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August 6, 2012 By News Staff
Kansas City was lucky enough to become home to the first Google Fiber site, but the risk-averse region is missing the essential early stage venture financing needed for success, Emily Maltby pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. Infrastructure is important, but angel investors are critical for young companies that can't yet receive funding from a bank, she wrote.
Missouri and Kansas ranked 22 and 27, respectively, in state rankings of venture capital investments last year. While Missouri entrepreneurs received about $134 million and Kansas about $61 million, California received $15 billion, by comparison.
One Kansas City entrepreneur, Tim Sylvester, said he's trying to raise money for an intelligent roadway that makes use of the Google Fiber network, but it's hard to get investor attention without a proven model, which he needs funding to create. "Friends-and-family capital is easy to obtain, but you are limited by what the small investor can put in," Sylvester said. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem."
For a more detailed analysis of the problems facing Google Fiber in Kansas City, visit The Wall Street Journal.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/wireless/Google-Fiber-May-Find-Problems-in-Kansas-City.html
If there are enough MDs to have a REIT, or buy a Hilton Hotel franchise, there are more than enough to link their homes, Medical Offices, Labs and Hospitals together with fiber that will let them consult Xrays and each other from all of the above. No Venture Capitalists in KC. I think not.
At the current rate of expansion by the end of 2013 the people in the KC metro area will have more Internet bandwidth than the entire rest of the Internet worldwide in sum. They will become the center of our information economy, the focus of our online world.