Last week at Startup Empire in Toronto a couple of people told me they felt that the Montreal startup community was much more collaborative than the Torontonian one. While I can’t comment on things in la ville reine, I definitely agree that people here go out of their way to help one another. Last week for instance, I asked Sylvain Carle if he’d be willing to answer a few questions from the CTOs of two of our portfolio companies. They were preparing to deploy their services on Amazon’s cloud but, as newcomers to AWS, they had some concerns. Sylvain went one better and organized a round table discussion for CTOs, developers and sysadmins. In two hours, the newcomers to the cloud were up to speed and even those who had been using EC2 since its inception learned a thing or three. Shout-out to the Praized and Karabunga crews for generously sharing their time and knowledge.
Everyone has their own opinion and here is where you can read what they are. These are blog posts, not necessarily endorsed by anyone – except the team member who wrote them!
by Jevon
I think that kind of generalization is pretty hard to make for anyone who hasn’t lived in both communities, and frankly it just isn’t helpful. The idea of Montreal being better than Toronto, or Toronto being better than some other place is moot, because the end result is that you are better than Toronto, which frankly doesn’t say or mean much of anything.
The truth is that great entrepreneurs do everything they can to help others. There are groups of these folks right here in Toronto who spend countless hours helping newcomers and I think StartupEmpire itself is a great example of some folks doing something to give back (if I can say so).
In fact, I know a few Toronto entrepreneurs who are mentoring Montreal based startups, and the last thing they are worried about is what city the startup is in.
I love my city and so should you: http://www.startupnorth.ca/2008/03/20/i-love-my-city-and-so-should-you/
by daniel
Hi Jevon,
I totally agree, especially with the bit about generalizations if you haven’t lived in both cities. Perhaps the Torontonians who made the comments to me have that experience? I certainly don’t, that’s why I’m not claiming anything at all about Toronto (”I can’t comment on things in la ville reine”).