[gammateam]

Your whole post missed the important part about what can get funded and where.

NYC is coming up, but the graveyard of quirky disruptors would still only be pursued in Silicon Valley. These non revenue generating companies acting as developer daycare need to be flipped from one portfolio to the next until you have a deal size big enough to matter, swap out the board and executive team and shop it to the public markets, ka-ching. New York VCs and other markets cant and wont chase developer daycare companies on a broad enough scale to grow these into deals.

[testudovictoria]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why are you talking only in terms of massive funding and growth. The GP stated that they're seeing success in smaller (I don't actually know the size) companies due to capitalizing on a local or hyperlocal need. That's far from disrupt, fund, flip, and retire, and it's a perfectly viable way to start, grow and maintain a business.

Again, I could be missing the entire point of your comment.

[gammateam]

The point is that disrupting local industries gives only a narrow field of what can get funded

The graveyard of seemingly pointless portfolio pieces is a key component which nyc cant replicate

[nickelcitymario]

I more or less responded to this in response to "etblg", but you'd be amazed at the amount of funding available from angels, local governments, provincial governments, and federal governments.

No, we probably won't be building the next Facebook up in Sudbury. We don't need to.

But we can do extremely well being "big fish in a small pond", as the saying goes. Our strength is mining. Very few communities have the concentrated resources and expertise that we do in this very specific sector.

I think your point of view is a little VC centric. If you're a community leader in any city like ours, your ambition isn't to attract billions of dollars of investment to build the next unicorn. I mean, sure, we wouldn't say no to it. But the actual challenge we're trying to solve is job creation. To create jobs faster than they can disappear.

If we throw all our money willy-nilly at any tech startup, we're not going to get a good return on that investment. Startups notoriously fail at a ridiculously high rate.

But we can look at our strengths, and build upon them.

You know, like any sane business person would.

[Animats]

non revenue generating companies acting as developer daycare need to be flipped from one portfolio...

I wonder what's going to happen when, at some point, the Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund stops putting money into Softbank. They're currently the world's largest source of dumb money. That can't last forever.[1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/19/softbank-year-in-review/

[JetSpiegel]

As long as Trump is in power they should be OK.

[geofft]

Apologies if the point was sarcasm, but you never know. It isn't obvious to me that this behavior is in any way helpful for success or even that it's the only way for success. Sudbury can probably do just fine for itself with another approach.

[pastor_elm]

Huh? Tell that to companies like Blue Apron, Etsy, and We Work which are about as destined for failure as any Silicon Valley daycare company.

[gammateam]

True, lets do more of it