“a hobby inventor walks into a show-and-tell event filled with fellow hobby inventors and says “hey everyone! I’ve invented an echo chamber! you wanna buy in?!”"

I am cruel. I know.

Yep. As long as the “come up short” point is viewed as chance for improvement, not as automatic suckage which a lot of posts and comments often seem to say.

but i do think benchmarking against SF is valid in this context. if we’re going to ask the question “is montreal a hub for innovation?” it would be ludicrous to avoid comparing ourselves (for better or worse) to the place in the world that is arguably the epicentre. of course we will come up short in many regards, but that’s exactly the point.

@heri – go down to NYC, or london or paris, or boston and ask someone to name you the best school in Canada, and I would bet that 90% of the people will tell you mcgill. i would be absolutely shocked if anybody in the english speaking world has ever heard of UdeM. mcgill’s greatest strength is in its marketing, and it has incredible brand recognition internationally. that alone attracts top quality minds, educators and research money. as for the quality of the education, i think it’s uniformly crappy across the board. but then again – you don’t go to university to learn anything in the classroom, right?

as an entrepreneur, you should be ready to question the status-quo.

also, good weather sounds great… in theory. Sophia-Antipolis, France’s silicon valley, is in the Cote d’Azur. I lived there, but one thing is for sure: people go there because there are so many tech and biotech companies, not because of the good weather. For me, it’s like saying Ibiza or Cancun would be a great place for tech entrepreneurship because there many sand beaches and comfortable hotels.

I agree a lot with what Patrick and John are saying. Everyone knows it’s harder for startups here than in Silicon Valley. But it’s improving. And for me, as I wrote in the post, I believe has a lot of untapped potential.

And to carry on with the Hockey metaphors – the more you practice, train and play with other good players the better you get – but it also requires a lot of determination and time.

Having committed team mates alongside you really helps – and having lived in many cities and country’s around the world I really think that Montreal’s tech entrepreneurs have a team spirit as strong as anywhere.

For various of your points, and Mat’s answers, you should specify the web industry and if you don’t, you’re mistaken, there are a number of great success stories and big companies that have come out of Montréal in other areas.

2. The rate of self employed, freelancers and micro enterprises is the highest in Canada, maybe in North America. Where’s the 9@5 there??

6. Took me all of 2 hours to fill out the paperwork, 20 minutes in line to hand it in and I got everything back 2 weeks later.

7. Huh, that’s funny. Talk to the Flickr (to stay web) or to everyone bitching about sooo many Canadian companies getting bought out (although I don’t know their inc. provenance)

7. (the second one) That happens everywhere to a certain degree. Even in Silicon Valley. We might be worse than some but it’s not a binary thing, many many countries have that behavior.

Finally everyone, here and in most cities having the exact same arguments, should stop comparing with SF. Sure, keep a close eye on them, take lessons from there, but it’s like saying you can’t play hockey because you can’t be as good as Crosby, there’s a whole big spectrum of success in between.