Overheard at Office2.0: Canadians startups don’t take enough risks (0)
[Stowe Boyed stopped helping the Canadian startup] because the company was helping at the time was – in his own words – “Too Canadian”.
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What the heck does “Too Canadian” mean… According to Stowe, the company was too slow in hiring, developing features, etc…
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There are numerous great Canadian companies that are playing the high risk, high reward game… Our Company Name is Tungle, and we are Canadian.
Sounds like a rallying cry from the heart for me. But I found it insightful tough, because it seems as tough it’s generally accepted in the US that companies from Canada will never be as successful as the ones from the Bay area or Boston. It reminds me a lot of the Red Herring special edition, where the author defended Canada’s place in innovation and as a place for startups, “selling” the different cities throughout 6 pages — as if Québec or Canada was the vast inhabited country where nothing much happens.
I guess the lesson from this is: don’t limit yourself to Montreal or Canada. Act local, but aim for the global. And more importantly, be aware of what’s happenning in other parts of the world. Not only from the US, but also from Europe and Asia. Little facts like most japaneese websites are profitable and make money. Or that the Internet in China has been monetized thanks to Tencent’s qq.
