[cmrdporcupine]

> Canadian tech is nonexistent because every Canadian pension fund, family office, and bank prefers to invest in American equities over Canadian equities.

Off-topic but I suspect it's also that oil and gas and real estate are the "easy" money in Canada and that's where investment goes. Canadian investors are risk adverse because they can be. That and there's a colonial-descended cultural bias towards credentials and established players.

But yeah, I'm furiously writing code for a product living off my savings, and would love to get investment to build a startup off of it, but every time I sniff around the Canadian "investor" scene it becomes clear to me that they'd have no time for somebody like me.

[rangestransform]

I have a (admittedly unevidenced) hypothesis that the US took off from other economies after ‘08 because real estate became a spectacularly shit investment overnight and investors had to invest in productive things for returns. Investors in Canada kept passing the same pieces of land between each other for no benefit to society. My pipe dream is that Canada grows the balls to annhilate property values

[to11mtm]

> I have a (admittedly unevidenced) hypothesis that the US took off from other economies after ‘08 because real estate became a spectacularly shit investment overnight and investors had to invest in productive things for returns.

There was also the Z/VLIRP to smooth things along.

On the other hand, poetry rhymes, and one could similarly draw a line from now-increasing interest rates to the tech layoffs, forced RTO (to help improve on some spreadsheet the property value they want to leverage) and general corporate-IT sector malaise.

[cmrdporcupine]

I think the point is that when zero % interest rates came along in 2008, Canadian investors piled their money into real estate -- because we hadn't suffered the same crash as the US and it was still a reasonable investment that was humming along at at least 6-7% a year (and often way way higher) in gains.

But in the US that was a "shit investment overnight" and it took many years to recover. So if you were looking for a place to park money, you maybe put it into more productive sectors, or tech, etc.

(Another factor is that for a few years around 2011, 2012 the Canadian dollar somehow hit parity with the USD. As a result many Canadians piled in hardcore into the US market and saw big gains from that when USD/CAD went back to its normal ratio)

[kevin_thibedeau]

They kept selling residential property to foreign money launderers. In the US that activity is confined to major metros where it impacts the more distributed population density less significantly.

[cmrdporcupine]

Don't worry, we have our own domestic money launderers as well. And whenever the gov't tries to close loopholes they riot. (Also half the gov't MPs are landlords, so ...)

[cmrdporcupine]

Even if real estate were to implode, Canada has a pretty much permanent sickness on account of being a "rip n' ship" resource exporter over everything else. Since confederation.

It lends itself to a rentier capitalist model, and to oligarchies, and to a stagnant conservative investment class that just wants to coast off their proximity to resources.

Real estate coasting is arguably even worse, but not by much.

Notably the United States is actually trying to make this worse with their tariffs on us. Alberta oil and gas is tariff free while our value added manufacturing sectors are highly tariffed.

It makes no sense to try to kill Quebec's aluminum sector since it's the most logical place to smelt aluminum on the whole continent, but they're trying to, anyways.

[xp84]

American here, it makes me want to pull my hair out the way Trump confuses tariffs on inputs with tariffs on things we make here in the States. We have a ton of big (as in: employing tons of well-paid people) industries here that need to buy metals and comparatively few people employed in mining and smelting.

A 5-year-old could correctly answer that we should then NOT try to make metals cost more because that screws our big industries while helping almost no Americans. But somehow our tariff policy is set by people with less sense than a small child.

[cmrdporcupine]

I mean, he's not acting in your interests, he's acting on his own (and his buddies), and for other purposes.

Also if your goal is to eventually annex Alberta and destroy the Canadian state more generally, you'd do this kind of thing. Esp when the premier of Alberta comes down to Mar-a-Lago right after your elected, to kiss your ass.

Same as bombing Iran with no plan for an exit does nothing good for either Iranian or American citizens, but it does good things for the price of oil and therefore your friends in the resource sector.

Oh look, Trump just announced another maybe-ceasefire and the stock market skyrocketed. Hope all his friends got their buy / sell opportunities in before market close!

It's all just awful.

[Tiktaalik]

I think there's a huge bias toward this "easy money" yea. I mean the Canadian government is in a bind with these tariff issues and what do they reflexively reach for? Pump more oil and gas. It's the easy fast, simple solution to problems and so every government returns to this well to the detriment of other industries that don't receive the same attention.

[bruce511]

>> But yeah, I'm furiously writing code for a product living off my savings,

Probably not relevant to thus thread, and hopefully redundant to you, but writing the code is the easy part.

If you have not already done so figure out your market and start marketing to them. Get deposits, build a mailing list of interested parties, build a presence where your customers hang out.

Marketing is the hard part. Get that done first before writing code. Most ideas fail not because of bad product but because there's no market, it's too hard to reach the market, or you're solving a problem no one will spend money on.

Before depleting all your savings, learn from all the threads in the "ask" section. Code counts for nothing without hod marketing. And marketing is the hard part, the code part is easy.

As an aside, the startup which has a market and marketing sorted out is a lot more attractive to investors.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yes, all good advice. In reality what I need is probably a cofounder.

[glitchc]

Canada definitely has a "first buyer problem" which makes it hard to get liftoff. A great many Canadian startups end up going to the US to get funding to get around this issue.

[alephnerd]

> it's also that oil and gas and real estate are the "easy" money in Canada and that's where investment goes

Partially. The money made in ONG and Construction is then re-invested in American equities. And even provincial pension like Ontario Teachers and La Caisse funds prefer investing in American equities instead because their only incentive is pension solvency.

The issue is Canada is simply a tiny country with an extremely loose confederation in a world that is returning to a "winner takes all" mindset dependent on hard unification.

More tactically, using a Yozma-style approach to subsidize Canadian VC would help sow the seeds for a truly self sustaining ecosystem.

> it becomes clear to me that they'd have no time for somebody like me

Because they don't and never will. Anyone who has potential gets frustrated and leaves (ofc I've poached a couple as well).