{"id":15130,"date":"2024-10-22T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T09:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15130"},"modified":"2024-10-22T09:26:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T09:26:15","slug":"for-vance-an-idyllic-appalachian-startup-became-a-hard-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15130","title":{"rendered":"For Vance, an Idyllic Appalachian Startup Became a Hard Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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During JD Vance\u2019s brief career as a venture capitalist, few startups attracted his support more than AppHarvest, a now bankrupt plan to build greenhouses across Appalachia.<\/p>\n

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For JD Vance, it seemed like the perfect investment.<\/p>\n

In February 2018, he was working as a venture capitalist when he learned about AppHarvest. Its founder, Jonathan Webb, was a Kentucky native who wanted to build giant greenhouses in Appalachia that would put locals to work. For Mr. Vance, an Ohioan and chronicler of Appalachia with political aspirations, the idea sounded enticing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really try to identify where a given economic trend matches up with a new technology\u201d and then \u201cput as much money into that company as you can,\u201d he said in a podcast interview a couple of years later. He called AppHarvest \u201ca pretty perfect elucidation of that thesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within three years, the company would file for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Vance, 40, spent less than a half-decade as a Silicon Valley investor, but those years were a pivotal period when he laid the groundwork for his political career \u2014 as a Republican senator from Ohio and now the running mate of former President Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When he co-founded his own firm in 2019, Narya Capital, some of its investments would mirror his evolving beliefs. One was Rumble, an unfiltered video-sharing service that bills itself as \u201cimmune to cancel culture\u201d and is awash in the kind of false claims<\/a> that Mr. Vance has embraced<\/a> during the presidential campaign. Both Narya and Mr. Vance also invested in Hallow, a Catholic prayer app; he converted to Catholicism<\/a> in 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The AppHarvest facility in Morehead, Ky., in 2021.<\/span>Luke Sharrett for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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None, however, attracted his attention the way AppHarvest did. His memoir, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d had described Appalachia as \u201chemorrhaging jobs and hope\u201d; AppHarvest was pitched as a solution to the declining coal industry there, ready to provide hundreds of workers health insurance and living wages.<\/p>\n

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During JD Vance\u2019s brief career as a venture capitalist, few startups attracted his support more than AppHarvest, a now bankrupt plan to build greenhouses across Appalachia.For JD Vance, it seemed like the perfect investment.In February 2018, he was working as a venture capitalist when he learned about AppHarvest. Its founder, Jonathan Webb, was a Kentucky native who wanted to build giant greenhouses in Appalachia that would put locals to work. For Mr. Vance, an Ohioan and chronicler of Appalachia with political aspirations, the idea sounded enticing.\u201cWe really try to identify where a given economic trend matches up with a new technology\u201d and then \u201cput as much money into that company as you can,\u201d he said in a podcast interview a couple of years later. He called AppHarvest \u201ca pretty perfect elucidation of that thesis.\u201dWithin three years, the company would file for bankruptcy.Mr. Vance, 40, spent less than a half-decade as a Silicon Valley investor, but those years were a pivotal period when he laid the groundwork for his political career \u2014 as a Republican senator from Ohio and now the running mate of former President Donald J. Trump.When he co-founded his own firm in 2019, Narya Capital, some of its investments would mirror his evolving beliefs. One was Rumble, an unfiltered video-sharing service that bills itself as \u201cimmune to cancel culture\u201d and is awash in the kind of false claims that Mr. Vance has embraced during the presidential campaign. Both Narya and Mr. Vance also invested in Hallow, a Catholic prayer app; he converted to Catholicism in 2019.The AppHarvest facility in Morehead, Ky., in 2021.Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesNone, however, attracted his attention the way AppHarvest did. His memoir, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d had described Appalachia as \u201chemorrhaging jobs and hope\u201d; AppHarvest was pitched as a solution to the declining coal industry there, ready to provide hundreds of workers health insurance and living wages.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15132,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15133,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15130\/revisions\/15133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}