[DanHulton]

As I hear it, it all comes down to financing. Talent's easy to find, sure, but raising money anywhere in Canada vs. SF is no contest.

It's still a shitty way to treat people, but I can see why companies still want to be in the valley. I just wish we could attract more investors to Toronto. There are a lot of super-psyched tech and design folk in this city.

[ska]

It's not quite that simple - for example Canada has a number of advantages and good programs for early stage startups. What is true is there isn't much access to SV style VC funds, so if your model is dependent on that, you have a problem. Other sources can be pretty good though.

[Apocryphon]

What all of these tech hubs need is to popularize their own style of growth that can contrast favorably with SV's '80s Wall Street-esque brand of maniac growth chasing. Once a city figures out how to do that, then the "must be in SV" meme will weaken.

[nasalgoat]

Yes, my current startup is finding it very, very difficult to raise the Series A financing here in Toronto. Canadian VC firms are few and far between, and concentrate on the oil/gas sector mostly, and find tech scary and unpredictable.

On the flip side, the SF VCs don't like investing outside their local sandbox.