I tried to raise a ~$300k seed round in Toronto in 2014. Most Canadian investors we met with wanted to see us have something like $10k/month in recurring revenue before considering an investment. We spent a week in SF and left with a $250k offer at a $4M valuation, when we were pre-revenue!
(We declined, and eventually our business failed (acquhired by a team in SF, though....). But still. Wow! What a difference!)
The US owns the money printer to the world trade currency (USD), and has the military force to defend this unique position, so of course it can afford to outspend everyone else.
No, kids, if Saudi Arabia suddenly started selling all its oil in Euros or Yen on renminbi, the US would not send the Sixth Fleet off its shore, any more than it did so to force KSA to use the US dollar to price its wares in the first place. Saudis (and Russians, and Chinese, and everyone else) use the US dollar because they find that a) using it is more convenient than another hard currency like the Swiss franc or British pound, and b) no one else wants riyals, rubles, or renminbi.
I can make the same argument without mentioning the military - we benefit from a virtuous cycle of having the most dynamic economy which allows us access to credit to improve it, making it even more dynamic, and we simply pay it back as a lesser share of % GDP later.
It has nothing to do with the federal reserve and everything to do with risk tolerence.
The Canadian risk/reward curve is weird. They won't look at anything barely promising but will go "all in" once it hits a bit of traction (even if the business model is wonky)
Also, we were near completing a $10k/month enterprise deal but didn't have the runway to finish those sales in time. Additionally, we had Government of Canada contracts at $3k/month in the pipeline, which we did eventually complete. Our software was running on millions of phones, we had enterprise pipeline deals, signed government contracts (hard to come by I hear!) and a darn good team.
Hard to say how it would have played out, but, what's clear to me is that it wasn't clear that the $300k would have been lost.
Replace Canada with EU and it's the same.
> Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy.
EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.
Sure, you can bunch the countries together and get high GDP number but that's not an Apples to apples comparison with the US as every EU country has it's own completely different languages, economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and tax system, and local issues plus high levels off autonomy from the EU.
The EU is not the United States of Europe therefore cannot compete with the US toe to toe as it's not 300 million people speaking the same language and having the same culture and laws, but 300 million people spread across 27 countries, speaking 24 official languages, with little overlap in laws and culture from end to end, that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe and there's no EU military.
The US is not a single united market. Each state has it's own economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and taxes, and local issues.
> that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe.
this is just false. There are plenty of succesful european software giants , and there are numerous "unicorns" too; Spotify being the textbook example. There's an absolutely booming video games industry, Fintech and crypto (not my thing but can't argue there's no money in it) have very very solid bases across the EU too.
There's no single reason as to why the US has a stronger software market than the EU, but I would put money on it being "it's where the money already is".
Therefore to end the argument here and save my sanity, I'll stop replying to you. Have a good day sir.
You made the comparison between US and EU, so it's in play. QED.
Just don't open an office in the province of Quebec:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/protest-montreal-bil...
* https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/breaking-down-th...
I thought top talent Canadians who want high salaries just moved to the US :)
(Of course, this could be because such high salaries aren't offered in Canada.)
If an American company paid 80% of American salary to Canadians they would have their pick of Canada’s top talent. This slowly appears to be happening with Meta jobs in Canada.
Canada has the same time zones, a similar culture, is geographically close, the same language, and excellent computer science/engineering programs.
What Canada doesn’t have is a strong venture capital pool, a culture of risk taking, or a domestic market of 330 million people which stifles new businesses.