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If you wanted to summarize that uncanny Canadian quality about television, movies, and lately startups, it's that they are the artifacts of a mandate, which is usually a condition of some kind of institutional funding, like SREDs, but also a bunch of other vehicles. The finite game is that a lot of capital and incentives come from agencies who have government mandates, which gives everything a certain tint. So glad to read this. The author wrote a story some months ago about the reason SV angel works is because it's part of the social signalling for wealthy people. You make money, you show you can do it again, and that's what makes you a player. In Toronto, it's different.There are excellent global tech companies in Canada (Ubisoft, EcoBee, Shopify, Pornhub, etc.), but like everywhere, excellence is exceptional. It's the "why is this weird? Oh, because they had to write around this condition of their granting agency." The US has tons of public funding as well, but much of it is defence driven, which has more general reusable business applicability than say, "culture," driven. Not sure what the solutions are, but something we should put words to as that weirdness has been a ceiling on growth and opportunity here for a couple of decades. |