Poll of the week #4: Montréal as a startup and innovation hub (14)
I have read this week Daniel Drouet’s post at montrealstartup, where he says Montréal’s unemployement rate is now below Toronto’s, which is historical, as Montréal has been lagging economically for years.
Of course, it might not be permanent, and we should ask ourselves questions on how Montréal can become a permanent place for development, and for me, a permanent place for innovation. StartupNorth is starting a series, asking its readers which is the best place for startups, but I think it’s more relevant to ask montréalers how they feel about their city.
So I am starting a new poll, and the question is: What is Montréal’s best advantage for launching a startup? Choices are:
- Avalaibility of tech developers
- The design community
- Universities, student population, and research and development
- Cost of Living
- avalaibility of angel funding
- avalaiblity of venture capital funding
- government assistance and programs
- presence of successful tech entrepreneurs
- entrepreneurship spirit in Québec
- Diversity in Montréal and Montréal’s culture
- the technological infrastructure
You can choose multiple answers or even write a new one.
Please come by and let other readers know about your opinion
Thanks!
Relevant post:
Though it’s perhaps not necessarily the most important reason, the availability of bilingual workers is something Montreal is ideal for. This is the most bilingual city in Canada, and if you’re going to service people in both languages, you need workers who understand them both. We have plenty of those here.
[...] What is Montréal’s best advantage for launching a startup? [...]
fagstein: I was thinking about that when writing diversity in Montréal. You can also find many spanish-speaking people - and italian and portuguese and chineese people in montréal. i should have written multiculturalism I guess
for all readers, I think I have forgotten a few important choices that you can put in “other”:
- presence of PR firms
- presence of UI design consultants
- presence of organizations (yes entrepreneur, CDEC/CLD…)
- meetups and cohesion of local tech community
- quality consultants, strategy consultants
- sales trainers, management coaches
- and let’s not forget video production which is the tool of choice for marketing these days
I’m very tempted to check every item on the list. All of them contribute, in their own way, to making Montreal what it is: an exciting place to launch a startup.
However, there’s one item that’s not on the list and will take some time to get on there. Mentoring. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and strong in Quebec and there are successful tech entrepreneurs to show for it. However, the up-and-comers (and there are a lot out there at the moment) could benefit from the experience of others who have gone before them.
Sylvain Carle and I had a brief discussion about this a couple of Tech Entrepreneur breakfast’s ago. In the Silicon Valley, they are on the third generation of tech entrepreneurs. We’ve gone through a first generation and are developing a new generation. Hopefully we’ll be able to bridge the gap and skip a generation or two, so we’re no longer playing catch-up.
I think this is coming, with the current openness and cohesion of the tech community, things are looking good.
In french, but interesting nonetheless: Emploi : Montréal surpasse Toronto grâce à l’éducation
robin: the globe and mail had the same conclusions, saying that Québec has a far better education system than Ontario, and that ultimately, education wins. thanks for the link. :-)
eric: i have heard a lot about mentoring but haven’t heard of practical examples. well not yet. I have an upcoming project with “les affaires” about experience transfer from the baby boomers to the younger generation. we will see how this come up. (can’t disclose more than that)
by the way, yes montréal has very good advantages for launching a startup, although we should also work on the issues and how to improve it. that’s why i have started a series on this blog about other cities and how they are doing, what are their structures and how is entrepreneurship. there was a post about ottawa recently, and there should be more coming.
Hello Heri (and all!),
For your piece on mentoring, make sure you talk with the Fondation de l’entrepreneurship (http://www.entrepreneurship.qc.ca). They put in place a nice network of experienced managers who can support our young entrepreneurs. We hope to be able to tap into this for our ICT companies.
“the technological infrastructure” didn’t get any votes, yet iWeb was rated the 7th most reliable internet host according to http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/07/08/tiscali_is_most_reliable_hosting_company_in_june_2007.html
And we got Koumbit: http://koumbit.org/ :)
Robin: i think everybody though that québec is very late in mobile networks. and this is a big problem.
i do agree though that in broadband internet, ISPs and in other areas, montréal is at the forefront.
hmmm….. koumbit has its own servers? do they lease it or do they own it?
Koumbit owns its servers, it also does community colocation, vservers, vhosts, etc. I’m not sure where they are hosted anymore. More info on the community colocation program is here: http://wiki.koumbit.net/CommunityColocationProject
Non-profit doesn’t mean ressourceless ;)
robin: apparently, they use iWeb’s facility
http://wiki.koumbit.net/IwebDotCa?highlight=%28iweb%29
http://wiki.koumbit.net/TermsOfService/ExempleIweb?highlight=%28iweb%29
which is the most logical place in montréal.
[...] spends a great deal of time on MTW, wondering out loud if Montreal is, or is becoming, an international [...]
[...] Montreal is ideally attractive to the creative class — funky, cheapish, fun, mixed, vibrant etc — but there are all sorts of problems here. For pros and cons, see the discussion from a while back over at Heri’s MontrealTechWatch. [...]
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