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How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

• taylorwc 11y ago
  > If an investor community grows up here, it will happen the same way it did in Silicon Valley: slowly and organically. I love this. I'm in Kansas City and find myself constantly cringing at the number of projects that all try to be a silver bullet that will magically transform the startup ecosystem here or in any other midwest city. If you want to make some place a good place for startups, then you have to play the long game. You can't be beholden to any political cycles. You can't jump on the startup bandwagon because it's suddenly fashionable. You can't run for the hills as soon as the economy takes a substantive dip. The only answer is to put your head down and try to build whatever you can, and stick with it. If a large number of people do that, then over time, good things will happen.
  • ASinclair 11y ago
    It also doesn't hurt to have a huge injection of DoD dollars. That played a big part in how Silicon Valley got its start.
    • maxerickson 11y ago
      I took note of a post Katrina suggestion to bring aid to New Orleans by opening a large federal office there (whoever was making the suggestion pointed out that DC had plenty of federal spending and the difference showed).
• rdl 11y ago
  I would love to see this happen. (I'd also love to see Portland Oregon, mentioned as an alternative, get the world-class research university it lacks now.)
  • santaclaus 11y ago
    Given unlimited funds, could a school like OHSU or PSU realistically gear up to 'world-class research' status quickly?
    • gravypod 11y ago
      The only thing that's expensive about R&D is the people. The materials, and the ideas are nearly free.
      • santaclaus 11y ago
        Well, and time. I imagine it would take 3 to 5 years to start poaching and recruiting new, top faculty. These top faculty in turn have to recruit top PhD students and assemble research labs, which is going to take time as the school is not yet mentioned among the top 10-20 programs. Tack a few more years on for enough publications to hit top venues. This is probably at least a decade to hit the level of, say, USC, let alone crack the top 10 or even top 3 occupied by the likes of a CMU or a Stanford or a Berkeley.
        • gravypod 11y ago
          I know a few people who work in R&D who are quite good at their activities. They can usually turn around an effective product in at max a year. They usually create a set of underlying patents, this takes maybe a year of reading academic journals and thinking of your physics and me guys, and then you usually have a theory you can put in practice. Apparently, all they need from there is a trip to home depot, one or two things off amazon, and a PCB designed and printed. From there, they can make a wide range of products. One small invention can be used as the underbelly for many, many pieces of technology; everything that comes as a result usually also has one or two applications to research or defense. This means big money. Most real R&D is self sustaining, so long as you have a team that can sell. The hard part of R&D is getting the right people in my mind. I've had this conversation with many people, and it usually helps to ask this: has anyone you have met who works in R&D said they didn't like their job? I've never heard of it. I'm curious to see what you think.
    • 11y ago
  • cfallin 11y ago
    Yes please! I grew up in PDX, and live in Pgh now. There are a surprising number of similarities in the sort of grassroots neighborhood community, and the slower pace of life compared to CA. (And the weather, I guess.) Pittsburgh is way ahead in intellectual foundation -- CMU is world-class -- but Portland has a quality-of-life edge. Portland already has a small but respectable startup scene, and a few bigger anchors (Intel, etc), but it has huge potential if it were to build more of a tech/CS critical mass.
• jl 11y ago
  "But if a university really wanted to help its students start startups, the empirical evidence, weighted by market cap, suggests the best thing they can do is literally nothing." This is an important insight and will be totally counterintuitive to universities.
• tacos 11y ago
  It's as if he's never spoken to a Carnegie Mellon grad as to why they get the hell out of Pittsburgh after graduation...
  • seangarita 11y ago
    amen.
    • alanh 11y ago
      Care to share your experiences here?
  • avn2109 11y ago
    Out of curiosity, why do CMU grads leave?
    • sehr 11y ago
      "It's Pittsburgh"
    • sharkmerry 11y ago
      Weather...mostly, at least for me CMU and Pittsburgh are great, but for college. I cant imagine ever moving back.. and I'm from jersey originally.
    • gotodengo 11y ago
      In my experience, there's some world class tech in the city, but in terms of numbers mid-level more accesible employment is easier found elsewhere. Also the weather, landscape, and a road system designed to match a 4 year old's hot-wheels track are a real love it or leave it kinda thing.
    • nunobrito 11y ago
      I'm from Europe but lived in Pittsburgh and graduated in CMU (software engineering). Really enjoyed the city and the people I've met there. CMU is really a place where you can discuss engineering breakthroughs while having breakfast or a coffee. It is true that the coffee houses there tend to have their own personality and become really good places to study. But still left the city and just returned to Europe. I've left because the poverty rate in the city was high at that time (2010) and was too easy to either get mugged on the street or get yourself inadvertently involved in some violent event. Still, Pittsburgh is a special place in my heart and I still keep contact with friends there. Was happy to read this article, really happy to see the city getting better.
• shriphani 11y ago
  I remember my time in Pittsburgh. Mostly fond memories. However 8 to 9 months of the year the atmosphere is really gloomy (not just the weather - take a walk in the downtown - feels like everything is falling apart) - when things are not going right in life that is just the worst thing to put up with.
• Animats 11y ago
  Uber is building a self-driving car research center in Pittsburgh. They hired most of the CMU self-driving car people. Supposedly they're going to renovate a railroad roundhouse in Hazelwood and use some of the empty space from the old coke plant for road testing. How's that working out? In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements. So you can leave and do a startup even if your old employer doesn't like it. That's an edge Silicon Valley has and no other state has had the guts to copy.
  • delish 11y ago
    > In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements. I work in Pittsburgh, and recently learned that my employer can own intellectual property that I created on my own time in my home. I was appalled.
    • hoodoof 11y ago
      It's a normal employment clause, don't freak out. Just fix it. Tell them that you would like your own projects excluded and your agreement should exclude your own personal projects as long as you inform them in writing of what those projects are. It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords.
      • throwaway_xx9 11y ago
        > It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords. Not so fast. A lot of East Coast companies aggressively enforce contract provisions, EMC being one of the worst. If it's in your contract, and it's not illegal in that jurisdiction, you should be very concerned. Most companies require board-level approval to change a contract, and you will usually be told, "I want you to leave the premises now."
      • kzhahou 11y ago
        If the default is terrible, then be appalled.
• matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  Im convinced that the next valley will happen in the place that can attract the most unmarried people ages 18 through 30. What do these people care about? - night life - high density urban living - progressive local governments and freedom (drug and marriage decriminalization). - good public transportation - access to high speed internet - good universities As they grow older and get married, affordable and high speed public transportation will allow them to move without causing terminal urban sprawl.
  • wklauss 11y ago
    I'm not sure where do you get the idea that people aging 18-30 care about those specific things. I assume Pew will have some statistics about interests and priorities for these ages but I wouldn't be surprised if those are not the main worries of the generation. Yes, urban living is on the rise and with it some of these list item will rise too (density, night life, high speed internet, public transportation...) but this is a trend that will affect most mayor cities in the US. My guess? The "next valley" will be highly decentralized and a lot of big cities will act as innovation hubs. Oh and remember that the valley happened well before the flock of young people to SF. Lot of factors played in, including the presence of well established semiconductor companies whose employees were far from the stereotype you are describing.
    • JamilD 11y ago
      > My guess? The "next valley" will be highly decentralized and a lot of big cities will act as innovation hubs. Really? It seems to me like things are getting more centralized, rather than less. I recall reading (though I can't find the source right now -- on mobile; correct me if I'm wrong) that venture capital is more concentrated in the Bay Area now than it was in the dot-com boom.
    • eropple 11y ago
      > The "next valley" will be highly decentralized and a lot of big cities will act as innovation hubs. I would like it if you were right, but I think you are discounting the critical factor of being able to be face-to-face with somebody. I live and work in Boston, and while it's not SF, I am within a forty-five minute public transit ride of most of my clients and almost everybody from whom I could conceive of needing a favor or an intro. Meeting a potential investor at a coffee shop because they had a few minutes and you happened to be in the area is the sort of thing you don't get with distributed communities, and as much as the I find the Valley to be personally kind of odious, that's an unmistakable advantage. And this is a problem that technology, hype to the contrary, doesn't seem ready or able to fix. Video chat is not a solution. It may never be a solution. Being able to sit down and talk to somebody is not replaced by talking at a screen (and while I love the current crop of VR tech, I think it will be as effective as Second Life in terms of meaningful telepresence).
