> 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.

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rangestransform 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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

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kevin_thibedeau 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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 ...)

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cmrdporcupine 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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glitchc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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alephnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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).