Is Vancouver a Legitimate Tech Hub?
 

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/info...mate-tech-hub/

In the first part of this series, we covered the history and rise of technology in Vancouver with an in-depth timeline infographic.

Today, our piece compares the Vancouver startup ecosystem against the other major tech hubs in North America.

If you’re asking yourself whether or not Vancouver is able to directly compare with Silicon Valley, the answer is a resolute “no”. To put things in perspective, Silicon Valley boasts at least 10x more tech employees, 20x more venture capital deals, and an unsurpassed track record of success.

In fact, California alone grabbed a hefty 47% of all North American venture capital funding in 2013.

That said, there is no question that Vancouver is trending in the right direction. For starters,Vancouver has some of the best support for entrepreneurs with a high ratio of mentors and incubators per capita. Venture capital figures are rising and some great success stories are popping up.

Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and the rest of the big boys are all setting up shop in the Rainy City. Even the mayor and city are on the bandwagon.

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That's an interesting article, although a bit of infographic-overload.

From a purely anecdotal point of view, I remember when my friends were getting degrees and jobs with CompSci backgrounds in the 1990s, they were heading South and East en masse, to Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Waterloo.

Today, more new grads seem to be sticking around. So regardless of the specific company they are working for, that's good news.

I've always considered Kitchener, Ottawa, and Vancouver to be the three tech hubs for Canada.

If the US ever relaxes immigrant hiring again we're doomed. The tech brain drain is currently plugged, which is of course great for us.

Quebec ending its massive tax breaks for video game developers should send a lot of talent back our way as well. We were the undisputed game developer hub in Canada a decade or two ago.

If in fact the US did relax immigrant hiting, and the jobs went south, and our industry with it, where in the
USA do you think the industry would go? Seattle? Elsewhere? Is there already one major game development hub in the USA which attracts most of the jobs, or is it more dispersed?
Thanks for any info on this.

I would look longer term and look overseas for more development as consumers/companies/governments overseas get turned off by what's happening with the US tech industry. Or I could be wrong :)

Bay area California is the big dog on both counts. Bellevue/Redmond and LA are the other large game development areas with places like Chicago and Austin trying to grow their piece of the pie as well.

It's an international industry not particularly reliant on any one location though. Tokyo, London, Paris, Stockholm, Montreal and Vancouver are all important. Lifestyle of the city seems more important than anything - it's all about luring talent.

My dad worked for EA for a while, then went to a smaller company that was eventually bought by Yahoo and moved to the bay area. He was the only employee to decline the move.

No, Vancouver is not a tech hub. Any software company that you see here is either based somewhere else, or so small and insignificant in numbers and operations to make much of a difference. For example, if Microsoft packs up its Vancouver office tomorrow, it won't really impact anything within that company.

I dunno why Vancouver wants to claim to be a tech hub. Its been doing that since the late 90s, especially with its "Tech BC" project near Science World which we all know never took off as intended. Whatever developments that did come there is so not fueld by high tech. The sexiness has been gone since the tech bust of 2000 and when people think tech jobs, they think outsource to India (namely Bangalore).

As for tech hubs in Canada, Ottawa for sure, Kitchener / Waterloo / Brampton, yes. But one thing forgotten is Montreal, which is actually very big in computer gaming, thanks in large part to Ubisoft but also lots of smaller but numerous studios. Vancouver only has EA as a major player due to the FIFA game (hence why it has a huge profile), but that company also has major operations in Montreal and Edmonton (through EA subsidiary Bioware). Montreal is fast becoming the next Austin, Texas, which is a major computer gaming development centre in the US.

I don't know what makes a city a "Tech Hub" or not. California (with a population the size of Canada) has a lager Tech component than any given city in Canada.

There are tech companies based in Vancouver. Some examples:
- MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd (http://www.mdacorporation.com)
- Alpha Technologies Ltd (http://www.alpha.ca)
- Creation Technologies Inc (http://www.creationtech.com)
- Westport (http://www.westport.com)
- .............

There are are also a host of local companies that have been taken over and are now part of large multi-national tech companies. Here is a 2003 list (with number of jobs):
http://www.biv.com/article/20130507/...-in-bc-in-2013

Interestingly ViaTec claims that tech is the second largest sector in the Victoria economy after government. There are a host of tech companies there that go under the radar screen. This includes:
- Race Rock 3D (http://www.racerocks3d.ca/)
- TP Systems (http://tpsystems.com/)
- Mighty Oaks (http://www.mightyoaks.com/)
- AML Oceanographic (http://www.amloceanographic.com/)
- Carmanah Lighting (http://carmanah.com/)

Victoria appears to be dominated by small companies, but there are lots of them. Kelowna also claims to be a tech hub as well as Saskatoon and Calgary. I think the reality is any city with a university with a solid Computer Science or Engineering program is going to have a small tech hub.

If that tech hub grows to become a cluster of companies that dominate the tech industry is much harder to predict and will mostly be based on the success of one or two that make it big and then have smart people who leave to start up their own companies. There have been some in Canada, Victoria had flicker, Ottawa had Nortel, Waterloo had RIM.

Right lets just ignore all the incubators in the city. Lets ignore Hootsuite, now employing 400 people and looking to hire more. Lets ignore all the talent and venture capital that's made its way out here. Walk through Gastown and I"ll show you where tech really lives in this country. It's the attitude and skillset here that has changed since the 90's where we relied on gaming. Not anymore.

You say don't mention microsoft and then throw out EA, which is based out of Redmond California, I believe, same with Ubisoft, not Montreal based. So if you wanna include that then Microsoft is planning to expand here, gaming and more. Gears of Wars will be made in Vancouver. Last I heard Amazon is planning to hire hundreds more in the city. EA makes FIFA but also makes NHL here, has been since the inception of the company. They also make a load more games here too, not just FIFA.

