (at the expense of the entrepreneur). What I find is a travesty is that the recent govt of Canada investment in developing startup activity will most likely go to these glorified bankers to help them further reduce risk.

Look at how much YC has spent on its startups ... my memory might be faulty but when I heard pg give the number it was around 6 million. If the govt of Canada did a program similar to startup Chile where they would invest in people's startups for a few months, THAT would have been a game changer for the smart Waterloo and UofT grads. Squandered opportunities ...

You're right on the money. Bay St likes resources, not startups. The company I'm currently working for was started by a couple of fresh UVic grads in 2005 and they went through 60 VCs before they found one who both had a worthwhile network, and seemed legitimately interested in funding a startup that had positive cashflow from day 1 and partnerships with tech titans.

this is very true, very low valuation, a friends company got into an incubator, a very well known incubator in SV, and their current investor called them retards because the valuations wasn't proportionate to revenue...

Actually, the article doesn't spin it that way, but a lot are staying in the Waterloo area. BufferBox for the most part is still based in KW. Thalmic and Vidyard returned to KW after YC. Eric is one of the few successful exceptions I can think of for staying in PA with Pebble after YC.

Man its depressing, its been a year post graduation and all my friends have moved to Silicon Valley, I'm working on a start up so I stayed, but its really hard when literally every technical person you used to chill with has moved out.

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