The latest poll from Montreal Tech Watch (thanks Heri) asked what was Montréal’s best advantage as an innovation center and a permanent place for development.

23% Diversity in Montréal and Montréal’s culture (14 votes)
20% The Universities, student population, and R&D (12 votes)
20% Cost of Living (12 votes)
8% entrepreneurship spirit in Quebec (5 votes)
7% The design community (4 votes)
7% Avalaibility of tech developers (4 votes)
5% government assistance and programs (3 votes)
3% avalaibility of angel funding (2 votes)
2% avalaiblity of venture capital funding (1 vote)
2% presence of successful tech entrepreneurs (1 vote)
2% the technological infrastructure (1 vote)

Bearing in mind that the majority of readers of this blog are from the tech entrepreneur community, with results like this I wonder why on earth anyone is even attempting entrepreneurial activities in Montreal !

I mean, if we believe that our top 3 strategic advantages are cultural diversity, universities and cheap cost of living, then the fact that we actually have a tech community is amazing! So fortunately all is not lost.

It was interesting to see that the “presence of successful tech entrepreneurs” only received 2% of the votes. I see 2 potential reasons for this low vote: a) people don’t believe that the presence of successful tech entrepreneurs is actually an advantage in creating an “entrepreneur-centric environment” or b) people believe that it would be an advantage if we actually had the presence of successful tech entrepreneurs – but we don’t!

I can’t believe that anyone agrees with a) – and so it must be b) ?

As we have said before on MSU’s blog, in addition to smart people and “appropriate” forms of financing (which is an issue that we are working on improving), we need successful role modes to inspire people to stretch themselves.

Now – our digging around has shown that there are more successful tech entrepreneurs in Montreal than we would believe. By successful I mean people who have started companies, financed them and that have now been sold or are generating good cashflows. Has anyone heard of Eric Boyko, Eric Aubertin, Joe Poulin, Chris Royne, Rocky Murza, Faycal Kahloun? and the list can go on.

The best contribution that successful entrepreneurs can do for the community is to start talking about their successes. Most are willing but they just need an appropriate forum to “expose” themselves – one which doesn’t make them subject to what Carl Mercier refers to as “Quebec Jealousy” – or what we call “Tall Poppy Syndrome“.

It would benefit everyone to find the right forum – for example, would a slot at demo camp be appropriate?

The other benefit of raising these entrepreneurs profiles is that is shows to potential Angel investors that it is possible to make money by investing in start-up’s. For every successful entrepreneur there are probably 2 or 3 successful Angel investors !