Today’s billionaires aren’t suited fat men who hang out at Tammany Hall – or whatever the modern equivalent is. Today’s billionaires are a new breed: young, adventurous and – most importantly – cool.
Now this isn’t your high-school-star-quarterback type cool. This is nouveau riche CEO-wears-a-hoody-to-work cool. They live and play by different rules, which means cities that want to attract them need to adjust to their wants. And they want a city that feels fun.
Style can trump substance. While certainly not a good business creed, when it comes to a city where today’s younger generation want to start a life, style wins out.
Ottawa has a lot going for it in the substance department. Between a highly educated population, a propensity of universities and colleges from which to draw new talent, and a reliable ecosystem, there are plenty of reasons why some in the business community give it the moniker Silicon Valley North. Unfortunately, there are also key areas where Ottawa is lacking.
Let’s compare to Silicon Valley – the original, that is. The obvious differences, like beautiful weather, Ottawa will frankly never be able to compete with. But Silicon Valley has another very potent weapon on its side: it’s cool.
Nestled between two burgeoning metropoles in San Jose and San Francisco, who wouldn’t want to live and play in that space? Ottawa on the other hand is better known as a boring government town.
After all, the New York Times printed a piece entitled “A Sleepy Ottawa Neighborhood Wakes Up” about Ottawa’s downtown core. The hook to that story? A new Wine Rack opened in the Byward Market.
Ottawa, and more specifically Kanata, was great for companies like Nortel and Mitel and Kinaxis and all those big business-to-business companies that either sprouted up in the late 90s or are carrying on that legacy.
But as Shopify has demonstrated, the big money isn’t in hardware, it’s in consumer friendly software.
And while Kanata is a great place to live and start a family, the young 20-somethings who are bound to create the next Shopify need something a little more enticing than a safe sleepy suburb.
Rightly or wrongly, Ottawa is perceived as a boring town.
It’s by no means an easy feat to shake that reputation and it’s not something that can only be changed with a few boutique microbreweries or a couple offbeat bars. It’s the feeling of Ottawa that needs readjustment and reinvigouration.
Much like a kid looking for a date to prom, Ottawa needs to show the world it too can be fun. Investing in infrastructure like the LRT and modernizing its public transit is one way to do that. Another way is to liven up these areas by encouraging investment by companies that young people looking to settle down would enjoy, rather than appealing mainly to the bureaucrats on the hill or the transient university population.
Shopify stayed, which is great, but if Ottawa wants to encourage more young entrepreneurs to bring their skillsets – and moneymaking potential – to the frozen north, it’ll take more than a Wine Rack opening to appeal to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world.