Montreal Tech Watch

The Montreal startup scene, Blitzweekend, 2nd March 2008

There is a great thread at Hacker news about the best place to startup now, outside of the U.S.

Hacker news is a social news website designed for the “ycombinator community”, and has been hailed by many (Michael Arrington among others) as a leading source of news for programming, hacking, and entrepreneurship.

I know many readers of this blog are either involved in startups, or are interested into starting or joining one. If you are part of the latter category, one of the questions you should ask yourself then what would be the best location for a startup.

Inevitably, Silicon Valley, and also Boston are shown as the reference, with its obsessive entrepreneurship culture, the abundance of investors, smart people and early adopters, which are all key ingredients of success.

There are some good news though as comments on the thread highlights many Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Waterloo, Ottawa, Winnipeg, etc.) as great cities for a technology startup. Some positive points mentionned for Canadian cities:

• community events and growing ecosystem,
• cheap rent and cost of living for many cities,
• accessible and friendly VCs,
• not much bureaucracy, it’s easy to register a company,
• great healthcare system compared to the U.S., plus healthier people than in the U.S.

Cons mentionned by the commenters:

• apparently, many shy away from Montréal and from Québec because they “fear” French
• might be a problem for those who want sunshin all year long

There are certainly many other reasons why it’s a great place to launch a technoloy startup in Montreal, in Québec or in other cities. I’ve got many in my mind, but I fear I’ll repeat myself. So I’ll leave it up to you, if you think of other reasons, please share them, either here or on the discussion thread.