The Canadian entrepreneurial hustle
Humility and collaboration may be the face of entrepreneurship in Canada
Sitting in the StartUp Canada Awards #StartupCanAwards event in Montreal, it’s hard not to feel proud of the cold, northern country that could. The pride isn’t necessarily directed at the actual achievements, but rather at the way those achievements are celebrated.
Whether or not the victories are objectively big or small, the event is carried out with a humility rarely observed in other cities or countries in the startup world. The Canadian way is always one of pride, but not too much.
No one is coming up and talking big numbers and milestones, no one is claiming to have any secrets about success, in fact it doesn’t even seem like they’re certain they’re going to continue being successful. The award winners spend most of their speech thanking everyone else and providing simple but evergreen advice about the importance of keeping strong in the face of the difficulties.
When our executive director at District 3, Xavier Hervé, came up to receive the award, he opened his speech with the following advice:
“We should never forget that there’s a lot of bad weather in this entrepreneurial world and so everyone here in this room deserves an award.”
The message is simple: entrepreneurship is hard, and just trying to venture on that journey is award worthy regardless of the outcome. This “trying is doing” mentality fits in perfectly with our 3 foundational pillars of “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Collaboration”, and it’s a sentiment that was directly and indirectly supported the various award winners. All of them incredibly successful and noteworthy, yet all of them humble.
Perhaps it’s all part of the politics that have become common place at such events, but that sort of cynicism will only further damage our already jaded and disenchanted youth. I would rather take the position of believing that the words being shared today are genuine and encourage people to take the messages from this event to heart. The messages of a simple, highly Canadian careful optimism: entrepreneurship is great, and although it’s hard, you can make it a little a bit easier and better if you do it with people.
To put it in the succinct closing words of Xavier’s speech:
“We have an obligation to collaborate.”
