It's not for opening one small-engine repair shop. It's for the company that aims to be the next Merck or Microsoft, the company that has a medical device that could be sold worldwide, or the software developer with a hot Web application. Venture capitalists expect many of their investments to fail. In compensation, they expect to own part of the companies that succeed, and to be in on the big payoff. This is the far edge of the spectrum of business financing, but it's increasingly important in the digital age, in which a company's assets are neurons that can't be collateralized.
Most venture capital is private, almost by definition.
North Dakota badly needs the kind of economic activity that venture capital nourishes. We must create some of those jobs on our own. Venture capitalism is one way of creating them. If it takes a high-risk, public fund to get the that kind of capitalism going, so be it. We taxpayers should develop steely nerves, and we should decide that we want to be in on the big payoffs.