[cdnthrownawy39]

Canadian here.

It's not so much any single regulation, as it is there's so many little ones that seem reasonable on the face of it. But it's also that what makes the ruling Canadian class so is the authority to bypass those regulations.

I can give one personal example; I was able to secure some public funding application for a non profit I'm affiliated with. But the only reason I was able to do that was because my parents were university classmates of the elected official that was able to pressure the staff that was handling the paperwork to prioritize and approve our application ahead of probably the hundreds in front of us. The official's going to get a nice thank you dinner out of it, but I also had to offer some information that the official could financially benefit from for him to even consider it, and a promise of some future favors.

For better or worst that's how a lot of Canadian system works. Grant applications, personal tax work, personal and business banking, etc. Anyone can get through it eventually for anything. But if you want it done quickly and in a way probably won't get tied up in the system itself, you better know someone that owes you a favor.

[mrtksn]

This is very interesting anecdote because it resonates with something that a friend of mine said when I pressured him to explain which regulations exactly are causing him problems in EU.

As it turns out, he also complained about excessive documentation he needs to get public funds for his project.

So both of you are actually complaining about accessing public funds and not actually doing private investment or starting a private company with private funds.

this is not what most of the Americans do and this is not what they mean by startups or business. Mostly.

[cdnthrownawy39]

Sort of. Accessing private Canadian financing is a lot harder for the most part, our financial sector is notoriously risk averse for any sort of personal or business loans unless there's a path of guaranteed returns and you have a track record of getting those returns. Last time one of my bosses tried to get something like $2 million in raising funds with Canadian investors, they said that we needed to show I think at least $2 million in net profits for 4 or 5 years at least.

Public funding is easier to access in part because the people that are overseeing it usually don't understand or care to understand what it is they're overseeing. My boss in 2015 or so was presenting my regular IT work as research and development and somehow it worked.

It's not just in new business either. Canada has the lowest investments in business machinery like computers to improve productivity. I don't know what the friction in that regard but just to give you an example; the big name company I was working in 2023 retired the DLink Fast Ethernet switches that we were using as core networking for one of our labs. $200 to upgrade the component that was bottle necking 20+ employees was not worth it and I had to buy it out of my own pocket to demonstrate just how badly it was hampering. And this was after showing fancy power points on the financial impact of 20+ employees doing file transfers at 1/10th the speed they could be (not so much that they didn't have the money, they just didn't believe that an engineer could understand finances. Go figure).

I gotta run, but there's more I can comment on.

[indeedmug]

> Sort of. Accessing private Canadian financing is a lot harder for the most part, our financial sector is notoriously risk averse for any sort of personal or business loans unless there's a path of guaranteed returns and you have a track record of getting those returns. Last time one of my bosses tried to get something like $2 million in raising funds with Canadian investors, they said that we needed to show I think at least $2 million in net profits for 4 or 5 years at least.

If someone's businesses is already working, then why would they go and get investment money?

It seems like the investors don't realize that if someone does have that much net profit, they actually don't have that much leverage over them to get good equity deals. So they are essentially just paying high and selling low later.