Matt 
Canada’s largest CPA firms have undergone a paradigm shift in the last decade. One estimate suggests that 80% of our top 10 firms now have a ‘dedicated offshore pod’ in India or the Philippines. What’s more, these same experts suggest that 70% of the staff for a typical Vancouver public company audit work from one … Read more
What are the chances of a successful exit for angel investors in a startup? Angel investing is a high-risk, high-reward game. The chances of a successful exit for angel investors can vary widely depending on several factors, including the startup’s industry, market conditions, and the effectiveness of the startup’s management team. On average, angel investors … Read more
The old west is alive and well in Silicon Valley – and Silicon Valley North.The closure of Bench Accounting Inc – self-described as the “world’s largest bookkeeping and tax advisory platform” – last week in Vancouver, would have been devastating to the Canadian economy.Except that it wasn’t! First of all, it wasn’t the “world’s largest … Read more
According to an article in the Globe and Mail on December 27th, 2024:“Bench Accounting, a Vancouver-based bookkeeping company, ceased operations Friday, potentially putting hundreds out of work and leaving customers scrambling for alternatives.” So what was Bench?According to former CEO Jean-Philippe Durrios:“Bench is the world’s largest bookkeeping and tax advisory platform. Our mission: to help … Read more
The 20th century saw a proliferation of professions from the original three:First, theology;Second, medicine;and third, the law. Religion has recently lost out to ideology. But law and medicine, and their new 20th century cousins (which are all really just occupations with a sense of entitlement) have lobbied successfully for regulations in order to protect the … Read more
Russell David “Russ” Roberts (born 1954) is an American-born Israeli economist. He is currently a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and president of Shalem College in Jerusalem. He is known for communicating economic ideas in understandable terms as host of the EconTalk podcast. Roberts describes himself as a classic liberal, stating, he believes … Read more
Ha-Joon Chang was born in Seoul, South Korea, on 7 October, 1963 (there are stories about what life was like in South Korea in my youth in the Prologue of my book, Bad Samaritans* and also the Introductory chapter of the latest book, Edible Economics – A Hungry Economists Explains the World*). I came to … Read more
Yesterday morning I attended a video conference with the CEO of a promising startup in the AI space. The other attendees were two lawyers from one of Canada’s most prestigious law firms in Toronto. According to Statistics Canada there are more than 49,500 law firms in Canada, but the profession is dominated by just 7 … Read more
The first European universities emerged at the beginning of the High Middle Ages, offering courses in the liberal arts, and advanced professional training in theology, law, and medicine. A Medieval scholar might have described the study of the liberal arts as a necessary precursor to what academics now call ‘critical thinking’. But, it could be … Read more
While Milton Friedman preaches the gospel of the free market and free trade, he ignores anything that interferes with the beauty and metaphysical elegance of his ideology. Warren Buffett – by contrast – practices the trade of business in the real world. Buffett uses the term “economic moats” to describe a company’s ability to maintain … Read more