The VFX industry in Vancouver is booming, Sony just relocated their head office to Vancouver.

Then there are companies like Mobify, A thinking Ape, Invoke etc... all startups that are well funded. Not looking to sell out.

It's the combination of workers, companies, VC's, incubators, and mindset that have make Vancouver a legit tech hub.

Wow! The first two responses to me sure brings a lot of good ole memories from the early days of the forum. Back then, Vancouver forumers were hit with "San Fran envy" when it comes to tech.

My favourite instance was when a thread evolved into San Fran vs Vancouver (with the suburbs) in terms of tech then a defensive Vancouver forumer proudly says EA was "based in Vancouver", claiming its based in the PWC building in downtown, then in Burnaby, when in reality the company as a whole is based in Redwood City, a suburb of San Francisco.... :haha:

If the mere presence of a handful of "tech companies" employing a few hundred people at most makes Vancouver a tech hub, then hundreds upon hundreds of cities in the world should be "legit tech hubs" as well.

Betcha you guys never heard of Taguig. It employs far more "tech workers" than all the tech workers in British Columbia. Lets just say if your Telus internet service is busted and you need someone to fix it, its done over there for the most part... :P

I am not comparing Vancouver to San Francisco. Metro Vancouver has a population of 2.4 Million while Metro San Francisco (Bay area) has 4.5 Million.

As I said, I don't know what it means to be a tech-hud. Vancouver, Victoria, and Kelowna all claim to be such a hub. So your assessment that there may be "hundreds upon hundreds" is correct. I use to live in Saskatoon, and with Innovation Place that city also had a significant tech (thought mostly Bio-tech) component.

Not certain what it is like in Vancouver. In Victoria Telus is having a hard time holding on to the SME market for Internet. That market is basically going over to Shaw. Where Telus is still holding their own is the large enterprise market and government, they do have good system architects (based in Canada). A big part of the problem is that the call center Shaw has in Calgary is more effective at resolving issues than the one Telus has in the Philippines . Could Telus make a call centre in India or the Philippines work as effectively? Probably, they just have not found the right formula yet.

Getting back to the Tech sector. The business pressures that causes a Canadian phone company to go offshore for their tech call center is going to impact the US as much as Canada. i don't know where AT&T call centre is located but there is a good chance it is in the same country as the person who handles the calls for a AT&T related problem in San Francisco.

Would you recommend we shut down the Computer Science program at UBC and SFU and get rid of the tech-incubators because the tech-sector in BC is not as big as Mumbai? I would not, I think we want a well rounded diversified economy and tech is part of that. Will it become the same percentage of the economy as San Francisco? Does it matter?

I learned recently that Plenty of Fish is Vancouver-based. Flickr was developed in Vancouver, so was the progenitor for Outlook, apparently. For those into computer games, Counter Strike was created here as well and it's one of the most popular online games in the world.

Personally, I don't know why it is important that Vancouver gets some kind of recognition that it is a "legitimate tech hub" via this forum or news articles like these. This isn't the 90s when tech was relatively new and sexy. Its the 21st century, tech is part of everyday life now, no different than food production, housing construction, clothing manufacturing or the shipping industry.

This desire for "legitimate tech hub" is such an outdated notion, and given globalization, the true legitimate tech hubs nowadays are those many cities in the third world were tech is indeed being processed and manufactured due to cheap but skilled labour, or those few cities in the developed world where tech advances are being developed due to talent and innovative individuals who happen to all reside in those few places.

Frankly, this whole desire for recognition as a "legitimate tech hub" is more off a reflection of the proponents' insecurity in a city's role in the tech industry more than anything else. :P

If you honestly think the tech industry was more exciting in the 90s, you're totally out to lunch.

Living in the SF Bay Area in the 90s where it was literally the centre of the tech universe, money was easy, techie younglings driving Ferraris after cashing in stock options...good times. :tup:

Much of its sexiness was derived from that era...the tech startups, the open layout offices in old brick buildings, e-<insert company product>, equity based compensation packages, IPOs, etc...until it came crashing down in March 2000. :P

This sexiness from the "New Gold Rush" of the 90s in the SF Bay Area is ultimately why "legitimate tech hub" is a must have designation for Silicon Valley wannabees like Vancouver...or more accurately proponents that for whatever reason want to declare Vancouver a "legitimate tech hub"... :sly:

It was half created here and mostly on the work of a single local person. Doesn't really count as a product of Vancouver's tech hub.

In other words, pretty much the same as it is right now.

Are you saying Vancouver should not aspire to draw tech business, or that it should but is failing? Either comment, especially the former, I think is wrong.

Actually its a little bit different now. Lots of lessons learned from the tech bust of March 2000. Equity based compensation is becoming a rare primary means of paying up workers in start ups, capital markets are much more wary and require a lot more due dilligence before raising or providing funds, and as for the image, the ultra casual is not that common anymore and note that tech companies are even embracing traditional office towers, as seen by the tallest building now underconstruction in San Francisco.

What I'm saying is Vancouver, or more accurately, proponents who push for this "legitimate tech hub" image for the city, should just get over it and start to look for something a little bit more current to sell the city to companies around the world. It shouldn't pigeonhole itself to just one type of business simply because its "sexy", especially since that viewpoint is extremely outdated. The city should be attracting a diverse array of business, both traditional and emerging.

What? How is tech not current? This latest wave of companies setting up in Vancouver is a step in the direction of diversity. Your comments contradict themselves a little bit.