5 North American Cities For Tech Startups to Thrive In

What names come to mind when we think of the places around the world that are considered “tech hubs”? Typically Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Barcelona, or Tel Aviv are all common answers since these places are prominent for innovation. In today’s society, there is a widespread movement toward digital governance of everyday life. With the influence of companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and Netflix (to name a few) there is never time to be bored. The consumer market for technology is hot and new companies are constantly popping up to support this market in North America. We must be aware of this future and the cities on the rise with infrastructures to support further advancements.

In a post-pandemic world, the economy is still recovering from the struggle faced by many businesses. The technology sector certainly felt the blow from this as issues with manufacturing and distribution were a big hit. When it comes to an economic downturn, any sign of strength in times of uncertainty is likely to have a ripple effect on morale within an industry. Tech sectors emerging within major cities are a great example. Let’s dive further into it.

Northern California was the largest hub for the technology market for a long time. Today, several cities in North America are coming out strong in the tech sphere. America remains home to the world's biggest technology companies, making it a default attraction for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to launch their businesses. However, startups need to know specifics and certainly won’t limit their long-term growth based on geography. With that being said, here are some cities that may be on their horizon:

Boston

SaaS (Software as a Service) companies such as Akamai, Robin, Hubspot, and SEMRush are just a few of the major organizations settled in Boston, Massachusetts. This is due in part to a couple of reasons. The first is the increase that the city is seeing in graduates from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) related fields. This has opened the talent pool up dramatically. Not to mention that the state is home to Harvard, MIT, Boston College, and Boston University. The city saw an increase of over 7% in employed tech specialists from 2015-2020. A startup looking to build a network and take advantage of a booming market would be wise to consider a future in Boston.

New York

Startups eager to prove themselves to investors will be pleased to know that in 2021, New York City venture-backed companies saw funding of over $52 billion. The majority of the funding was allocated to startups in industries such as software, IT, healthcare, and financial services. The fast-growing tech space in NYC is home to nearly 300,000 jobs with an output of around $125 billion to the economy. This market is extra hot right now, especially with the impetus from those returning or migrating to the city since the recovery from the early days of the pandemic. The next 5 years of this market are unforeseeable but certainly, we can expect to see further growth. 

Toronto

Ranked as the 9th fastest growing tech city in the world and the most multicultural, Toronto Canada is a city that embraces innovation and collaboration. Technology is a focal point of the city's job market, with a 68.9 index score in the tech talent market and accounting for 88,900 jobs from 2016-2021. Additionally, this contributed more than $8 billion in employee wages yearly. Big companies have recognized the city's value which has introduced the city to companies such as Google, Netflix, Uber, Shopify, and Amazon. Now, Toronto is far from the new Silicon Valley which saw $132 billion invested into tech startups in 2021-2022. Toronto sits around the $5.4 billion range but this is still consistent growth year over year, which speaks to the level of talent in the area. 

San Francisco

A primary location for startups in North America is without question San Francisco. Housing Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area is a notorious tech bubble with companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Uber, and Facebook establishing their headquarters here. The reputation and infrastructure of the area allow for a couple of benefits that include consistent attention from investors and high-quality workers. When it comes to workers, the tech talent pool in the Bay Area is among the largest in the world with over 370,000 tech industry professionals. As well, the proximity of colleges such as Stanford and SFSU makes it a breeding ground for talent in the labour market. 

Vancouver

Startups in Vancouver (nicknamed Techcouver) have seen tremendous growth over the last 10 years, specifically from 2019 - 2020 when the technology sector grew by 21%. The city reported 6% annual growth in the tech hub year over year. Vancouver-based tech companies are certainly making the most of this market as more than ten thousand of them bring in a revenue of more than $23 billion. This has made the city’s tech giants a major contributor to the province's GDP (adding more than $15 billion). Though Vancouver’s tech leaders are not on par with the likes of Toronto (who saw a 26% growth from 2019 - 2020), it is certainly bringing value to the table. 

What’s Next?