• nahual 11y ago
  Evan Miller's essay "Marketing your startup hub"[0] comes to mind. [0]: http://www.evanmiller.org/marketing-startup-hubs.html http://www.evanmiller.org/marketing-startup-hubs.html
• krebby 11y ago
  ctrl-f Duolingo. No matches. Aside from Duolingo (who have been there for ages) and Uber (who aren't really based there) what's so exciting about Pittsburgh?
• minimaxir 11y ago
  I'm a CMU undergraduate who moved to San Francisco. Every year, the School of Computer Science publishes a survey of where undergrads go after college: https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-survey/bach-scs-2015-post-grad-report.9.28-15-kc.pdf https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2015-su... [pdf] About half of the 2015 graduates go to employment in the West/CA. I'll add that I am not even a graduate in CS (I majored in Business), yet I know a lot of non-CS majors my year who have also moved out here. California is where the prestigious jobs are. And that's what matters at the end. Is Pittsburgh capable of supporting a Silicon Valley? Not as long as Pittsburgh's weather remains the way it is, anyways.
  • mafuyu 11y ago
    I'm a current ECE student and I could see it. AlphaLab accelerator and TechShop are in the area, and there are the Google and Uber campuses by CMU. A lot of the talent right now is getting pulled by the big name west coast companies, but I could see something growing over the next ten years. (The weather is awfully dreary, though.)
  • ghaff 11y ago
    >Not as long as the weather remains the way it is, anyways. Really? I like a lot about the California climate (and terrain) but this seems a level of geographical determinism that wasn't true until pretty recently. And arguably, even today, is influenced mostly by a fairly specific class of mobile/social/web companies. For example, there's a huge amount of pharma/genomics and other forms of tech in the Boston area (and most of the big SV companies are adding or have added offices there as well). And Boston isn't exactly known for its weather--not that I actually mind it all that much most of the time. By that logic, the desert southwest should be booming in tech. The weather is admittedly not to everyone's taste but a lot of people like it.
    • minimaxir 11y ago
      I was referring to Pittsburgh's coin-flip weather. Edited OP for clarity. Yes, it really is that bad.
• seibelj 11y ago
  Somewhat unrelated, but a lot of people complain about Boston being too expensive, like SF or NYC, but honestly you can live downtown inexpensively if you live in Chinatown, or within subway distance if you live in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, or Roxbury, which become cheaper (and less safe) in that order. You don't need to live in Cambridge / Somerville / Back Bay / Seaport. If you are seriously considering moving to Pittsburgh or someplace similar because of cost, look at Boston, which is way closer culturally to Silicon Valley than any second tier tech city, and don't focus on living in the prime locations.
  • TTPrograms 11y ago
    Living near Davis/Porter/Harvard/Central is pretty damn awesome, to be fair. I wouldn't live downtown even if it was cheaper.
    • cushychicken 11y ago
      >I wouldn't live downtown even if it was cheaper. ...which it may be soon! In fact, for office space, it already is!
  • cylinder 11y ago
    My brother a student is paying $1600 for a bedroom in Chinatown. It's a high-rise but not luxurious. I don't get the appeal of Boston as a transplant at all. Not compelling unless you are there for a very cool job or education.
  • bydo 11y ago
    Boston is too expensive. Have you looked at real estate prices in Pittsburgh? You can easily get an apartment in a nice neighborhood for less than a bedroom in Dorchester.
    • seibelj 10y ago
      But compared to SF or NYC, it's significantly cheaper, and you can receive a salary close to what is expected in SF or NYC.
• Mz 11y ago
  I really love the comments about making a city more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.
• rafaelc 11y ago
  Money quote: "I've seen how powerful it is for a city to have those people. Five years ago they shifted the center of gravity of Silicon Valley from the peninsula to San Francisco. Google and Facebook are on the peninsula, but the next generation of big winners are all in SF. The reason the center of gravity shifted was the talent war, for programmers especially. Most 25 to 29 year olds want to live in the city, not down in the boring suburbs. So whether they like it or not, founders know they have to be in the city. I know multiple founders who would have preferred to live down in the Valley proper, but who made themselves move to SF because they knew otherwise they'd lose the talent war."
• saosebastiao 11y ago
  Where is the actual evidence that strict historical preservation actually matters? The culturally important buildings tend to stay around whether they are "protected" or not...its really only at the margins where they do anything. And those margins tend to be pretty ridiculous. Seattle, for example, has upheld historical preservation status on buildings that were completely vacant and had no discernible written history whatsoever. Things like old mechanics garages and derelict wooden apartment buildings that had already rotted through. Strict historical preservation is nothing more than an anti-development attitude codified into law.
  • state 11y ago
    In spirit I agree, but can you provide any references? I'd love to be able to make this argument with a source to back me up.
    • davidw 11y ago
      Here's an example I posted on twitter, from Boulder, Colorado: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-board-votes-landmark-home-against-owners-wishes http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_27278888/boulder-... That seems like a pretty absurd historical designation. It's just creating a burden for the people who bought it. It's a far cry from bulldozing a beautiful old brick building to put in a McDonalds. Edit: > The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be too strict about historic preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the better they seem to do. If you go a bit beyond the US, you could look at Europe and... I'm not sure that's true. Rome has a ton of old stuff that's been reasonably well preserved. Berlin has been torn apart and reinvented. Berlin is doing way better than Rome in terms of startups. Granted, there are a ton of other factors in play, but if it were just about having a lot of historical stuff, Italy would be the startup capital of the world. I think I get what he's talking about... you want architecture and places that feel 'real', not some homogeneous office park. On the other hand... most of Silicon Valley is very new, and not very exciting, and it did "ok".
      • ghaff 11y ago
• mtviewdave 11y ago
  >Focus on historic preservation. Big real estate development projects are not what's bringing the twenty-somethings here. They're the opposite of the new restaurants and cafes; they subtract personality from the city. >The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be too strict about historic preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the better they seem to do. Interesting contrast to the common belief here on HN that historic preservation is just unimportant NIMBYism and should be opposed in the name of bringing down housing costs.
• hoodoof 11y ago
  Isn't Silicon Valley a black hole with unrelenting monetary gravity that would pull all skilled software engineers down towards it? Any young developer who is any good will go from the minor leagues to the big league attracted by the cash, leaving Pittsburgh or whereever behind. Budding "Silicon Valleys" would simply be the target of aggressive and unrelenting talent raids.
  • drumdance 11y ago
    Not necessarily. Companies like Facebook and Google build offices outside of the Valley partly because it's less competitive. Google has been expanding in Boulder because they know their employees won't be poached as frequently as in SV.
• vincvinc 11y ago
  If you prefer the spoken version, here is the actual talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI
• georgecmu 11y ago
  I was going to attend this event (mainly because of pg's participation), but regrettably had to miss it (family claimed the Saturday). Thanks for the write-up. The video of PG's keynote is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI
• ausjke 11y ago
  I went to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, the downtown is just slightly better than Buffalo, not fully a ghost town but pretty close. Buffalo is worse because someone made the wise decision to move UB out to the suburb, which essentially rendered the already lost town to a ghost city. Put young people into the center of town helped to sustain it, however a city's future is more decided by the overall economy development, both Pittsburgh and Buffalo are just _lost_ in recent decades on that part.
  • TillE 11y ago
    Buffalo is crippled by truly awful winter weather, especially downtown where the wind from the lake is incredibly strong. You could spend billions renovating the area, turning all the parking lots into something useful, and it would still be a fairly miserable place to live. I've only spent a little time in western PA, but it's definitely better than that.
