This has become a frequently reported topic, but here's a recent article from Wired talking about tech workers living out the American Dream -- in Canada. The story is pretty simple. Immigrants are smart and work hard. Canada has a system in place that privileges newcomers who are young and smart. And this has become a boon for our largest city and for the country. Here are two excerpts from the article:

But there's a new global winner: Canada, and particularly Toronto. Since 2013, the tech scene there has grown faster than in any other North American city. In 2017, Toronto added more tech jobs than Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, combined; in 2018 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), the city was second only to the Bay Area in new tech jobs. Toronto is so crammed with immigrants that nearly 50 percent of all residents were born outside the country.

Canada's immigration policy is hardly warm and fuzzy. On the contrary, it's icily calculating. The government loves educated, elite newcomers, because they help propel the economy, says immigration lawyer Peter Rekai, but it wants them young, so they won't drain the public health care system. Their parents are much less welcome.

In the first quarter of this year, international migration accounted for 82.3% of Canada's population growth. And at the beginning of this year, Ottawa was planning for up to 370,000 new permanent residents. It is highly unlikely that we hit that number given our current health crisis, but I have no doubts in my mind that we will hit it in the very near term. And when we do, it will be a good thing for Toronto.

Wired recently published a long read called, "I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London." Apparently the people who do these sorts of things on the platform (things that are both illegal and questionable) call it "systemizing." This is the process of trying to create scale. Secure lots of units. Create a bunch of fake/duplicate accounts. And try and maximize revenue.

This obviously runs counter to Airbnb's mission of "authentic places", "community", and "local hosts." But as Benedict Evans points out in his latest newsletter, "where there is money and people, there will be scams." And Airbnb is obviously doing everything it can to quash this kind of activity, especially as it prepares for a possible IPO this year. The company has a policy of zero tolerance.

Fraud and government regulation are likely to be the two biggest kinks to work out as the company gets ready for public consumption. I am sure an equilibrium will be found; it's just going to take some time and a few lawyers. It goes to show you just how challenging startups can be when you combine digital (tech) and physical (real estate).

Wired's oral history of how the London startup scene came to be is a good reminder that, typically, a city needs some great big exits (acquisition or IPO) to really kickstart an ecosystem. In the case of Silicon Valley, you could perhaps trace things back to Fairchild Semiconductor (1950s). But a more recent example of this phenomenon would be the PayPal Mafia, whose members have gone on to found Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other companies that you may have heard of.

Put simply: success begets success. When a startup does really well and the founders and employees of that company get rich, it is likely that many will go on to found/fund other successful companies in that same city. In the case of London, that catalytic startup was arguably Skype (at least according to Wired). Microsoft acquired the company in 2011 for $8.5 billion, giving birth to the Skype Mafia. Of course, that wasn't the only ingredient, but it sure helped (excerpt from Wired):

Since 2008, according to data compiled by Dealroom.co, the UK has created 60 unicorns (tech companies valued at $1bn or more) – 35 per cent of the 169 created across Europe and Israel. In the past three years, the UK has created more unicorns (25) than France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden combined (19). And London has produced 23 unicorns with a combined value of $132bn, compared with Berlin’s eight, worth $32bn.

The world has changed since Skype was founded. It's now cool to be doing a startup. But given that every city seems to be trying to establish a thriving startup scene, I think it's valuable to point out just how important a single big exit can be, not just for the people within the company, but for the broader city. Easier said than done, right?

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash