If you've written about this on a blog or elsewhere, I would be very interested in hearing more about this.
Can you say more here? Is this a payment gateway thing? I though if you used a visa/mastercard/etc that data is up for grabs by a foreign government, but if it's interac or some other payment method, does that ensure the data resides only in Canada?
This is a _very_ fair criticism and worth pointing out.
I thought the piece wasn't particularly alarming and more just showing the opportunity exists, and cursory googles don't show any cases where it happened.
The problem I'm trying to point to is that we cooperate internationally because it benefits both countries or pushes towards a common goal- but when one of the cooperative speaks of turning that cooperation into a weapon, to me, makes it clear that the goal of the cooperation has changed.
When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1].
It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it, I get the motivation- but allow another country to wield a "cooperation" like a weapon to attack Canada's sovereignty is just further evidence that we need to safeguard our data.
I've started watching soccer more seriously in prep for the world cup (I'm in Canada) and watching live games is never going to happen, so I only watch replays.
There's so many games played per week, I want to find the best/most exciting games to watch, without spoilers. I built a little model to classify games and give me control over the level of spoilers shown so I can watch the best games of the week.
Whatever price you put, you will get it wrong the first time.
Make an educated guess (maybe informed by your competition), and test raising and lowering it over time. Make sure you have a tier of pricing that gives people the chance to pay you a lot of money in exchange for additional value you can provide.
Talk to your customers and understand who they are and have that inform the types of tests you do or tiers of pricing you can offer.
I had a contract recently where I got very familiar with render.com, and I figured I'd do some blogging about some of the things I learned, with some tips and tricks to learn how to write technical content.
It's been a lot of fun to help people on the internet with something I've learned a lot about!
I hit this wall last year and I realized that I had to either: accept that work gets you money and you can live with stability and comfort and pursue your hobbies, or take a risk and see what your potential is.
I'm still figuring out what starting a company is for me (is it solo founding? freelancing? product? service?) and what I want out of my life (how do you feel about never ending uncertainty? being on call 24/7 for an unreasonable client?).
What I've found about myself is that building "a business I believe in" is really me saying "I want to be paid to help people I respect". The rest is just being willing to screw up, taking risks, being uncomfortable and having really supportive people around you that will listen when things are hard and you need to cry.
Start by taking some time off (4+ weeks) and into nature. Ask yourself what you really want.
In Montreal, we have a large contracting scene for banking and near-shore consulting in general.
For a contractor with ~10 years of experience, it's pretty common to see 175k as a contract worker, with contracts renewed yearly (if you decide not to move somewhere else).
In the last 5 years SV companies have started to open offices in Montreal (google has been here for a while, fb came semi recently), and that sweet sweet USD + venture funding gives them a real edge in what they can pay people. FTEs with a US base can make 150k+ which is quite a jump above Canada based firms. From what I've seen those tend to be around 100k for someone with ~10 years experience, and anything higher is considered quite good.
Check out www.indiehackers.com
There's a strong community there of people who are doing exactly what you are all at various stages of growth- someone who's business is within stonesthrow of where you are and in the direction of where you want to go may be in the best position to help advise you to get to that next step. (check our their podcast, might be useful for you)
When I look back at university now, I put in a ton of work to chase things I was curious about and I feel like when I had my first job and compared myself to the other new grads around me I had a very broad knowledge base which even now ends up being really helpful. I'd recommend tasting everything you can!
There are so many things to learn that you cannot possibly master them all (you probably won't find them all interesting anyway, or maybe you'll see a specialization you'll like!) but learning new skills and keywords to google later makes you really adaptable and feel more comfortable just diving into the unknown. Having a broad knowledge base also makes learning new skills later feel WAY less daunting- approaching a totally foreign concept in something like a MOOC is much less scary when they use words or concepts you've encountered before. (e.g. I didnt do any ML when I was an undergrad, but all the statistics I took helped me through the coursera ML course later).
Do internships- the real world is very different from school and you want to get exposure to it before it comes- it makes you far more attractive as a candidate when looking for work.
And make sure to surround yourself with other curious people, that's a habit that'll help you your whole life.
Can you say more here? Is this a payment gateway thing? I though if you used a visa/mastercard/etc that data is up for grabs by a foreign government, but if it's interac or some other payment method, does that ensure the data resides only in Canada?