    • thrownaway2424 11y ago
      If Buffalo is crippled by winters, then Pittsburgh is crippled by having the worst air quality in the nation and the least sunlight. http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/states/pennsylvania/allegheny.html http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/states/pennsylvania/allegh... http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/pctposrank.txt http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/pctposrank.txt
  • Brendinooo 11y ago
    Depends on what you're there for. Our ratio of sports to population is really high. The Cultural District is really vibrant, particularly if you happen to be around during a gallery crawl. If you're at Point State Park at the right time, you might wander into a big event (arts festival, regatta). Downtown definitely gets quiet after a certain point, but I've seen some take that as a point of pride - we're a "city that sleeps."
• robg 11y ago
  This is perhaps the first essay I read from pg and thought "You're hopping aboard this bandwagon now?". Even he admits to following the lead of the NY Times Food section. Having attended grad school in Pgh from 1999-2004, it was clear back then the city was on it's way back. Now with Apple, Google, and Uber, the question isn't how to make Pgh a startup hub, it's how much it will be.
  • CptJamesCook 11y ago
    What successful startups are in Pittsburgh?
    • _delirium 11y ago
      Celsense, Rorus, and PieceMaker are three that come to mind. There are especially a lot of biotech startups. Not as many of the consumer-web type startups that are more commonly seen on HN though.
    • Brendinooo 11y ago
      Shoefitr was acquired by Amazon last year. Duolingo is from the area as well.
    • colindean 11y ago
      Lots. "$280 million was invested in Pittsburgh technology companies in 2015." https://www.innovationworks.org/Portals/1/documents/Pittsburgh's%20Technology%20Investment%20Landscape%202011-2015.pdf https://www.innovationworks.org/Portals/1/documents/Pittsbur... Off the top of my head, Duolingo, 4moms, Treatspace, Wombat Security, Redzone Robotics got big $$$. That doc has more that I'm less knowledgeable of. Exits: Vivísimo acquired by IBM 2012 (I was a part of this one) M*Modal acquired by One Equity Partners 2012 Carnegie Learning acquired by Apollo Group 2012 BlackLocus acquired by The Home Depot 2012 The ExOne Company IPO 2013 BodyMedia acquired by Jawbone 2013 Mobile Technologies acquired by Facebook 2013 BPL Global acquired by Qualitrol 2013 Shoefitr acquired by Amazon 2015 Giftcards.com acquired by Blackhawk (I think 2013) LightSide Labs acquired by Turnitin 2014 Powered Analytics acquired by Target 2014 Millennium Pharmacy Systems acquired by PharMerica 2014 RedPath Integrated Pathology acquired by PDI 2014 Aesynt acquired by Omnicell 2015 iGate acquired by Capgemini 2015 Blue Belt Technologies acquired by Smith & Nephew 2015 Ottomatika acquired by Delphi 2015
• cfallin 11y ago
  Pittsburgh has a lot going for it, and it's been really cool seeing the growth since I moved to Pgh in 2009. I think the one thing it might have against it is a growing anti-gentrification/tech movement. It's nothing like throw-rocks-at-busses San Francisco, but you do see things like this graffiti: http://imgur.com/5T0iJQ6 http://imgur.com/5T0iJQ6 And it's not just the fringe with these views, but (in my experience) reasonable people who are frustrated with rising rents and they scapegoat tech growth. The housing market is also a little wonky. Pittsburgh is cheap on average, but it's sort of bimodal -- there are nice new shiny apartments being built, especially around Google (Bakery Square) and thereabouts, but they're going at maybe 1.5-2x the median rent. Then the rest of the apartment stock is just a little... old. I took for granted having parking and laundry and post-1950s wiring when I was on the west coast. There are a bunch of places here that haven't been renovated in 50 years. In any case, I agree with PG that there's a certain pragmatism here and I think really great things are coming if the growth continues.
  • beachstartup 11y ago
    > I took for granted having parking and laundry and post-1950s wiring when I was on the west coast having lived in both sf and la, you really can't expect many rental places to have all 3 of these things (or even 2, really), except the newest developments. most buildings in both cities are cheap-ish mass housing built in the 40s-70s. the new stuff gets a lot of attention but is a tiny fraction of the city.
    • cfallin 11y ago
      That's true... but I think it just depends on the market. I lived one year each in Mountain View and in Hillsboro, OR (a Portland suburb near Intel's campus), and while Mountain View was competitive, Hillsboro had oodles of nice, modern places ready right away. I ended up in modern (< 20 yr) construction in both cases. I'd still say average housing quality in both markets is much better than in Pittsburgh, at least in the neighborhoods near CMU (Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, etc). My current place was built in 1916, still has knob-and-tube wiring, and I considered it a good find. I'm moving to a 1950s building in August and I'm looking forward to having enough electrical capacity for a microwave. All that said -- everyone should still consider moving here -- it's a beautiful city, with a lot of culture, and the housing market will eventually come to a better equilibrium!
• robg 11y ago
  Not sure if the venue, but why is UPitt left out here? CMU is great, but Pitt is also a world class research institution and with a first rate medical school and insurer already investing deeply in startups. http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/mental-health-startup-lantern-raises-17-million-series-a-round/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/mental-health-startup-lante...
  • alanh 11y ago
    Funny, I just got recruiter spam promoting Lantern today, and the email mentioned the investment from UPMC (that’d be University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the med school & healthcare conglomerate, for those unfamiliar with the 412)
  • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 11y ago
    It's not a bad school by any stretch, but it's not on the same level. Looking at federal grant money (e.g. NSF, reasonable metric for research), U Pitt is at 26 million to CMU's 70 million. Penn is a much closer match at 48 million. Berkeley and Stanford are at 112 and 78 million, for comparison. You can make 'world class' mean whatever you'd like, but I think most would consider Pitt a solid state-level school, whereas CMU is more competitive nationally. http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp I'm definitely not saying it doesn't matter, but it's not as significant as CMU, and PG's argument seems to be that you benefit from having a really apex research institution for making a startup scene.
    • rsfern 11y ago
      NSF funding isn't really a fair comparison, because Pitt is most well known for its excellent medical research. $4.5 million in NIH funding at CMU vs $79.9 million at Pitt in FY2016... Plus CMU and Pitt collaborate quite a lot, especially in biomedical research. [0]: https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm https://report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm
    • mcburton 11y ago
      You are correct that CMU and Pitt are not on the same level, but you have your dirctionality flip. Pitt is in top 10 in research expenditures nationally[1], I don't think CMU is even in the top 50. Don't ignore the significance of a medical school. NSF has a 7 billion dollar budget, but NIH is 30 billion. Don't even get me started on endowments. Pitt+CMU == complementary research institutions that have had a long tradition of collaborating (for example the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) and BOTH provide strong intellectual anchors for the city. BOTH are significant. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh#Research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh#Res...
• swalsh 11y ago
  I think VR has so much potential to make people in remote places work together in close productive ways, that I wouldn't be surprised if the next silicon valley isn't even a real place.
• shas3 11y ago
  Strange comment about Pittsburgh's diversity and strangeness! In my experience, outside Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, perhaps Monroeville, and some working class neighborhoods, Pittsburgh is a fairly conservative South-US-ish city.
  • chetanahuja 11y ago
    Bingo. The farther suburbs are fairly conservative, midwesternish in culture. Though the areas you mentioned (SqHill, Shadyside etc.) provide enough of a cool college-town vibe to perhaps be sufficient as a nucleus to attract (or rather, keep) the young college graduates required for general optimism... not just startups.
• hyperion2010 11y ago
  This sounds very similar to the actual process that Durham has gone through over the past 15+ years, and the first visible signs were in the restaurant business too (concerted efforts by the city and local businesses were less visible, but preceded the visible signs). Pittsburgh seems like it has an incredibly similar social and historical setting, so hopefully they can pull it off as well.
• AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  How to make any place a startup hub: Have connected investors/money that is willing to take risks (drives job growth) and founders who have exited to encourage and promote new startups (creates the ecosystem). There are almost no cities in the US outside of SF that meet those two criteria. Even NYC which has VC money (nowhere near that of SF) doesn't have more than two major exits (Etsy, Tumblr). All those other things are nice to haves. Job opportunity and money are everything. Pittsburgh has none of those. Nowhere on the East coast does, and I can verify it as we are HQ in D.C. Also Pitt is cold.
