Montreal as a startup hub - take 4 (2)
I was reading Michael Arrington’s views on techcrunch early friday, where he stated that any tech entrepreneur who wants seriously to make it happen must go to the Silicon Valley, which he describes as the geek’s paradise and a focal point for tech investors.
I can certainly imagine the place. Even if I haven’t been to the Valley, I know what it’s like to be in an environment where everyone can work his ass every day of the year, 14 hours a day, everyday, for years, and where everyone seems to be smarter and quicker than you. Michael Arrington’s description of confederation of “geeks” working 18 hours each day and pulling all-nighters doesn’t impress me. I know better. He might be right though about access to capital. Angels and VCs are only a handful in Montreal, and it might be a problem for aspiring entrepreneurs, although standoutjobs and praized showed that if you have a good team, then you will find an investor to back you in Montreal.
I believed there is a climate favourable for startups in Montreal. This has been discussed before here, over and over, so I am not ready to add more to the topic. To top it, Roberto Rocha coincidentally published an article this weekend at the Gazette, exposing Montreal’s tech environment. Many agree - with Mark Mac Leod quoting the habs as an argument for Montreal ;-), although I am not sure this plays for anyone wishing to relocate to Montreal.
To any aspiring entrepreneur out there, I am inviting you to try out Montreal — I am even ready to help out, the email is news@montrealtechwatch.com
I much prefer Paul Graham’s take on the topic:
http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
http://paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html
My personal experience has been that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to do great things. While still living in Montreal, I made a number of contributions to open source projects which are now widely adopted (relayfs which is now in the kernel, and LTT which is used in a variety of places) and wrote a book for O’Reilly. Living in Montreal didn’t hamper this type of bleeding edge work.
A few years back I moved to an even more “remote” region, Sherbrooke, where I started my second startup (Kryptiva) using basically Sherbrooke-based angel funding. So even remote location doesn’t necessarily mean lack of funding.
What does seem to harm startups is the lack of the fertile breeding ground that can be made possible by the existence of local success stories along with what appears to be an ingrained fear of failure. I personally find this state of affairs somewhat disconcerting, especially given the local talent pool. And while I do see positive signs, I think there’s still some ways to go. FWIW, MontrealTechWatch is definitely one of the more positive signs for sure :)
[...] on Saturday talking about the growing tech and start up culture on the island of Montreal. Heri of MTW, Joey at Global Nerdy, and Rob at Techvibes all picked up on it rather quickly and built on the [...]
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