We can see that the tech market brings major profitability to the cities with the markets for it, which then brings attention from big name companies. This leads to jobs which attract citizens and consumers, all of which are in the best interest of a major city. There are numerous places for a startup to get its feet wet and for consumers to locate providers. No longer will anyone have to limit their view of tech hubs to Northern California. When it comes to tech startups, all of this information should scream one-word: potential. Even what seems great right now is likely amid growth and your business could be the next major contributor. 

Written By Ben Brown

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8 Remote Work Tools For Software Developers

Working remotely is no longer related to a business decision to save money and time, since the last year it has become a frequent reality for millions of people in need of keeping human lives safe and supporting the maintenance and progress of the economy.

Fortunately, working remotely is easier than ever before. And if you know in advance any of the tools that I will be writing about today, you can agree that remote work tools increase productivity. The better the tool, the more benefit you can get out of working hours. That is why I selected some of the greatest tools I found in my research, that would help you to improve communication with your team and speed up the accomplishment of software development tasks.

Communication

1. Slack is one of the most used remote work tools. It was launched in 2013 and it is primarily aimed at freelancers and small and medium-sized businesses. It currently has 10 million daily active users worldwide and can become also in your online office, helping you to build a digital workspace to facilitate communication and task sharing.

2. Skype is also another wonderful communication tool, whether you are a freelancer or a company with thousands of workers, using Skype will bring many advantages to the development of tasks. With this tool, you can make traditional calls and video calls between Skype users anywhere in the world, it also has instant messaging functionality and allows you to share large files, whether they are documents, audio, images, or videos.

3. HubLinked is a central digital office that makes it easy for each team to learn, share, organize information, and prioritize tasks. It is cloud-based and mobile-friendly, allowing you to access your work from anywhere.

4. Loom is a video recording tool that allows you to record your camera, desktop, and microphone at the same time, which makes it a very useful tool for instructional videos to guide anyone through a certain procedure.

Task Administration

1. Jira is a tool designed to assist teams in managing work, from requirements management and test cases to software development. It allows you to plan, monitor, and manage all software development projects from the same tool. Moreover, can be integrated with Outlook, GitHub, and Salesforce

2. Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a product created by Microsoft in 2005 that provides technologies that help different teams to collaborate on the creation or completion of a project. Among the main elements that it includes, we can mention source code management, project management, generation of tests and reports, as well as version management.

Version Control

1. Git is a version control software created by Linus Torvalds, designed to keep track of changes in computer files. In other words, GIT is a system that allows you to organize the working code, in addition to its history and evolution, it allows you to access the different versions that exist of the existing project and you can also add new functionalities without necessarily altering the stable version.

2. Subversion (SVN) is a software versioning and revision control system. It is widely used among software developers to maintain current and historical versions of files such as web pages, documentation, and source code. In fact, it allows you to maintain versions of files and directories, as well as the metadata associated with the directories. It also has the ability to work with HTTP in addition to its own protocol, which allows universal access possibilities. 

Did you know these tools already? In case you are interested in knowing more about any of them, especially Hublinked, contact us.

Technologies and the New Way of Work by David Mansilla

In today’s economy, technology is enabling a new wave of independent workers called “the gig economy players”.

Since the industrial revolution and the introduction of the 9 to 5 workday, we got used to working for a large employer. This came with the hopes of a good pension when you retire, while having financial certainty most of the time.

However, this was not the case for most of humanity’s history. If you research it, you will find out that most people were independent workers for most of our existence. In fact, the human economy was based on your local geographical location. As we started cooperating more and more, we started specializing in providing value based on a single trade, like farmers, butchers, etc. As technology started to expand, it allowed humanity to play on a larger scale; for example, when we developed bigger and stronger ships, we were able to make trades with other continents. Did you know that the stock market was invented in the Netherlands as a way to hedge risk from sail ships failing to bring and send goods over the oceans?

According to Sofi.com here is the stock exchange timeline: 

• the Late 1400s: Antwerp, or modern-day Belgium, becomes the center of international trade. Merchants buy goods anticipating that prices will rise in order to net them a profit. Some bond trading also occurs.

•  1611: The first modern stock trading is created in Amsterdam. The Dutch East India Company is the first publicly traded company, and for many years, it is the only company with trading activity on the exchange.

