It’s no surprise that Toronto, considered by many to be the new Silicon Valley, is on this list. The city boasts a thriving financial sector that has become globally important over the years and has a diverse and multicultural population. This makes Toronto an ideal place for businesses to interact with international markets.
As the fourth largest city in North America, Toronto has numerous universities and has a wealth of creative engineering talent and students eager to work for a growing company.
If all of these reasons aren’t enough to make Toronto a great place to organize startups, the city is also supported by the Canadian federal government and separately by the Ontario provincial government.
Government support introduces technological innovations that help support and strengthen the local startup community.
For example, wireless internet in Toronto in particular is undergoing a major transformation, as Google is partnering with the local Toronto library to pave free Wi-Fi to homes where students or startup employees (often the same people) live.
Not coincidentally, startups like Shopify, 500px, KIK, Wattpad and FreshBooks have developed here.All of them call the city of Toronto their home, but besides them, there are plenty of other companies funded by venture capital funds and business angels.Shopify and KIK are part of the unicorn club, which means these companies are valued by the market at over $1 billion each.In addition to startups, Toronto is home to several Fortune 500 corporations, as well as the Canadian headquarters of multi-billion dollar companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.