I have two main concerns when considering a startup: access to talent and access to capital. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, Toronto falls short on both. Multiculturalism barely factors into it -- and if it did why would I pick Toronto over NYC?
Multiculturalism and the political scene is what keeps your employees happy to live in the city.
regarding access to capital, two things;
1) We have access to NYC and Chicago VC's, easily. If you slightly push your startup in the media (blogs, newspapers) it almost guarantees a call from interested US VC's within a 1hr flight.
2) Where we lack the competitive VC environment, we make up for it with Federal and Municipal programs. Incentives to hire top talent, compensation for hiring new graduates, grans for office space or R & D.
Canada rocks. more people are starting to realize this.
The other reality is, older generations, our parents or their age group, were never as globally competitive as we have the potential to be. They were happy with just having a customer base thats local, if lucky, nation wide.
But no, this new generation is fierce and competitive. We don't want to just dominate in Canada where we have home advantage, we want to compete globally. The rise of the tech startups out of the Toronto region is just a great example of that upward trend. it's just going to get better and better where as SF seems to have peaked.
I have two main concerns when considering a startup: access to talent and access to capital. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, Toronto falls short on both. Multiculturalism barely factors into it -- and if it did why would I pick Toronto over NYC?