• the Late 1700s: A small group of merchants made the Buttonwood Tree Agreement. The men meet daily to buy and sell stocks and bonds, a practice that eventually comes to form the New York Stock Exchange.

•  1790: The Philadelphia Stock Exchange is formed, helping spur the development of the U.S.’s financial sectors and the country’s expansion west.

•  1896: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is created. It initially has 12 components that were mainly industrial companies.

•  1923: The early version of the S&P 500 is created by Henry Barnum Poor’s company, Poor’s Publishing. It begins by tracking 90 stocks in 1926.

•  1929: The U.S. stock market crashes after the decade-long “Roaring 20s,” when speculators made leveraged bets on the stock market, inflating prices.

•  1941: Standard & Poor’s is founded when Poor’s Publishing merges with Standard Statistics.

•  1971: Trading begins on another U.S. stock exchange, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, otherwise known as the NASDAQ.

•  1987: Corporate buyouts and portfolio insurance helped prices in the market run-up until Oct. 19, what becomes known as “Black Monday.”

•  2008: The stock market crashes after the boom and bust of the housing market, along with the proliferation of mortgage-backed securities in the financial sector.

And now with the emerging new technologies like personal computers and the Internet, it seems that we are now embracing a new era of independent work pretty similar to preindustrial times, but this time with much more comfort and abundance.

Here are the top freelance gigs that are dominating the market today:

• Software Developer

• Graphic Designer

• Ghostwriter

• Copywriter

• Digital Marketing

• Photographer

• Videographer

• Translation services

• Public Relations

• Drop-Shipping reseller

• Information Products developer

• E-Commerce retailers

What types of technologies are enabling these new ways of doing business?

As we previously stated, it is thanks to the technology that we are now able to break free from the status quo and be independent when it comes to generating an income. In today’s economy, the Internet revolution is enabling a new set of human experience transformation technologies that I believe will be responsible for our growth in all areas of our lives. According to one of the people I admire the most on this topic, Peter Diamandis, we can see these trends in technologies that will revolutionize humanity:

• Biotech

• Hyper-Connectivity (5G and beyond)

• Nanotech

• 3D printing

• AI

• Renewable energy

• Genomics

• Blockchain and Distributed technologies

And this is just the beginning. However, the bigger question is why are people choosing to become independent over having a stable, secure job? It’s funny because this question is the entire reason why I became an entrepreneur. The simple answer is FREEDOM! We will give anything for freedom, even certainty, and economic stability. You see, I actually grew up in the corporate world, jumping from big corporations to even bigger ones, making huge salary increases along the way. But I always felt trapped in the rat race. When it got so unbearable, I decided to roll the dice and go out on my own. Bear in mind I had a wife, 3 kids, and a mortgage to pay, and… it did not matter. I still jumped into the black void of uncertainty. Now, after 15 years, I must say it has been one of the best decisions of my life. Don’t get me wrong, the first 10 years were so hard I actually almost died from a heart attack. But now, looking back, I am living life on my own terms, using technology to the max, and making incredible abundance along the way. So, what was it? Again, for me and most independent people out there, it was the freedom of controlling my own time! 

I wrote a book about it last year called “Breaking out of Corporate Jail” and it quickly became a number one Amazon bestseller, and you know why? Not because I am a great author – far from it! I actually had to hire a ghostwriter to get it done. It actually became a best seller because most of us are looking for freedom among all else, and now in today’s economy, we have the technologies that allow us not only to survive on our own but to thrive. As I am writing this note, I have over 45 software engineers working with me, soon to be 50 and I consider them the best in the world. I have developers that have been with me since the beginning (2005) and you know why they stay? Because I give them the freedom I was looking for when I was a corporate employee. We have people on our team representing over 8 countries, and we are getting stronger every day. Why? Because we are using technology and freedom to our advantage.

My good friend Olavo asked me to write this article as he is teaching a Masters class at a University and now you know too, how I would not be surprised if by 2040 most of the workforce consists of independent individuals doing what they want, when they want, with whom they want, while creating incredible abundance for them and others.