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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
by 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 agoPeople 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 agoWhy 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.
- pesenti 11y agoI bootstrapped my startup so I indeed never needed outside money (well rather never really tried given that we started during the 2000-2002 nuclear winter). But if I had to do it again, especially in the current VC environment, I would raise money. It can be slow and tedious to bootstrap (took us 12 years to grow to 125 people and exit) and a lot of good startups in Pittsburgh seem eternally stuck in the seed stage.
- prgmatic 11y agoEven if you do need to raise money, why is it a necessity to run your company out of the same city that your investors are in? I've never had to personally raise money for a startup, but I see a lot of the face-to-face meetings starting off as warm email/phone intros. Even if you have to constantly travel to NY/CA/* to meet prospective investors isn't it still a better value to run a business somewhere with a low cost of living?
- pesenti 11y agoYou don't. But investors tend to invest a big chunk of their money locally (they don't like to travel for board meetings...)
- tim333 11y agoI can see that. Imagine you're someone like Sequoia with "1,156 Investments in 664 Companies" according to crunchbase. It would do your head in flying all over the country to see them all. Maybe the answer is to come to where the money is for raising and then set an office back home.
- x0x0 11y agoPart of what an investor provides is a network. That network tends to be where the investor is.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago> Even if you do need to raise money, why is it a necessity to run your company out of the same city that your investors are in? It's almost never necessary but try telling an investor that. The amount of investors that said no to the start-up I'm currently working at, simply because it was on the East coast (that was literally the only reason given), was simply astonishing. In a world where you can be anywhere in essentially, physically, in less than a day (typically hours domestically) or instantly digitally technology investors would stick their noses up due to physical location. I love SF but it just didn't make sense at the time and it's still insanely expensive there!
- brandonmenc 11y ago> people in the US still perceived Pittsburgh as a bad place They still do. I'm originally from the area and when I mention this everyone thinks I come from either a Deliverance-like backwoods or a bombed-out Detroit-style factory town. No one takes me seriously when I call it The Paris of Appalachia.
- lintroller 11y agoBecause even if it is "the Paris of Appalachia", it's still Appalachia. I'm sure the city has made great strides but the outside perception is still negative.
- pesenti 11y agoOh my, never considered Pittsburgh as part of "Appalachia" - I thought that was West Virginia! I guess the US looks at Pittsburgh like Pittsburgh looks at WV...
- beachstartup 11y agoas soon as you leave the city, it's evident. it's hilly and the coal industry is everywhere (but shrinking...) probably why steel found its way there too. plenty of fuel to make steel. the people are friendly too. i had no idea what to expect but everyone was really friendly and open minded.
- jrochkind1 11y agoPittsburgh is about 50 miles from West Virginia at the closest point. It's a beautiful town.
- Merad 11y agoAppalachia is actually a huge region that comprises probably 1/3 of the eastern seaboard, stretching from New York to Alabama: http://www.arc.gov/assets/maps/Subregions_2009_Map.gif http://www.arc.gov/assets/maps/Subregions_2009_Map.gif
- namlem 11y agoAppalachia extends all the way into southern NY.
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoCurious: what was the company that you founded, and that was sold in 2012?
- mathattack 11y agoIt's amazing that Pittsburgh hasn't evolved past the bad rap. A cousin of mine moved there in the early 80s, and it was already rated one of the best cities in America to live in. It's interesting that CMU just isn't enough to help the scene. Silicon Valley and Manhattan are hard to beat for access to money, personal ambition and risk appetite. I hear you on the cost of NYC. It's a city that sucks every dollar out of bankers and hedge fund traders - everyone else can only just run the treadmill.
- B1FF_PSUVM 11y ago> we were the first company to ever do something with a technology that CMU released to the founders. Boom. A few thousand people vaporized, James Gosling among them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosling_Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ https://www.pdf.com/Home https://www.pdf.com/Home etc, etc.
- pesenti 11y agoYou didn't read the qualifier: "released to the founders". It means that CMU didn't pursue the tech we invented there. So we were free to go out and do something with it as long as we gave them a small chunk (though nobody knew what that was).