NorthGeek

Give Canada’s Visiting Brains a Boost

Sometimes the comment trolls get to you. A couple great profiles on the plight encountered by foreign entrepreneurs trying to set up startups in Canada, including our friends Mircea and Cristian from Summify, have been met by some infuriating comments. First, there was The Globe and Mail’s article, Immigrant Tech Stars Face Hurdles in Quest to Start Business in Canada, following four days later by this Globe Editorial.

They were met by some pretty ridiculous comments. Such is the Internet.

Here is the comment I had to make there:

It’s truly UNFORTUNATE to see this much MISUNDERSTANDING in the comment thread here and on the original article. People are doubting whether this company has any promise, whether it’s anything unique and if someone else could do it, and even if Mircea and Cristian are lying about receiving offers from successful, established companies. COME ON!

Who cares? What matters is that they’re doing something that has raised investments from legitimate, accredited investors in Canada (and from the US, but that’s secondary here) and that they have or will create jobs in Canada. As a bonus, if you just look it up, they’re actually getting favorable press, they raised investment from some rock star investors that have extremely high standards for tech companies, and they are proclaiming proudly that they’re a product of the growing Vancouver startup scene.

Instead of criticizing Mircea and Cristian’s company, we should use them as an example of what the Canadian government should accept. The US Startup Visa effort (startupvisa.com), for a great example, is trying to mend their current legislation to allow entrepreneurs into the US based on two critical accomplishments — raise a certain amount of investment from accredited investors (understandably lower these days with the dramatically lowered cost of starting a company) and create a certain number of jobs with a specific timeframe — and if you fail, you lose the visa. Easy. Simple. No extensive trickery or bureaucracy.

Let the process be quantitatively, merit based — not based on emotion. Canada should be so lucky to have entrepreneurs building legitimate companies and jobs in our country, and so unlucky to have people relentlessly and ignorantly criticize them.