Good for those guys for living the dream. Too bad that dream didn't also result in job creation in Vancouver, Canada.
There is quite a bit of noise in media about the economic benefits of investing in foreign entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, it strikes me that these guys chose the quick win and we will now see those economics benefits move south of the Canadian border.
This is starting to happen all over. Tech startup accelerators in places like Vancouver are in danger of becoming a farm system, a "minor league" of tech entrepreneurialism.
A team that attracts attention will impress the scouts (either acquirers or investors) who will sign them up to play for the "big leagues" in the Bay Area.
This isn't malicious, but so many accelerators are trying to build a community, which is really hard to do when so many potential leaders of that community decide to 301.
I don't think this goes against the efforts to build a community in satellite locations. The reality is that there aren't many potential acquirers in Vancouver (virtually nil for consumer internet), so one takes an exit where one can get it. The community is helped by the fact now that when startups are raising in the Bay Area we can point to a company that was in the same geography that made a return for their investors.
Actually, it did result in economic benefit for Canada, and also in job creation in Vancouver, though not for a long time.
As for the more general discussion about the economic benefits of investing in foreign entrepreneurs, I'm not sure you're looking at it quite the right way. I would expand on this idea some more but I'm not sure what you mean by "noise in the media," who exactly is investing, (private entities or the Government?) your definition "quick win," and what's your opinion on this matter.
This isn't new. Canada -> US brain drain has been happening for a long time.
The economic situation for entrepreneurs in Canada is abysmal. The smart people leave because they know what they're up against. Every corner of the Canadian economy is controlled by either a monopoly, or a cartel supported by the government. The entire Canadian economy is essentially a syndicate consisting of banks and big businesses, and it's all wrapped up in rah-rah Go Canada! Go! patriotism.
I checked into Canada's immigration laws, specifically regarding the question of what kind of residency they'd give us if we located there and did our startup. (some of us are US citizens, but one of us is from a commonwealth country, so canada seemed like a reasonable choice.)
Canada does not make it easy, to say the least, to come there and build a company and, eventually, hire canadians. (Not that the USA is much better either).
If you want more immigrants to come and create jobs, allow people to immigrate.
Well good for them. They used to rent space in our office, and they were a great bunch of guys, quite clever and always focussed on making a good service for their users. Twitter is lucky to have them.
It's most likely a talent acquisition, not a product acquisition. Keeping Summify up and running would be a waste of developer time (from Twitter's point of view).
With such a long list of investors (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/readfu) it must have been quite a large sum of money to acquire Summify. So IMHO not just a talent acquisition.
Indeed; I thought it might have been a nostalgia piece until I realized that my memory isn't fuzzy enough that I could have memorized Summify as Summize.