• Cshelton 11y ago
  Dallas: - Highest growth rate in the nation (especially for 18 - 30 years old), after Houston, which is down now due to the oil industry, placing Dallas at #1 - Highest spending on food and alcohol at restaurants - http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/dallas-fort-worth-spends-more-on-eating-out-and-booze-than-anywhere-in-us.html/ http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/dallas-fort-worth-... - One of the most affordable places to live in the U.S. - Large number of top tier universities within 3 hours (Univ of Texas, Baylor, TCU, SMU, UNT, Texas A&M, UTD, UTA) - Massive amount of wealth/wealthy investors, who, are starting to put their wealth into more and more seed start-ups My point is, many cities all fit the same criteria as he listed. But until the people IN those communities move to make it happen, it won't. In the last 3 years, I've seen a magnitude increase in Start-up/entrepreneur activity happening in Dallas. And I believe much of the criteria PG said is right and a good part of the reason, but those things won't just "make" it happen.
  • joeblau 11y ago
    Yeah, but are people in Dallas truly open minded? I've never lived in Texas but from my understanding, Austin is the only place in Texas which really fosters an truly open thought process. Without that, it doesn't matter how many of the other elements a city has.
    • Cshelton 11y ago
      In the city, yes, absolutely. Now if you go out way into the suburbs and the country....well..they don't call it the bible belt for nothing... Note: I'm not knocking on Christians..I am one myself. Just saying a lot of the people out there are not as accepting. However I have found a larger percentage of "nicer" people here than in other places I've lived. "nicer" is hard to define in words though...so I'll leave it at that.
    • throwaway3724 11y ago
      Well, you sure sound open minded. If by open minded we mean writing off 26 million people because they live in a geographical area that's different than yours (and perhaps hold religious views, "quelle horreur!"). But what you really mean by "open minded" is "votes for Democratic politicians". And lucky for you, Dallas (just like all of those other bastions of conservativism, San Antonio and Houston) has a mayor who is a member of the Democratic party! Funny, huh, stereotypes aren't always accurate.
• 50CNT 11y ago
  I'm not sure whether YC is actually that great for startup hubs outside of SF. After all, the most ambitious founders seem likely to just go through YC and then stay in SF because all the other ambitious founders have stayed in SF, the VCs are there, the talent is there. Yes, they could head back to Pittsburgh, but that's 2 moves for a fledgeling startup, and they have little to gain from the second. It kinda reminds me of Front[0], another YC startup from France, which decided to eventually move their entire team to SF. I'd wager that the cultural differences in this move outshine those of a Pittsburgh-San Francisco move, and they still decided it was the most sensible option. And if they are sucessful, you file them under SF startup instead of French startup, or Pittsburgh startup, or Berlin startup, because that's where they've spent the majority of their time, and that's where they are right now. Through some mental fudging, it becomes another data point for "If I want to start a startup, I need to go to SF". [0]http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/pros-and-cons-of-distributed-teams/ http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/pros-and-cons-of-distri...
  • minimaxir 11y ago
    A class project from a CMU class, PayTango, ended up becoming a YC S13 startup: http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/society/2013/spring/fingertip-convenience.shtml http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/society/2013/spring/fingertip-co... What happened afterwards? Everyone moves to SV for YC, then 3/4 of the founders went to Google.
• p4wnc6 11y ago
  I live in the Midwest and would be happy to continue living here. Pittsburgh would in many ways be ideal. But if start-ups flock to Pittsburgh and start engaging in cargo-cult replication of the idiotic open-plan madness of SV, poor wages relative to cost of living, poor employment culture that places importance on inane things like how much alcohol you consume, then count me out. I frankly don't understand why a region would want to become like Silicon Valley. Don't get me wrong. I understand why unrealistic founders would want it and I understand why exploitative VC firms might want it. But why would employees or residents want it? It will only accelerate wealth concentration, establish monoculture, lead to absurd corporate corruption, gentrification issues, and on and on. Quick, Pittsburgh. Stop this before your local politicians have completely sold you out!
• tryitnow 11y ago
  Hmmm. Does he even reference the fact that the SF Bay Area was the recipient of massive amounts of government and government contractor money? And what about the free-wheeling, non-traditional culture (embodied in the Homebrew Computing Club)? These two factors created Silicon Valley. Federal money subsidized the semiconductor boom, which brought a lot of technical expertise to the area. Then the open-minded culture created the perfect environment for entrepreneurship. It seems like the formula for success is: (1) Massive exogenous funding (on scale only the federal government can do) + (2) A highly open-minded culture that accepts failure as an inevitable part of creation. Honestly, there's just not a lot of places that qualify. Pretty much all of the east coast, mid-west, and south are too conservative. And nowhere is really receiving massive loads of external funding like the Bay Area did in the 20th century.
  • andrewfong 11y ago
    > And what about the free-wheeling, non-traditional culture (embodied in the Homebrew Computing Club)? Not much mention of government funding, but there is this: "A city has to tolerate strangeness to be a home for startups, because startups are so strange. And you can't choose to allow just the forms of strangeness that will turn into big startups, because they're all intermingled. You have to tolerate all strangeness."
  • duderific 11y ago
    Not to mention a couple of top-ten universities located within 50 miles, and other great schools elsewhere in California.
    • DavidAdams 11y ago
      To be fair, the presence of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh is one of the cornerstones of the essay.
  • nostrademons 11y ago
    To be fair, Pittsburgh gets a lot of external government money through DARPA grants to General Dynamics and CMU. I had a friend (working on DARPA contracts at General Dynamics) who told me "wearable computing is going to be huge". This was in 2007. 2007, before the iPhone even came out. In general, the military seems to know about things 10 years before Silicon Valley gets ahold of them, who knows about them 5-10 years before the rest of America does, who (until recently, with China's resurgence) knows about them 5-10 years before the rest of the world. Other huge innovations first funded by DARPA: multitasking (1963), the Internet (1969), the GUI (1968), GPS (1978), self-driving cars (2004).
• deleted 11y ago
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• outworlder 11y ago
  > What does that have to do with startups? Because startups are made of people, and the average age of the people in a typical startup is right in that 25 to 29 bracket. So Paul Graham is now helping to perpetuate the current Silicon Valley ageism. How useful is that data point? That bracket could be the current average of SV's founders, due to forces in action at that region. Another region could have an entirely different age bracket. And that's founders. As the article touches upon, there won't be many investors. And certainly not at that age. What you actually need to do is to get bright people to go to a region and stay there. If you just try to optimize for that age bracket, you won't have Silicon Valley.
  • khuey 11y ago
    There are good reasons for startup employees to be young. Front loading risk when you don't have dependents (a spouse and kids, or parents of advanced age) to worry about is a big one. Also when you're young the pay differential between working at a startup and Google is smaller. If you're experienced enough to make Staff Engineer or something the economics of a startup look a lot worse.
    • vonmoltke 10y ago
      > Also when you're young the pay differential between working at a startup and Google is smaller. If you're experienced enough to make Staff Engineer or something the economics of a startup look a lot worse. Here's the thing, though. IMO successful entrepreneurs (startup or otherwise) have to want to be working for themselves. Money as a concern is of the form "Do I have enough money to make this work?" rather than "Can I make more money at MicroAmaGoogBook?". Personally, as someone who ultimately wants my own company and doesn't really want to sell portions of it to get there, I see the high-paying BigCo jobs as stepping stones to get to where I ultimately want to be. I don't see them as drawing me doen an alternate path.
• grillvogel 11y ago
  hurry there are cities that haven't been completely turned to shit yet!
• overgard 11y ago
  I think the question of where the "next" silicon valley will be is the wrong question; the question of where is way less significant than the question of what. I don't think the next hub of cultural and economic significance is necessarily going to be about what we think of as startups, it will probably be something that doesn't even register with most people today.
