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by HelgeSeetzen 2814 days ago
Montreal is a great choice indeed. I am originally from Europe (Germany, short time in Holland) and have built tech companies on the West Coast (Vancouver, SF). After a decade on the West Coast, I moved to Montreal in 2010. Really enjoyable city with a great mix of high quality of life, culture and massive diversity (which in my opinion - even more so that universities - is the cause of the "intellectual" environment that you seek).

My outfit, TandemLaunch, has built 20+ deep tech companies in Montreal with people from all over the globe (some 40+ countries of origin). Depending on your background, there might be opportunities for you in one of those. Our companies range from early stage to those with 100+ employees so there are opportunities along the entire risk/reward spectrum (see here http://www.tandemlaunch.com/#portfolio). Obviously there are plenty of other great companies in Montreal as well.

Happy to help with any local insights if you are considering this beautiful city (including with immigration since we have literally done this 100+ times).

cheers Helge

1 comments

What's "deep tech"?
As the previous reply kindly indicates, I am talking about more fundamental technology development. Basically the R of R&D and not just development. For example, our portfolio includes companies like Stratuscent which is using tech from NASA to develop an "electronic nose" using machine learning, Aerial which extracts people's position/activities by analysing wifi signals, Airy3D which is developing a novel image sensor that can capture 2D/3D/lightfield all in one package, etc..

We work with 50+ universities across the globe on the fundamental research and then incorporate the results in new tech companies like those above. Great fun :)

By deep tech he means tech companies backed by patents or defensible intellectual property. Technology businesses enabled by research or new ideas, not another chat app.

He was a research physicist that worked on developing High-Dynamic Range screens, so he's interested in businesses kinda like that.