OK You've got a point. But let us say only 20% of the applicants stay in Atlanta. That's 4 more than otherwise would. Also, as I said before, once you pass the

OK You've got a point. But let us say only 20% of the applicants stay in Atlanta. That's 4 more than otherwise would. Also, as I said before, once you pass the seed stage, it's easier (but not valley easy) to get the $1M you mention in "Can you Buy a Silicon Valley". It will help long term. Basically, if we could at least get the ease of raising seed funding in Atlanta at parity with the ease of raising 1st round for a startup with revenues, it would be a significant win for us. I do agree with you that if there were more VCs funding at the $1M level in Atlanta, we could keep all the Shotput applicants here and maybe a bunch of startups would move from across the country to Atlanta. But since politicians are unlikely to be as enlightened as making the $1B investment you mention in your essay would require, we'll have to attract private investors. If 1 of those 4 startups has a big successful exit, we'll probably get 1 more large fund to come to Atlanta.