• abalone 11y ago
  I for one "treat the people starting these little restaurants and cafes as your users" in SF and I can tell you, the permitting process is not the biggest problem. It's costs. Commercial rents have skyrocketed. Moreover, residential rents have skyrocketed to the point where few people in the service industry can afford to live in SF at market rates. Even if you can find a space, how are you going to staff it? Who's willing to commute in from Oakland (which is getting expensive too) for a low wage job with grueling hours? Nopa, one of the most successful SF restaurants in the past 10 years, is posting job ads for cooks on their menus now. This isn't because of a slow permit process. Nopa hasn't applied for a permit in years. It's a result of the macroeconomic effects of a tech boom. So while I'm very happy to see PG highlight macroeconomic factors that foster economic growth in cities, I see a missed opportunity to fully address their complex effects. This is probably because this issue has been politicized here in SF, with the tech industry often lambasted for "destroying" the city (this comes from a lot of the people getting pushed out), so tech folks often get hyperdefensive and contort themselves trying to point fingers elsewhere. I think that's what's happened here with PG trying to blame the government's permitting process. But clearly if we want to continue making SF an attractive startup hub, we need to help "little restaurants and cafes" continue to open and operate. And the elephant in the room there is quite simply the high rents and high cost of living for workers in the service industry, driven by a huge influx of wealthier residents competing for space. You want a startup hub, you need city policies that manage that growth.
  • Swizec 11y ago
    > for a low wage job with grueling hours? Maybe it shouldn't be such a low wage job, if [good?] talent is in short supply? Just a thought. I for one would be happy to pay higher prices, if it meant we could avoid the whole 20% restaurant subsidy (tips) song and dance. Charge me a fair price and I'll pay you a fair price. There's no need for the whole "And oh yeah, we don't pay our staff enough so you're a bad person if you don't pay extra".
    • spitfare 11y ago
      You're talking about serving/wait staff, whose hours are significantly shorter and wages (including tips) are significantly higher than cooking staff, which is what the parent comment was actually talking about.
• beatpanda 11y ago
  Paul Graham is giving deadly advice for maintaining housing affordability. Those cute historic building become an albatross around a city's neck in a hurry once a lot of people start moving in.
• calbear81 11y ago
  Detroit fits the bill on the whole lots of old buildings that were once built when the city was rich but then turned poor. You can buy a 6 bedroom placial estate in Indian Village for $350,000 and live next to estates once owned by the Fords and the Dodges, etc. It's near a world class University (UMich) and has an abundance of office space, mostly owned by Dan Gilbert. The challenge is that it's just not that safe of a place once you venture outside of the protected downtown bubble and public transit is dismal. It's becoming a refuge for artists and free thinkers priced out of Brooklyn, seeking space that still retains it's edginess and grit. The problem is what they're bringing is aimed at the new Detroit urbanites and don't really help solve problems for all of the other normal working class folks in Detroit. Disclaimer: I live in the Bay but spent a lot of time in Detroit over the last few years when my SO was doing a residency in Clinton Township in the Detroit suburbs. She would vehemently disagree with me on my assessment and sees a frontier spirit emerging there.
  • netman21 11y ago
    Long time SE Michigan resident here. You are spot on. Gilbert may be actually be making a change though. Starting to feel different downtown.
    • ssharp 10y ago
      Gilbert seems to have seen the trend of midwesterners embracing their central cores well ahead of everyone else. What he's done in Cleveland has been pretty smart. He started by purchasing the Cavaliers and becoming a relatively vocal owner (at least compared to the previous owner). That won him a lot of favor with public. He opened up a Quicken Loans office in the city, providing jobs. He then was able to put a deal through public election granting him a casino monopoly in the city. He leased (and later bought) a mostly empty old department store building to house the casino that conveniently connected to the Cavs' arena. He later bought the Ritz hotel that also connects to the casino and arena and just recently purchased the shopping mall / train station that is the connecting piece to all of those. There are definitely some negatives to be seen from what he's doing, but I think in the end it will be an impressive improvement for that part of downtown, which was already in the upswing.
• fvargas 11y ago
  As a current CMU student and startup founder, I agree with Paul's observations about the environment and the kind of people Pittsburgh attracts. I've witnessed firsthand the startup culture that is churning, and I don't doubt it will continue to grow. However, the comparison between Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh Paul omitted has to do with the weather. Any freshman at CMU can tell you that the winter (and fall, and spring) in Pittsburgh are less than pleasant. Just last week it was snowing, in April. The fact is, for more than half the year, people won't be able to fully enjoy all those cafe's, restaurants, and cycling. The cold, rain, and snow do impact the day to day life of the people who live here and it's a factor of life that can't be overlooked. For many people, the choice between similar jobs in San Francisco and Pittsburgh is an easy one in favor of San Francisco. Pittsburgh's startup culture is growing, and there are great companies springing up here. But as a founder, I see Pittsburgh as a jumping off point. I don't wish to live with this kind of weather any longer than I have to. Not when I have the option to setup an HQ in San Francisco. And I know the people I want working with me now and in the future feel the same way.
  • bluedino 11y ago
    The weather isn't that bad. There isn't the 40 degree below zero temperatures of Minnesota or North Dakota. There are dumplings of 20 inches of snow in one day. You can do lots of activities in the winter: skiing, snowmobiling, hiking, ice fishing...
    • fvargas 11y ago
      There are many places with colder, rainier, and snowier weather. But that doesn't change the fact that between San Francisco and Pittsburgh, San Francisco is a clear winner in terms of weather. Many people will take climate into account when deciding between job offers, and it's not a difficult choice to choose the warmer, more stable climate of the Bay area.
  • draw_down 11y ago
    Yes, the weather is a big problem. Whenever I think about returning to Pittsburgh I know I can't do it, or at least would really rather not, because the weather is so much better out west. Ironically PG did point out Pittsburgh's weather as a sticking point in another essay some years ago, not sure which one at the moment.
• timv 11y ago
  Can you imagine a headline "City ruined by becoming too bicycle-friendly?" It just doesn't happen. It's pretty close to that in Sydney. Conservative media voices are fairly unanimous in their derision of Sydney City Council's attempts to build a network of bicycle lanes through the CBD. I hold the opposite view, despite never riding in the city, but it's definitely a strongly divisive issue. http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2016/04/why-sydney-hates-cyclists-and-melbourne-loves-them/ http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2016/04/why-sydney-hates-cy...
• kom107 11y ago
  Born in Pittsburgh, raised in Pittsburgh, started (and failed, 2009-2014) my own company in Pittsburgh, currently have an excellent tech job in Pittsburgh and am going to launch the beta product of my new company (YC reject) in Pittsburgh in June. So. First off, I nearly cried reading this headline, and did tear up reading it. So whether or not he reads this, thanks, Paul. Second. To the hard work of it all. I agree with every point he made, with the caveat that Pittsburgh needs to be careful with the historic preservation aspect of things: they vascillate between 'hey let's forget all of our history and blow this place up' to 'we must preserve every nook and cranny exactly as it was, even though it's detrimental towards progress'. We could also stand to improve tax policy (lower them, significantly), and get our major employers here to knock it off with their ridiculous IP agreements. Also, I'd love it if our politicians stopped directly trying to ape Silicon Valley (or New York, or perhaps most ridiculous, the Paris of Appalachia). Let's be Pittsburgh. Here's the thing that perhaps Paul missed when he was here, and perhaps others who aren't here can't see: I feel we've reached a critical mass of people who just DGAF (in a good way), because the opportunity costs of testing out your vision here are so low. By that, I mean that you can try out your weird (read: innovative) vision of the future, and no one bats an eye. On top of that, if you are producing a signal, it's much easier to cut through noise here. I spent a fair amount of time interviewing in SF for startup gigs, and it's not a good value proposition compared to here, to me. Finally, while the investment scene is terrible, that can be very beneficial to the right founder, because obviously one will retain more for themselves, and one don't NEED very much capital to get started in Pittsburgh. I bought my first house for $80,000 in 2013. 4/2, hardwood throughout, 1944 brick single family, 2 car garage, yard, granite, stainless, wine fridge, etc, in a good neighborhood. It's that cheap here. Anecdotal, but if you're smart with your money here, you can build your own runway. All of that said, I'm hoping it happens. More than that, I'll work for it to happen. Onwards and upwards, fellow Yinzers. And Let's Go Bucs.
