(Toronto) Three of the biggest names in technology claim to have resisted the attraction of the United States-and rich companies that considered them a target of acquisition-and hope that the next generation of Canadian entrepreneurs will do the same.
Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, Aidan Gomez, co -founder of Cohere, and Michael Katchen, president and chief executive officer of Wealthsimple, argued Tuesday that the future success of the country’s technological ecosystem depends largely on the presence of entrepreneurs in Canada.
“We have an urgent need to build Canada and truly reshape our economy, and the only way to achieve it is entrepreneurship,” said Katchen on Tuesday in the first week of the Toronto Tech.
Katchen explained that he had left the United States years ago to return to Canada, especially because he was “deeply worried about the country’s trajectory”.
Photo Nathan Denette, Canadian Press Archives
Michael Case
“We are doing two things here: we extract things from the earth and we finance these activities,” he said, adding that he did not want his children to have this impression of Canada.
More recently, he and other leaders in the technological sector have admitted to observe signs of change.
They saw Canadian entrepreneurs of many sectors abandon their reflexes and adopt a more ambitious perspective. The challenge, they say, is to ensure that these entrepreneurs remain and develop, rather than leaving for Silicon Valley, American technological Mecca.
“This is really the problem I have observed in many of my peers at the University of Toronto and elsewhere,” explained Mr. Gomez. It is a kind of mentality of “all or nothing”, which destroys the ecosystem and harms considerably in Canada. »»
Photo Chris Young, Canadian Press Archives
Aidan Gomez
His observations have reflected in the data. A 2018 study based on LinkedIn profiles of graduates from Toronto, British Columbia and Waterloo universities in 2015 and 2016, revealed that 66 % of software engineering students and 30 % of IT students left Canada to work after graduation.
Many temptations
Mr. Gomez, whose company is one of the most dynamic in the world in terms of artificial intelligence (AI), knows the temptations faced by technological talents.
Long before Chatgpt triggered an explosion of innovations in AI, he said that Cohere had received a nine -figure acquisition offer and that it was “very close” to accept it.
It is now a grateful that Cohere has finally refused the offer and is “not for sale”.
“Any outing that would make us leave Canada will only be done in case of failure-and we have not failed,” he said. We continue to grow very quickly, so I think that an acquisition is a failure. »»
He believes that relocating businesses abroad is just as unwelcome and said that he had accompanied entrepreneurs who wrote to him to ask them how to incorporate themselves into Delaware, so that they are rather fighting to appease investors on venture capital in order to keep their Canadian headquarters.
A decision that Mr. Finkelstein shared. He explained that Shopify, an electronic commercial software company and one of the country’s most valued businesses, had felt similar pressure when raising standard A.
Some investors have conditioned their funding for a move to the south of the border, but Shopify persevered and finally found a group of investors who did not care about their location.
The company continued to seek partners arranged to let them set up in Canada as the company expanded.
“Our resistance was manifested by our refusal to respond to telephone calls concerning mergers and acquisitions,” said Mr. Finkelstein. We knew that this would trigger a cycle of discussions which would lead to a possible offer to buy Shopify by a very expensive company. »»
However, the idea that entrepreneurs cannot avoid the United States for a long time persists.
When Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, and he himself announced that they left the hometown of their business, Ottawa, Mr. Finkelstein said that “we assumed that we were going to the United States”.
They were wrong. Mr. Lütke went to Toronto, where Shopify has an important workforce. Mr. Finkelstein was returned to Montreal, where he grew up, and did not regret it.
“The best decision I have ever made, I think, has been to stay here,” he said.
