There are tons of smart Canadians due to the great education system, but Canadians in general don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do. When I quit my job to start my own thing in America, all my co-workers and friends were pumped up and excited, while many Canadians were perplexed and asked questions like: "Don't you have a great job? Don't you make enough money? Why would you quit?" They concluded there was something wrong with me for quitting a decent job to do my own thing.
They didn't understand that being as upper-middle class as I could wasn't my goal. My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Americans get that because it's part of the American dream.
If you are talented, entrepreneurial and a good hacker, get down to NYC or SF. I used to be worried about visa issues, but then I realized it didn't matter, you can figure them out as you go along.
> My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world.
Can I counter your personal anecdote about your friends not appreciating success, with your own personal story of founding a business?
I grew up outside of Toronto, and I'm friends with a dozen Canadians that have founded technology companies. I wouldn't say that we "don't appreciate success".
The point isn't that I'm right and you're wrong. The point is that you can't make gross generalizations about an entire country based on your anecdotal life story.
I could have said "Building something great out of nothing and trying to be the best" is very much embedded into American folklore and culture, but not so much in Canadian.
I had a very long conversation about this with 3 generations of Canadian entrepreneurs (none of them tech mind you) and we all had a good laugh about this very topic. Again, sorry if anecdotal evidence doesn't do it for you.
Risk aversion "why are you quitting when you have a great job" is an individual personalty trait, not one of a whole unrelated group of people. You can find plenty of Americans who would say the same thing.
On top of that, you can't appreciate success that isn't there. You quit your job to start something, that's not succeeding so they weren't appreciating success. Odds are that you would fail miserably.
No, my bet is that what your seeing here is your friends are happy you're trying something you've probably been talking about doing for a while. They're probably your friends because they share some of these same interests, so in addition to seeing a friend do something they want they have the same drive to do it and understand why you would take that risk. Others around you that are not so close are making a risk assessment based on if they were in your shoes what would they think. If starting a business wasn't their interest, that's a huge risk to take for little/no reward. None of it has to do with Americans or Canadians.
Actually, you're a part of why Canada has a struggling tech sector. You moved to the US to start a business. Probably for the same reason doctors do, if you make money, you'll make a shitton more in the US. Other than money, there is no real reason to move to the US from Canada to start a business.
The thing that I disagree with is that people move to the US to make more money. I had a job that paid very well in the US and there's a very good chance I would have made much more doing that than starting my own company.
The US is often years ahead in design, advertising, the latest tech trends, etc. American brands are more likely to try new things out/it's easier to reach larger scale adoption more easily. Through out my life I have always waited for American products/chains/innovations (no matter how novel -- Easy Mac, Yogurt Tubes, MTV, Old Navy) to make it up to Canada. In my opinion those are definitely reasons to move to the US.
So much of starting/running your own thing is dealing with mental blocks. When you are around more people who are breaking through those blocks, or have done so before you, it's quite advantageous.
It's the same in the US. If you're an immigrant, it's incredibly difficult (if not outright impossible) to get a work visa to work at a company you founded. There are a few "founder visa" type bills being discussed in the Congress, but all of them require the company you have founded to have a hefty revenue as well as a handful of employees. In other words, they are only for founders who are already successful.
It's three years later now, and I've found a total of two guys that share the same interest in creating something from nothing, and putting it out there for the world to see. People aren't totally floored by the idea of a good idea, they just do their classwork, get good grades, maybe do some internships, but that's about it.
Now, this is a somewhat sweeping statement, based solely on a small amount of anecdotal evidence. Maybe it's due to the fact that I go to UBC and not Stanford, maybe some ideas are just too ambitious or overwhelming, maybe I haven't run into all the right people, but those are my observations, and my frustrations parallel those discussed by the OP.
These are the kids who never really learn how to program (there aren't nearly enough classroom hours in a 4 year degree to turn you into a competent coder; building your own side projects is a necessity). These are the kids who give rise to all the complaints about Why Johnny Can't Code, and why academia doesn't prepare people for industry. These are the kids who make up the bulk of the anecdotes about people interviewing 10 candidates for a programming position and finding out that only 1 of them could actually program at even a novice level.
It doesn't really have anything to do with being in Canada.
I just didn't think it was worth waiting for a greencard. I was on an H1B for a year, and realized I'd have to wait 5 more years for a greencard.
Now I look back and just think it was a mental road block (a big one albeit it).
Plus,we don't have LLC or a proper equivalent.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_bo...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
Most of the people in my year have gone down when they can for co-op.
You (assuming op is the maintainer of the site) should really handle any django "get" with a try/except block.
That, and you should also set debug to False on a production server.
Once the article exists again, it might be worth reading.
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/shortcuts/...
Cognos (IBM), Changepoint (Compuware), Workbrain (Infor), Flickr (Yahoo!), Dundas (Microsoft), Opalis (Microsoft), Kobo (Rakuten), Alias (Autodesk)... etc, etc.
And then there's also the likes of 500px, Cirba, etc.
You're missing an m or a b there.
At first I thought it was a joke related to the title, but now I see that it's just a Django error page. Made me chuckle at least.
Here's a cached version in the meantime: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Athrow...
The hugely hyped media coverage of celebrities is not really a good model for anything in the real world. We don't all buy products and services from only the largest business in any given market sector. If I'm buying a car, or cellphone service, or software, I'm certainly going to consider offerings from companies that are not the #1 company in their field.
As a start, let's all have our Twitter taglines say what our startup is (or will soon be) the best in the world at doing.
Here's what mine was before reading this article (@peterarmstrong):
Co-Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to self-publish in-progress ebooks.
Note how qualified that is: co-founder, self-publish, in-progress. That's because I'm Canadian, and I'm trying to be accurate.
If I was in the valley, I'd probably have mine be:
Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to publish ebooks.
What's better?
What's yours?
Edit:
How about a damning look at Canada's film industry (hint: it's not Hollywood)?
Canada is great, but easier access to capital in America.
Living in Toronto it's noticeable to recognize it's the financial industry runs this city, then comes marketing and advertising. Tech here in Toronto primarily just service these industries.
Now when it comes to getting people to invest in tech startups, is not a lack of money - it's the investors who have money and lack of knowledge in the tech industry. (Most of them having financial backgrounds)
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I'm already excited about the opportunities ahead. I'm in. I'll do my part, starting Today!
Aside: I think I finally found a use for my domain torontotech.org - colleagues and collaborators wanting to take part, get in touch