Is Canada’s Conservative Culture Affecting Canadian Hackathon Events?
Post Hackathon Thoughts from IntuitDev Hackathon in Toronto
***This article was written with a purpose of learning from industry professionals rather than criticizing the startup/Hackathon culture in Canada.
The Story
Last weekend I completed my very first Hackathon at SmallbizHack organized by Intuit Quickbooks and Square. The Hackathon challenge was to create a brand NEW solution that saves a small business time or money. However, I felt a strong sense of disappointment and frustration after receiving a private feedback from the judge, an experienced investor from a well-known company:
You have the boldest idea here, but it is so difficult to implement with technology and has lots of potential risks in security and safety. It’s hard.💔
To be honest, the fact that our team didn’t win the $5,000 prize does not disappoint me at all. It was a lot of fun, valuable learning & networking experience, extremely delicious food, and I deeply appreciate all that. However, the conflicting point between this one judge’s feedback and the Hackathon’s judging criteria (Impact, Innovation, Quality, Easy of use, see screenshot below👇) made me super disappointed at first, then I start to think: what made him say that? Would it be different if this pitch had taken place in U.S.?
My questions
What is a Hackathon? I think it is a perfect place to come up with crazy ideas and test/fail them quickly. However, it seems like I came to the competition with a wrong mentality, given that the winning team brought a very small-scale idea to live (The winning team utilized API technology and developed a Messenger chatbot, QuickChat, that makes automatic responds to customers to help with their flower 🌹 purchases).
A few days ago, I finished Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, a book that got me excited about this I-could-change-the-world mentality. But now an experienced businessman is telling me that a bold idea cannot survive in real world. I couldn’t seem to let go of this strong negative emotion and want to write about this, hoping to gain more insights and deeper understanding on this question:
Is Canadian Conservative Culture Affecting Canadian Hackathon Events? How is it different from U.S. (if any)?
Then more questions came to my head:
- Are Canadian Hackathons focusing more on specific tech problem-solving or bring-innovative-idea-to-life pitch?
- Would U.S. investors treat risky startup pitch differently from Canadian investors, or is this just me being subjective?
- Why do we have the majority of safe-player startups in Toronto, while most world-changing startups are from Silicon Valley?
- Why did Musk go to U.S. right after his graduation from Queens University instead of starting his business in Canada?
Culture & Business in Canada
When I got home, I googled my question and had a few interesting findings. As early as 2012, Bill Currie, Deloitte Canada’s vice chair, already pointed out how Canada’s conservative culture is influencing its startup business:
One of the most contentious debates surrounding Canada’s poor productivity performance is that of culture. Many contend Canadian businesses lack boldness, ambition and don’t have the risk tolerance to compete with the U.S. and emerging markets.
In particular, My heart resonates with this Q&A:
Q: At the risk of sounding crude, what’s the deal? Are we just wimpy? Why can’t we seem to be as ambitious in terms of our business growth as our U.S. counterparts?
A: I think we’re fat and happy. We are affluent. We feel comfortable. The productivity issue that we document and talk about, that’s a long-term thing and it will impact our children more than it impacts us. And, for many Canadians, including business owners, they don’t feel the need to go and take risks that may be uncomfortable for them. …[Canadians] have the largest economy in the world as their trading partner with a free-trade agreement; they have — depending on the industry they’re in — barriers to entry; and, they have some tax support if they’re small businesses. So, it’s a pretty comfortable place to be and I think that there’s not a lot of reason for people in that situation to get uncomfortable and go take risks?
Another finding from MIT research (2016) 👇 also indicates that Canadian Investors tend to be more risk averse than other developed countries like US and Singapore.
But how about Culture & Hackathon in Canada?
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide much information regarding the hackathon community in Canada, hence I’d like to get more insights here. My assumption based on my personal experience is that Canadian Hackathon Judges prefer small-scale pitches that bring tangible profits and short-term returns, although vague criteria such as innovative and impactful are often used. But is that affected by Canada’s conservative culture? Hmm… I’m not sure. I wish one day there will be a detailed article analyzing the relationship between Canadian culture and its Hackathon events. I’m sure it would be valuable for passionate hackers to know the underlying expectations and get better prepared.
I’d love to learn more if you have attended Hackathon events and have any insights/opinions to share. Please comment below 😄
Special thanks to Lucy Zhao & Pankil Dave for your help on this article 👏👏👏
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