  • LordKano 11y ago
    If you're not set on living in the city, housing is fantastic in the Pittsburgh area. I live 20 minutes from Downtown and I bought my house for $74,900 in 2008. 3/2, two car garage and driveway sitting on about 1/8 of an acre. It blows my mind when I hear how much money people are paying for housing in bigger cities. The salary would need to be significantly higher to make it worth my while to move to a place like SF or NYC to take a job. Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically. Sure, it's Democrat heavy but there are a lot of conservative, blue collar Democrats that balance out the urban intellectual Democrats and we have a small but intense Republican population so we never go too far in any direction. That's an intangible thing that is very important to me. The low cost of living, the low housing costs, the abundance of college educated professionals and the variety of experiences around would make this place attractive to all kinds of people. It could become a startup hub. I'm not sure I want to see that but I'm also not blindly opposed.
• pesenti 11y ago
  I bootstrapped a company in Pittsburgh in 2000 (the founders all came from CMU - I am from France originally) with a good exit in 2012. When I moved there the food scene was nonexistent and people in the US still perceived Pittsburgh as a bad place to be (e.g., a lady I met in CA responded with "Oh I am so sorry" when I told her I was living in Pittsburgh). CMU also didn't really understand startups - we were the first company to ever do something with a technology that CMU released to the founders. But it was also a time where you could hire CMU CS grads for $30K/year and rent an office for 30 people for less than $2K/month. And we were a big fish in a small pond so we got a lot of local press and a first cut at the local tech talent (one of our first hire ended up becoming co-founder of Tumblr!) After the exit I tried to get involved in the local scene. And while I found a lot of talent/ideas/start up to promote it was amazingly hard to attract any kind of money in the city. That convinced me that Pittsburgh would never make it as a hub and I ended moving to Manhattan last year. Now my family (wife and 4 kids) hate me for that move - because even if you throw huge piles of money on rent it's hard to match the quality of life of Pittsburgh - and we are reconsidering that move. Happy to answer any question about starting a company in Pittsburgh!
  • fiblye 11y ago
    People still seem to think Pittsburgh's a hellhole even though it's anything but. Honestly, I don't think it's a bad thing that people think this. The city's steadily drawing in talent yet rent/cost of living is remaining low and stable. Every once in a while I see people say "Pittsburgh's the next Portland!", but good god, I hope not. Too many people from SV have flooded into Portland and driven rent up to insane levels in just a few years while offering nothing of substantial value--Pittsburgh doesn't need the same.
  • MicroBerto 11y ago
    Why do you need access to so much money that you can't get it in Pittsburgh or remotely? Seems like an insanely cheap place to bootstrap. Get to break even far faster, etc... If you're living in Manhattan now, you could reduce costs by over 75% by moving back and put it into the next venture instead. Plus, the kids get the dog and a yard.
• spudfkc 11y ago
  As a native Clevelander, I love the idea of the a rust-belt city becoming the next big startup hub. Unfortunately, I can't help but disagree with several points in this article: Low cost of living: Sure, it's low compared to SF, but it is increasing at an alarming rate. Just look at how quickly housing prices have been rising the past few years. Maybe this isn't something to worry about - maybe it's just a sign that Pittsburgh is a place people already want to move to. Bicycle/pedestrian friendly: This is a great point, but it seems unrealistic given Pittsburgh's geography - it's surrounded by mountains and can experience some pretty harsh winters. Those factors make it difficult to be friendly towards cyclists. The public transportation could be much better, but faces the difficulty of, again, the geography. Culture: Now I don't mean any offense to anyone from Pittsburgh, but their culture (in my experience) has been anything but "tolerant". I visit Pittsburgh at least once every other month, and most people I meet there, unfortunately, are pretty racist. Now, it's perfectly possible that the people I have met there are a minority, but I'm just speaking about what I've observed. There are also several great points that I agree with: the food scene in Pittsburgh is great (and growing!) (check out Butcher and The Rye if you have a chance) , great universities all near downtown (CMU, Pitt), several notable tech companies there as a foundation (Google, Uber, etc), and every time I visit there I am optimistic about the city, though I question whether or not it can become the next big Startup Hub. Also, don't forget that there are other rust-belt cities that are experience a regrowth: Detroit and Cleveland. Pittsburgh is ahead in that race, but each city is unique, and who knows what the actual next Startup Hub will be.
  • harshaw 11y ago
    Those are Hills dude, not mountains :) I am from the Pittsburgh area and the geography is tough for a cycling culture, but mostly because of extremely steep terrain. See Canton Ave. Pittsburgh has a fantastic cultural scene. Performing arts, visual arts, it's all great and cheap. I think the Elephant in the room is the weather. The partly cloudy weather pattern is tough for me. I prefer for more consistent sun (which I get in Boston or the West Coast).
    • mtanski 10y ago
      The Andy Warhol Museum is fantastic. I go every time I happen to be in Pittsburg. Besides Wahrols and history of Andy Warhol they usually have a pretty good visiting exhibit. Sadly, I don't travel to Pittsburg as much as I did post collage (used to go every year or so).
• hawkice 11y ago
  Surprised no one has mentioned the gravitational effect these hubs have -- Sacramento will never really blossom in the tech industry because so much talent gets sucked into SF. But as plane ticket prices go down, those areas get larger and larger. It's worth saying: "Pittsburgh, this is time sensitive! Boston will eat your lunch by default, so make your moves quickly." Also, if plane trips get cheap enough, look at how the Hong Kong / Shenzhen area fares. Plenty of money and tech talent, and China's pushing a lot of VC money (although, who know where that ends up). If plane tickets get below the price of a video game console before an American city pops up as a cheap-dense-livable-tech-hub, HK/SZ will probably gobble them just due to order-of-magnitude advantages (4x the VC, 30x the population of SF, with preposterous numbers of PhDs, at some point the advantages will compound into something like SF but 100x more powerful).
  • malloryerik 10y ago
    Could be good, but Hong Kong is massively expensive and mainland China is censored, with slow int'l data connections, presumably because they have to scan for words like "Panama Papers." Goodbye Google, Facebook, real news... well you can have (need) a VPN, but that could also be attacked at any moment. You also kind of end up having to be a member of the Party, and are reliant on fickle gov't approval. Which makes one think that for quite a while China may be only for Chinese. Hong Kong, we'll see.
    • hawkice 10y ago
      So, obviously that is the core issue -- a tiny correction is that very few Chinese people are members of the communist party, less than 7%, and there is no expectation that foreigners join considering they have not been allowed to be members of the party since 1956.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• rquantz 11y ago
  Because being a startup hub has been so good for SF? Not everywhere needs to be a startup hub, for goodness sake.
• lewis500 11y ago
  I used to live in pittsburgh. I wish I still did but I have to live here in the Bay for work. Other than the work environment, unless you're a millionaire, this place sucks compared to pittsburgh: takes an hour to get anywhere, insane cost-of-living and sanctimonious locals who openly loathe "the tech elite" while they sit in their million-dollar ranch houses.
• gkop 11y ago
  Would you help me compile a list of interesting software companies in Pittsburgh? (I'm seeking to relocate there from SF but am having a hard time sourcing an attractive employer) * DuoLingo * Google * Oculus (Facebook) * ShowClix
  • colindean 11y ago
    Have at it: https://discover.imaginecareers.com/ https://discover.imaginecareers.com/
• nxzero 11y ago
  I would be curious if there's ever been a city built from scratch with any success around startups; seems unlikely, unless it more of an R&D city funded by a very large entity.
• dj_doh 11y ago
  Probably too late in the conversation. I'm a Pittsburgh product, as in I did my grad schooling from there. I've always found pgh vibrant! I was residing in the Oakland area. I liked everything about it. To this day I call it one of my favorite places to live or visit. Circa: 2008-09
• PhillyPhuture 11y ago
  Very similar dynamics happening in Philadelphia. Go PA!
