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Comment by vecinu | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad you had a great experience visiting Toronto and experiencing the startup culture there.

I'm sure I'll see the area totally different when I return from SF and I may just find a role that I fit in very well.

I totally agree with you about the over inflated hype currently in the valley. While this leads to a lot of failed startups and 'wrong' ideas being funded, I think it's still a healthy ecosystem for promoting innovation.

Like you said in your article, shooting for the moon in Canada makes you seem insane while it's seen as commonplace in SF.

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The hype and "over-investing" is deliberate.

Why?

Well, let's face it, the most revolutionary things have all started sounding silly and insane. People will buy things over computers without having actually seen or touched them? Humans will fly? Will travel to the moon? Everything is actually well modelled by equations that imply that everything is a wave and has probability it exists?

So just because YOU think it sounds crazy or insane, doesn't mean it doesn't have a chance at something big.

After all, who would want to communicate in 140 characters only, or have a real time feed of everything their friends do, or want tiny square pictures on their phone?

On the subject matter, I've lived in SF for a few years now and I was born in Canada. In the US people will give you a chance, in Canada companies want to know what you have done and get you to do more of it.

>So just because YOU think it sounds crazy or insane, doesn't mean it doesn't have a chance at something big.

This is true. I can name half a dozen billion dollar companies I rolled my eyes at when people told me what they do.

"They're trying to make money by having people tell everyone they know what they ate for breakfast? Really?"

Yes, a lot of big companies were once ridiculous ideas. The founders where tenacious, and would have succeeded regardless of any synthesized hype. I argue there's more companies hurt because of this than there are that thrive.

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