"... attracts the wrong kind of investors ..." this refers to those online gambling companies who try every possible tricks in the book to avoid being shutdown by the government starting from splitting the software development, business, and HR/Accounting departments. Remember the debacle with Fiver media? (was Riptown, became Fiver, shut down, now become NZone media).
I don't know if they're filled with 20 somethings because the place I work for is filled with 30+ (some even almost 40). Unfortunately I just got in and I didn't know what I put myself into. I plan to stay only for 1 year before jetting off. If you think Enterprise software is full of unnecessary complexity, wait until you deal with Online gambling companies (especially the ones that provide Poker Networks and deal with Casinos and 100 different payment providers in which everybody has their own APIs and payment workflows).
People are doing startups here usually because they want to jump into the social media and mobile bandwagon (at least that was the case 2 years ago, until almost all of them died, quietly).
They're not doing it because of the low salaries, they did it because quite frankly, some of them can't get a job or used to be a freelance web-designer or a contract workers. And it's not about risk averse.
I think there are some crazies out there in Vancouver. They just don't have enough money and they rely on SR&ED grant year-by-year living off it.
It's really tough to have a startup in here. Networking is very minimum as well. You go to a launch party only to meet a handful of people who are in the same boat as you; that doesn't help much of your situation. Sometime these launch parties invite (or in another word, have to fly) people from outside Vancouver (e.g. people from Silicon Valley or Ontario).
