[neptunespear]

> Expa's founder is from BC so I think them opening up an office there is mostly due to an excess of cash they have from Uber's success, not that it necessarily makes sense from a VC perspective.

The founder of Slack grew up on Vancouver Island and went to UVic, the co-founders of Tableau is an SFU comp sci alumnus; so is the founder of Buddybuild[1] (the first genuine mobile-first CI provider, raised a series A round from KPCB (!) for $7.6M which is unheard of for a Van company, let alone they managed to find an SV VC firm which was okay with the company keeping the company local).

The way I see it, it matters less why they came (whether it makes sense from a VC perspective, the founders are homesick, or as a response to shifting political tides in the United States) and matters more that they're here.

[1] Further reading:

https://www.sfu.ca/computing/newsandevents/archives/2007/sfu...

https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2016/sfu-in-the-news-janu...