• srinivasan 11y ago
  Points I would like to have seen mentioned: 1. Non-competes are enforceable in Pittsburgh, PA. Unlike in California. 2. Intellectual property rights over personal projects.
  • colindean 11y ago
    I feel that the non-compete thing is one of the biggest problems that PA technologists face. I'd be willing to put money on a state legislature candidate who would vow to get rid of them.
• colindean 11y ago
  There are some big things happening in Pittsburgh: Code & Supply (http://codeandsupply.co http://codeandsupply.co) is growing very quickly. It is just more than two years old and has nearly 2,200 members of its Meetup group. It holds 6-10 meetups per month, ranging from language talks to toolkits, WiFi, mental health, design, career management, and more. C&S is hosting Abstractions (http://abstractions.io http://abstractions.io), probably the largest ever software conference in Pittsburgh. It's in August and will likely sell out of its 1,500 tickets at the current rate (40% sold as of this writing). We've got big names speaking, like Stallman, Zeldman, Sandi Metz, Scott Hanselman, Mike Montiero, Raffi Krikorian, Mitchell Hashimoto, Joe Armstrong, Larry Wall, Allison Randal, Aaron Patterson, Jono Bacon, Kelsey Hightower, and lots more. The full lineup will be announced in May. Disclosure: I am an organizer of both. There are lots of other meetups that are big, too. PGH Python just merged into C&S. The PGH FP meetup is growing quickly, too. Pittsburgh hosted Midwest UX last year and Pittsburgh Web Design Day is a pretty big event. TL;DR the Pittsburgh software community is booming.
  • dalanmiller 11y ago
    Finished grad school at CMU last year. Loved coming to all the C&S meetups I possibly could when I had the time (and enjoyed the exercise hoofing it up to Squirrel Hill from Shadyside). Thank you for organizing such a great community along with Justin Reese.
• evantahler 11y ago
  I love Pittsburgh... but now too many of you know about it... so it's over ;p My Family is from Pittsburgh, I went to CMU for undergraduate and then graduate school. I helped found/bootstrap a video game company there that did quite well for a few years form 2009-2011. The city is manageable, quirky, tolerant, fun, and affordable. I agree with everything PG says here... including the lack of funding. I was with ModCloth when they had to "move the core team to SF to get investment". My video game company's troubles can be traced to lack of funding (and the CEO used too much personal capital remain objective). I would add one more negative: a bad airport. The Pittsburgh airport used to be a world-class hub for US-Airways and offered a ton cheap flights everywhere. A good airport is important for attracting talent and business... now this huge airport is less than 1/2 utilized and due to poor mass transit, it's hard to get to (I guess Uber is fixing that for the city). You could be in Philadelphia, DC, and NYC within an hour... but I always opted to drive to save on those overpriced domestic flights tier-2 airports are known for. There are investors in pittsburgh (like http://www.bluetreealliedangels.com http://www.bluetreealliedangels.com), but they aren't used to investing in "digital" tech. There are some early-stage incubators (http://alphalab.org http://alphalab.org and some others) but they don't have the network reach to justify their high stake in the company. I would argue that capital exists, but isn't as loose as it is out west. The folks who have it aren't as risky... which might be because they don't have as much to play with, but I think it simply is that they aren't used to the type of businesses Silicon Valley is starting... and that seems too risky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airpo...
  • evantahler 11y ago
    * My thoughts and opinions are current as of 2011, when I moved to San Francisco.
  • colindean 11y ago
    PIT is still struggling, but it's added lots of nonstops and new destinations. "We currently fly to 54 nonstop destinations on 13 carriers via 171 daily flights, and we will continue adding new routes." http://flypittsburgh.com/welcome-to-the-next-chapter http://flypittsburgh.com/welcome-to-the-next-chapter PIT's "AirMall" was a fantastic concept. I grew about an hour north of the airport and we'd go shopping at the airport frequently. 9/11 basically killed it and much of the expansion of the airport. The 2008 Recession didn't help, either. AirMall business did eventually bounce back to pre-2001 levels in the last few years. I'll bet that if the gov't ever relaxed the security theater of the TSA, the mall could be booming again.
• rwhitman 11y ago
  Pittsburgh is unfortunately kind of isolated transportation-wise, which I think is a bigger disadvantage than it looks on the surface. It was founded when waterways were the main transportation access point, and boomed as it was the intersection of 3 rivers. But today Pittsburgh has an airport that isn't a major airline hub, with limited flights that need a connection from most cities. Rail by Amtrak is infrequent and impractically slow. The drive from NYC is 6 hours, 5 even just from Philly. And extremely treacherous in winter, too - winding Appalachian mountain passes with icy roads, blizzards, fog, narrow lanes. The nearest neighboring city is Cleveland, which isn't exactly a big boost economically. Contrast to Philly on the other end of the state and you're 2 hours from NYC, Jersey, DC with high speed rail, a major intl airport etc. Sure there are west coast cities with worse problems, but they still have the optimism of manifest destiny working in their favor. Getting caught in a blizzard driving to Denver just feels more exciting than a blizzard driving to Pittsburgh.. If Pittsburgh doubled down on the airport or got cash from harrisburg to improve rail links to NYC (we can dream), maybe build up as a tourist destination even, it could be competitive. Till then, yinzers are going to have to enjoy the secrets of their charming city on their own.
  • simonebrunozzi 11y ago
    It's a good suggestion. Besides things like Hyperloop and such, even with today's train technology, a fast train (TGV, Pendolino, etc) could connect Pittsburgh to NYC in 2.5 / 3 hours. Unfortunately it would take 20 years to build it.
    • rwhitman 10y ago
      The frustrating part is that Pennsylvania has had tons of railway planning, infrastructure built - but it's mostly been abandoned or neglected for the last 70 years. So much of the state was born out of investment in rail connections and then economically smothered by the end of the railroads and never recovered. Pennsylvania became an economic powerhouse because of the railroads, but without them it's just a sad shadow of it's former glory. If someone took the lead on rebooting the railroad industry in PA it would reboot the entire economy of the state.
• simonebrunozzi 11y ago
  From Wikipedia [0]: In a 2013 ranking of 277 metropolitan areas in the United States, the American Lung Association (ALA) ranked only six U.S. metro areas as having higher amounts of short-term particle pollution, and only seven U.S. metro areas having higher amounts of year-round particle pollution than Pittsburgh. For ozone (smog) pollution, Pittsburgh was ranked 24th amongst other U.S. metro areas. Pittsburgh can be cool, but I wouldn't consider moving to a city where my health is in serious danger. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh
• shaneckel 11y ago
  As a yinzer, this is really fun to read.
