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The public generally looks askance at public funds being used for private benefits. Publicly funded incentives often are used to lure large corporate manufactur

The public generally looks askance at public funds being used for private benefits. Publicly funded incentives often are used to lure large corporate manufacturing facilities into town, but these generally are already very large and looking to employ thousands of locals. It would be a hard sell to convince the voters that you should give $1 million of their money to three guys with some laptops that weren't planning to hire any more people for the next few years.

timf 18y ago
Agreed it would be hard to sell to the public. Perhaps if the following point could be more visceral: "$1B invested in 50,000 startups would conservatively create 250,000 jobs immediately. If just 2% of those startups became wildly successful they would create 3 million to 5 million jobs." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  Sure. You could make numbers up and hope they are true. Just be sure the homeless shelters are well-funded for when the money runs out.
  - timf 18y ago
    Wouldn't you say the same thing for any public funding of private ventures, why does the volume matter? I don't support the government-as-vc idea myself but not because of any job projection numbers (real or made up). I think science and technology funding like NSF is a better way for the government to get involved in long term value/wealth/job creation in this country. The outcomes of the efforts can be more easily shared by the shared public money put in, seems more ethical to me.
    - jacoblyles 18y ago
      I think inviting 250,000 people to your city with three months of funding is going to have lots of unplanned side effects, many of which will occur three months after the initial funding date.
      - timf 18y ago
        That comment was more about how to point out the "leverage" that was possible, not any actual number.
patio11 18y ago
I used to work in a technology incubator in central Japan, and once you balled up all the support services, 100 teeny companies and a dozen that were decidedly unteeny added up to 3,000 jobs. It was one of the biggest things to ever happen to this town. Its a good thing, too -- this region is otherwise extraordinarily dependent on a handful of ultimate consumers for manufactured goods. When a certain large car company has exports crater, those manufacturers get hit hard. The bank datacenter that they put here for cheap bandwidth and easy access to technical employees, on the other hand, won't shutter or lay off temps. I won't tell you the total price tag but suffice it to say that if Japan got similar ROI on all their public spending, there would be articles here saying "Can I afford not to move to Nagoya?"

timf 18y ago

Agreed it would be hard to sell to the public. Perhaps if the following point could be more visceral: "$1B invested in 50,000 startups would conservatively create 250,000 jobs immediately. If just 2% of those startups became wildly successful they would create 3 million to 5 million jobs." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=497559

jacoblyles 18y ago
Sure. You could make numbers up and hope they are true. Just be sure the homeless shelters are well-funded for when the money runs out.
- timf 18y ago
  Wouldn't you say the same thing for any public funding of private ventures, why does the volume matter? I don't support the government-as-vc idea myself but not because of any job projection numbers (real or made up). I think science and technology funding like NSF is a better way for the government to get involved in long term value/wealth/job creation in this country. The outcomes of the efforts can be more easily shared by the shared public money put in, seems more ethical to me.
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    I think inviting 250,000 people to your city with three months of funding is going to have lots of unplanned side effects, many of which will occur three months after the initial funding date.
    - timf 18y ago
      That comment was more about how to point out the "leverage" that was possible, not any actual number.

patio11 18y ago

I used to work in a technology incubator in central Japan, and once you balled up all the support services, 100 teeny companies and a dozen that were decidedly unteeny added up to 3,000 jobs. It was one of the biggest things to ever happen to this town. Its a good thing, too -- this region is otherwise extraordinarily dependent on a handful of ultimate consumers for manufactured goods. When a certain large car company has exports crater, those manufacturers get hit hard. The bank datacenter that they put here for cheap bandwidth and easy access to technical employees, on the other hand, won't shutter or lay off temps. I won't tell you the total price tag but suffice it to say that if Japan got similar ROI on all their public spending, there would be articles here saying "Can I afford not to move to Nagoya?"