Possibly. I've worked for a few years around the edges of boosting a startup scene in a rural area that's roughly the same population as Helena. It's very, ver

Possibly. I've worked for a few years around the edges of boosting a startup scene in a rural area that's roughly the same population as Helena. It's very, very difficult work. Part of the trouble is that you meet a lot of really nice, well-intentioned people, but ... the talent just isn't there. You see a lot of bad results from a lot of effort. You have to have someone there that is the go-to person for building and supporting tech businesses in the area. We had a great guy here, but he eventually moved on to other things and nobody else has yet filled the hole he left. It has to be what they spend 100% of their time doing, and they have to be well enough compensated for it that they don't start looking for other opportunities. You have to provide a real incentive for talent to come and stay, and unfortunately office spaces and fiber connections aren't enough. Talent seems to be drawn mostly to other talent and unique projects, so if you can convince somebody with a good reputation to move there, that will help. For startups specifically, money can be a problem in rural areas. Promising startups will eventually need either venture capital or some really fantastic business funding. Other people in our community have been told to their face (by VCs) that they'd never get funding because there's no talent in our area. And rural areas can have other issues too. Small-town politics, a local rag for a newspaper, too much isolation can all wear people down, even those of us that prefer small rural areas to living in dense metropolitan places. Congratulations on building out your fiber network though, that's a hell of a job. We've got a local ISP that's been trying to do the same for several years now. They've been held up by federal bureaucracy for the last two years...