Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by guyzero 1987 days ago
IMO the conclusion isn't that the scene "doesn't work" but that it's not producing a lot of "moon shots" and tends to focus on "roof shots". There is nothing inherently wrong with this strategy and it produces solid gains over time, but it's a lot harder going to accidentally create a billion dollar company. That said, Solect got acquired for 1.5B back 20 years ago, Shopify exists, it's not like there are zero Canadian unicorns, they just get produced a lot more slowly.
1 comments
guyzero 1987 days ago
That said, this article: https://betakit.com/narwhal-list-2020-tracks-a-year-of-massi...

seems to think Canada is on track to produce a lot of unicorns in the next few years. Seems like pretty good work for a country 1/10th the size of the US.

link
gabbo 1985 days ago
From this list:

  Chinook Therapeutics
  Element AI
  Repare Therapeutics
  Enerkem
  DalCor Pharmaceuticals
  Verafin
  Fusion Pharmaceuticals
  Stormfiser Biogas
  Hootsuite
  North
Element AI was acquired by ServiceNow, North was acquired by Google. Both were widely seen to be overhyped underperformers. Element was acquired for roughly the $200M it raised in financing. North also raised about $200M over its lifetime and was reportedly acquired for around $180M. Not really value creation.

Chinook Therapeutics merged with Aduro Biotech and is now headquartered in Seattle. It's publicly traded as KDNY and is worth ~831M CAD.

Hootsuite is kind of stagnant. It has been on and off being close to being worth $1B since 2014, hardly a growth story.

Verafin was purchased by NASDAQ for $2.75B. A good exit, though it took nearly 20 years to get there and now it's just another Canadian office of a US tech company.

I don't know enough about the cleantech/pharmaceutical angle, but if this list is the best we can come up with, it's far from cause for the software industry to celebrate. My feeling on articles like the one you posted is they're mostly superficial cheerleading.

From https://medium.com/@lawrencekhov/narwhals-and-unicorns-where...:

  Despite investing the second most into venture capital amongst all OECD countries, Canada is producing the least amount of unicorns. Not only that, of the unicorns it produces, valuation are also the lowest amongst the group (to be fair, the sample size is tiny. Plus, Canada’s unicorns are generally really new compared to that of other countries, which may have opted to stay private for a variety of reasons). For an ecosystem that is by most metrics, really well funded and really strong, the number of narwhals and unicorns that it produces is disappointing. In terms of creating billion dollars startups, Canada is ruthlessly inefficient compared to the likes of Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
link