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A “startup” in Canada is just a dozen guys who stay afloat by chasing $50k government grants full time. It’s very good when these go out of business
by 3qz 4y ago
A “startup” in Canada is just a dozen guys who stay afloat by chasing $50k government grants full time. It’s very good when these go out of business
- junofan 4y agoHaha the PMs at their pension funds on the other hand… I have heard it gets boring when everyone in a local startup ecosystem is chasing govt grants.
- eagsalazar2 4y agoI know this doesn't apply to all Canadian startups, but this is definitely a thing too.
- raverbashing 4y agoThey also chase VC money but yeah. They usually go for the least plausible business models for some reason
- Kye 4y agoIt makes sense. Plausible business models can get normal business loans. Funding what no one else or not enough people are funding is typically the point of a grant.
- mikrl 4y agoOnce I looked into SRED and connected the dots, whenever I heard hypercapitalist talk at work I’d have to bite my tongue.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoSR&ED is just a nice-to-have break on taxes, no?
- throwawaysleep 4y agoI’m not sure of the details, but I worked for a company where SR&ED reporting and grant collecting determined product features.
- theflyinghorse 4y agoThat's most of the companies here, sadly. SRED is definitely a big part of decision making at the level of team leads and above
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoYikes,that sounds like a easy way to sink a lot of effort into something totally useless. With how mercurial the government can be with those credits it's better to do the work you need first and think about how to frame it for filing after.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoI a year there and 4 product launches, we never sold a dime.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stormbrew 4y agoIf you work for a tech company in Canada it's likely that a substantial part of your salary is made up of sred refundable credits.
- osigurdson 4y agoI wish they would cancel the SRED program and simply reduce business taxes in general. It is such a stupid drag on productivity and generally selects for things that sound cool to government bureaucrats while allowing for many juicy corruption opportunities.
- mardifoufs 4y agoOnly $50k grants? You must have missed the AI startup wave here in Montreal. They didn't end up producing much, if anything, of value. But they sure knew how to scale those grants/"government investments" to a completely new level.
- alephxyz 4y agoAt least a few of them found a niche and are doing okay, but it was almost funny to see the number of AI startups 3-4 years ago whose business model was essentially "hope businesses pay us to apply ML libraries to their data".
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoI would've thought the whole Element AI debacle would've reined that in but I guess not? If the patron saint of DL can't keep a startup with 100M invested in it going, I don't even know what left, right, up and down are anymore.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TMWNN 4y ago>Only $50k grants? You must have missed the AI startup wave here in Montreal. Indeed, I certainly remember the days when Montreal was said to be the next "AI superpower". How much of that was driven by the media predicting after Trump's election in 2016 that hordes of tech companies and employees would flee north of the border? (And how much of that reporting, in turn, was driven by smug Trudeau government bureaucrats who actually believed what they told sympathetic/gullible reporters?)
- bmc7505 4y agoMontreal still is a AI powerhouse. Most of the same people who were here ten years ago still are, and still working on the same research topics, just with less flashy PR. https://youtube.com/watch?v=LVXkISpbq2k https://youtube.com/watch?v=LVXkISpbq2k