George Shao

excited to see more waterloo coverage but respectfully this piece did not hit for me. the sauce of waterloo that outsiders don't get is it's all a bunch of mr meseeks boxes when you get into a certain crowd. everyone ropes each other into thinking more ambitiously, something canada overall seems to lack. its filled with misfit kids like me who had ideas and made things and got told that was dumb or otherwise judged for being interested in things. i never got anything more than a "huh, cool I guess" when i showed my friends in toronto my side projects but at waterloo everyone was asking questions and telling me what else I should make. you can't just sit still when everyone else is moving. canadians are nice polite and fall in line, the coastal elites in america are spiky, it's in their founding story to fight and overcome the odds. the engineering coop culture feeds you to cali early, to learn what it means to fight at a startup or at least raise your ambitions to faang a 300k starting salary rather than 80k at a canadian bank. it's also small enough to cross pollinate easily. word gets around much quicker when everyone hangs out in the same 2 buildings and shawarma shops, so if @sincethestudy is building a robot, and I'm semi interested in that, i can look at him and think "why not? if he can do it why can't i do my own thing?" culture begets culture, just as a select few in silicon valley started a movement saying "this is where you need to be to make make the future", waterloo is benefitting from the same momentum. the drain happens because after grad, people's ambitions are so raised from their peers and coops that they get roped into bigger ambitions. and the capitalism is just much better at supporting these ambitions in america, especially in sf or nyc where so many top wloo grads end up. no young hungry ambitious person ever wants to take a step down, and in their internships they're alongside people from harvard stanford mit, so knowing you can stand with them why would you ever stay in canada with a 60% pay cut and a less mature capital allocation scene? that's like expecting a harvard grad to take a consulting job in cambridge instead of new york just because it's closeby. any person I know who's actively chosen to stay is because their ambitions are to make toronto/calgary/waterloo great again, not just "cali or bust" lots more about waterloo than meets the surface, and lots to do here to support the incredible people that pass through it - if anyone wants to learn more please hit me up i'd be happy to chat and point you to awesome people that deserve more love pics from the olden times: