Startup dollars will go further here and the office will be twice as awesome. Much easier for new people to make friends and the art scene is not priced out. Montreal is undeniably more fun.
And lord, the festivals... Mind you, winter lives here but it is sunny even when it snows. Rain will tends to drive most people in BC a bit wonky.
I would say do Montreal if it is in the summer. Else BC. Or if it is about the quick plane ride to silicon valley, same deal.
You're right that in Montreal, investment dollars will go much further, and it is a more interesting city for a young person. If you are looking for a place to incubate, as a young company, Montreal might be almost perfect. Similarly, it's a great deal for a student.
But then you have to grow up and live there.
The tech talent pool is very thin, the laws are mindbogglingly perverse, and the taxes are very high. The French/English split becomes very difficult when you think about bringing more workers over from a non-francophone country, not to mention their spouses and partners.
Just like foreign students, a YC company that's growing up will probably want to get the hell out of Montreal.
At least in Vancouver you have some kind of chance to hang around, and if you want more techies there's a reasonable local talent pool, and people from the rest of the world don't mind moving here so much.
My kingdom for a fullstack capable graphic designer.
Secondly, it is cheap to hire someone for translation and companies should launch with multiple languages. It just increase the global audience for the product. I am sure YC could develop the capacity to translate the product at little cost.
Peixe Urbano, Baidu ... etc clones eat up the market that VC backed startup could accomodate for.
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/02/21/against-copycat-debat...
Winter... well try the rain in BC for a winter. Again I have no issue, I am from the Peg (Winnipeg) where it was -58 last year. It is the same weather as NYC and close to Boston (MIT, Harvard)
I know there is alot of development capital floating around.
http://www.investquebec.com/quebec/en/financial-products/smb...
Here is the total precipation over the last 3 months
Vancouver = 103.1 mm < Montreal = 366.4 mm
SRC = http://montreal.weatherstats.ca/charts/precipitation-3months... ( environment canada)
Next your going to try to convince us that poutine > sushi
poutine > sushi ... well not in Vancouver. Poutine is rough out there, all megabites with sesame seed pizza. It is just going to be tougher to bootstrap start ups out there.
Complaining about the cost of office space in Gastown is like complaining about the cost of office space in SOMA. There are many cheaper alternatives if you don't insist on being in a trendy neighbourhood. Office space in Burnaby or Coquitlam is a lot cheaper than Gastown.
You may think Montreal is more fun but I'd disagree. I can't scuba dive in Montreal. I can't walk five minutes and be hiking in a rain forest. Even if I agreed that Montreal is more fun this shouldn't be a consideration for a YC location. YC companies will be busy working.
Saying Montreal does not have the talent is silly. It is in the most populated region of Canada.
1) Mont Royal - Hiking
I don't think scuba might be a silly reason to discount Montreal. Fact is developers will build social ties faster in Montreal. Vancouver is clique driven and most people coming at not are really not prepared for the rain. Almost like Stockholm.
Metropolis real estate with creative spaces and inspire the imagination. McGills, Harvard, MIT, NYU all in the same time zone and a quick flight.
Burnaby or Coquitlam is like any other suburb and prices are already so high any big influx is just going to highten tensions. There is a strong Anarchist movement that surfaces time to time in Vancouver as well as crippling homelessness.
+1. With my current interests and life goals it seems like I'll eventually have head down to Silicon Vally, but the idea of living in the US terrifies me. Ycombinator opening up in Vancouver would probably prevent what would otherwise be inevitable just because of the domino effect it would have. Not to mention attending Ycombinator in Vancouver would be amazing, but that's making large assumptions.
Please do. Tarsnap will apply to be part of YC Vancouver if it happens. (I'm assuming that if you create a YC somewhere outside of the US it would be in Vancouver, because really, nowhere else in the world is anywhere near as awesome.)
FWIW, I think there's two "markets" of which you've only mentioned one -- in addition to founders who can't get US visas, I know plenty of talented Canadians and Europeans who don't want to live in the US due to the current political climate.