• intrasight 11y ago
  CMU grad here (EE, CE, Math '89). My wife is a native Pittsburgher. Her parents still live in the house she was born in – which I believe is not uncommon in this city. Anyway, I have her perspective too. Met wife shortly after graduating, got married, moved to Toronto to study neuroscience. After our daughter was born, we moved back to Pittsburgh to be with the grandparents. Can't say enough about how great an experience that was for our daughter. Pittsburgh is still very much a family town with deep roots and deep history. Daughter didn't go to CMU (had worked on robots there in HS and wanted a change) but if she had, she would have been 4th generation. Grandparents are great. Consider that you young adults coupling down. Are the soon-to-be grandparents in San Francisco? Having lived and traveled plenty, I think I can give a pretty honest assessment of Pittsburgh. The first thing I need to share is that this is a racist city. Granted, things have improved from the 80s when most of my Pittsburgh-born friends would think nothing of using the n-word. But I dismayed how often I still hear it from thirty-somethings. It is something I've never experienced outside of Pittsburgh. Check out "The most racist places in America, according to Google" in the Washington Post. A city can be amazing in many ways, but it is going to take a serious hit in terms of attracting a global diverse tech community with that shortcoming. But now for the good stuff. First, as PG discussed and others did mention, Pittsburgh is now a great food city. I think it easily holds its own against cities much larger. Seconds (and related to first) the city is getting more diverse. The fact that the universities have become so diverse (~80 non-Anglo-Saxon) plays a manor role in this transition. Most of these people will not stay in Pittsburgh, but their presence does change the culture. More and more are staying or moving here to start their careers. On the tech front, things have been slowly improving. CMU and Pitt have always fostered tech spin-offs, but things are really changing now with Google, Apple, Facebook, and Uber setting up research centers. Without a doubt, this is going to change Pittsburgh. You can already see the changes with the construction of hundreds of $2000+/mo apartments in what used to be the "ghetto". I am hopeful that this will change one of the current shortcomings of the local tech scene – that this is an "eds and meds" town, and if you want to get funded, you are more likely to meet with success if your business in that space. Pittsburgh has MANY cool, walkable neighborhoods. This is a huge draw for young adults. There are up-and-coming hip, walkable neighborhoods were you can still buy a nice house for $80K. FIOS is readily available. Taxes are pretty average. The weather is relatively mild (granted, I came from upstate NY). The geography is beautiful - the rivers, the hills, the parks, etc. We have an excellent system of bike trails. I'll be biking to DC later this spring. Pittsburgh is very active on the city-data forums. There is no better place to put your finger on the pulse of a community in my opinion. You'll find many threads on the issues I've discussed here. I remember reading a couple threads worth paraphrasing. In one, someone commented that Pittsburgh must be a very rich city because it has more mansions than any other city. He clearly didn't understand the history of Pittsburgh and how much wealth was created during the industrialization of the early 20th century. But his assessment is accurate in that the city has WAY more than its fair share of mansions build during the timeframe when houses were built big and beautiful by craftsmen who cared. If you do move to Pittsburgh, do yourself and the city a favor and buy one of these diamonds in the rough and renovate. Another lasting legacy of the robber-baron era is that Pittsburgh has an amazing arts and cultural heritage. In another interesting city-data thread, the discussion was on how Pittsburgh is still a place where people of average means can still live a middle-class life. The reason is two-fold. First, the cost of living is relatively low. But just as important is that Pittsburgh is a very hardworking and entrepreneurial city. This is the city that, in a sense, built itself and also much of the rest of the country. Steel, electricity, glass, etc. – they all came from Pittsburgh. That work ethic is still very much present. People here work hard, play hard, drink hard, and love their sports teams. Sorry for the long post, but since so much of what I read on this thread wasn't about Pittsburgh, I felt I had to help shift the balance back. Finally, check out pittsburghtoday.org which will tell you most everything, data-wise, that you'd want to know.
• caseyf7 11y ago
  Philly checks these boxes much better than Pittsburgh and doesn't have a tech scene of note. These cities will also need an anchor company to keep the talent there. Maybe autonomous cars can do that in Pittsburgh.
• femto 10y ago
  " Can you imagine a headline "City ruined by becoming too bicycle-friendly?" It just doesn't happen." Except in Sydney, Australia. Welcome to Murdoch's backyard: "On a bike path to chaotic traffic: new cycleways could mean more gridlock for city drivers "[1] "The cycle of waste will cost us $76 million" [2] "SLOW LANES: If they don’t want it, take it off them" [3] [1] http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/on-a-bike-path-to-chaotic-traffic-new-cycleways-could-mean-more-gridlock-for-city-drivers/story-fnii5s3x-1226869211260 http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/on-a-bike-path-to-ch... [2] http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/the-cycle-of-waste-will-cost-us-76-million/story-fnii5s3x-1226718069142 http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/the-cycle-of-waste-w... [3] http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/slow_lanes/ http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/d...
• sheel 10y ago
  I am an investor, with 500 startups. Originally from Pittsburgh, went to CMU- tremendous love for the place. Will come to find great companies to give them money. I particularly look at FinTech but would love to look at other stuff. Drop me a line if I can be helpful. Not hard to find me.
• crispyambulance 10y ago
  I've been born and raised in Pittsburgh, went to CMU for undergrad and Pitt for grad but eventually left for other places. Pittsburgh has plenty of business opportunities. There is A LOT of industry within the metro area. A small group of folks can relatively easily set up shop and make excellent careers doing tech in Pittsburgh. The "bones" of the city are excellent. It is a medium-size compact urban area surrounded by streetcar main-streets, industrial areas, and older 'burbs. Neighborhoods are relatively stable, there aren't insane fluctuations in property values, many places are walkable/bikeable and there's at least a corner in pittsburgh for every taste. As for it being a "start-up hub" where "start-up" is defined in the silicon valley sense of going from idea to VC investment to IPO in a few dozen months-- no that is not common. But that's such a narrow band of activity, can you really say it is common anywhere?
• kriro 10y ago
  It's an interesting article but I feel like the investor/entrepreneur relationship isn't quite as simple. I'd be really interested in a meaningful analysis of why investors cluster in SV. The obvious explanation is because that's where the talent is. However I feel there are a lot of social factors at play, too. It's cool to be in SV, people start companies there and change career path from selling their company to becoming investors etc. [lifestyle wise the city of SF doesn't sound all that great and Cali seems to be full of strange regulations and the like] What if investor seeding would be hugely beneficial for a hub to become "the next SV". Imagine this thought experiment...pg overcome with nostalgia convinces YC to permanently move to Pittsburgh and change the standard recommendation to "stay 3 month in Pittsburgh". I'm not convinced YC would implode..there'd be some difficulties sure. But I'd also expect (some of) the money to follow YC. A "Pittsburgh batch" (to go along with the regular one) might actually be an interesting experiment to run.
  • kom107 10y ago
    Ooooh. Talk dirty to us. YC Pittsburgh batch. Dig it.
  • tim333 10y ago
    >why investors cluster in SV A lot comes down to the seed planted when Shockley co-invented the transistor and then moved to be near his mum's place in Palo Alto. The whole thing went from there. The 'traitorous eight' left his company and: > would go on to found other companies after that, including legendary venture firm Kleiner Perkins, AMD and Intel. Over the next 20 years, 65 companies would be started by first or second generation defectors from Shockley Semiconductor Lab, giving it a legitimate claim as the birthplace of the chip industry that gives Silicon Valley its name. And then the people who made millions/billions from those invest it in new ventures in the tech field they understand. It's pretty hard to reproduce that else where.
• jrochkind1 10y ago
  Sometimes I Feel Like I'm The Only One Trying To Gentrify This Neighborhood http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-the-only-one-trying-to-ge-11249 http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-th...
• anonu 10y ago
  Early on in my undergrad life in Pittsburgh (circa 2001-2005) I remember seeing this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1985/12/20 http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1985/12/20 . It took a while to really understand the rather negative perception people had of Pittsburgh, but that comic strip helped. After undergrad I moved to NYC and sort of regretted that a little bit. I realized the same things PG mentions: low cost of living and constant influx of young people from the 20+ universities in the area creates the right ecosystem for a startup culture.
• markaduffy 10y ago
  Regarding the “startup” thread. When i first came to Pittsburgh, 2003, there was very little jobs in IT. When I came back in 2010 and every year since, its been noticeably better. The cost of living, and housing is significantly lower than UK. I worked in Belfast for a London based company. Lots of London based companies outsourced IT jobs to regional cities, because they could pay lower wages, as the employees didn’t have the expense of living in London. I always thought Pittsburgh could follow Belfast. In Dublin, they attract the American companies because of the low corporation tax. It also helps that they are a english speaking country in the eurozone. I think if US fixed the broken immigration (it takes a year for work authorization, compare to 2-3 weeks in UK), and Pittsburgh had some international flights, that would help investment in the city. I love Pittsburgh, and amazed at the speed of the changes since i first came here. Keep er lit!
• dietlbomb 10y ago
  I agree with PG that Mississippi probably isn't the right place for a startup hub, but it is disappointing that he contributes to the spin that Mississippi's religious liberty bill represents intolerance. It's these sort of religious protections that allow people of differing beliefs to live together, as opposed to the enforcement of secular norms found in jurisdictions that are supposedly more tolerant.
• surfmike 10y ago
  interesting perspective by ‏@kimmaicutler: "@paulg's advice to Pittsburgh is so the opposite of what @sama, @justinkan want SF to do. http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html " https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/720031161989267461 https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/720031161989267461