11 ms·

Pittsburgh as a Startup

99 points by joeyespo 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago
[deleted]
- doktrin 10y ago
  > Pittsburgh can't be a startup hub due to its extremely poor weather alone. (and that's harder to disrupt!) That strikes me as an odd line of reasoning. It seems fair to say that Pittsburgh can't surpass the Bay Area for any number of reasons (due in part but not principally to weather), but it seems a stretch to argue that it can't be a startup hub simply due to some mildly cold winters. London, Boston, NYC, Berlin, Stockholm - none of these places are renowned for their great weather. Neither for that matter is SF proper, with its notoriously shitty summers. Seems to me like talent and money converge for plenty of reasons that don't involve local weather conditions.
- melling 10y ago
  "Extremely poor weather" It's not Silicon Valley weather. How much worse is it than Boston or New York, other startup hubs?
  - cracker_jacks 10y ago
    The difference is that Boston and New York have transportation hubs that makes it easy to get around to many other places in the East Coast. Pittsburgh is a few hours drive away from any other major city in the area.
    - melling 10y ago
      What does that have to do with the weather, which I am addressing.
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        It's directly relevant. If someone in Boston wants nice weather, the places that have nice weather are easy to get to. Not so much for Pittsburg.
        doktrin 10y ago
        > If someone in Boston wants nice weather, the places that have nice weather are easy to get to. What places are you thinking of? I used to live in NE, and can't really think of anywhere within driving distance that features noticeably different or more attractive weather.
        enraged_camel 10y ago
        Not driving. Flying. It's much easier to get anywhere from Boston/New York than from Pittsburg.
        doktrin 10y ago
        You've lost me. There's definitely an airport in Pittsburgh. It obviously doesn't feature quite as many direct flights as a place like NYC, but on the pro side the airport is a complete breeze to travel through.
        dasil003 10y ago
        Is being a startup hub about coddled one-percenter lifestyles, or is it about a critical mass of ideas and hustlers? Maybe startups are the new finance, but it makes me sick.
        cfallin 10y ago
        If flying to warm places is your metric, PIT has direct flights to LAX, SFO, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and four airports in Florida. I don't think travel connectivity is a good argument against Pittsburgh. It's also really easy to get to other east coast cities from here. Megabus goes to Philly and NYC for ~$15 if you buy at the right time. DC is a four-hour drive away. We may be inland a bit from the true "east coast" but we're not in the middle of nowhere. > Pittsburg Minor nit, but we're also very particular about the "h". It's "Pittsburgh."
  - keiferski 10y ago
    Not sure if that's a rhetorical question or not, but: Pittsburgh is warmer than Boston but gets less sunshine, and slightly colder than New York and (also) gets less sunshine.
  - crispyambulance 10y ago
    The weather doesn't matter. Pittsburgh is a perfectly fine place to take an idea and create a business around it. There is access to talent, office space, manufacturing space, vendors, services, customers, and other industries. It ALSO has an airport, internet access, roads, electricity and running water. All of these are relatively low in cost as is real-estate if you want to live in a house. What might be an issue is getting regular visitations from VC's. VC's don't have much presence there, but will fly in if sufficiently motivated. That said if you don't need regular meetings with VC's... Pittsburgh is pretty awesome. At some point, people have to start wondering how miraculous it is that start-ups can deign to exist in such a comically expensive place as the Bay area.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      How much influence does the "golf course" of Burning Man still have on the Bay Area?
keiferski 10y ago
As a Pittsburgh native, it's been exciting to see the city develop over the past decade. One of the things that nearly everyone seems to forget about Pittsburgh is that is was once one of the single largest business and manufacturing cities in the country, if not the world. Some of the world's richest men lived and worked in Pittsburgh, including Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, H. J. Heinz, and George Westinghouse, to name a few. Nikola Tesla spent some time here, as well. Many streets are named after industrialists, which adds a unique flavor. If anything, Pittsburgh's recent rise is a return to success.
- Isamu 10y ago
  It is exciting, and I have mixed feelings. For instance, there is a lot of new development down along the Strip. I don't see how this won't end up eventually pushing out many of the old-Pittsburgh businesses that make the Strip awesome for everyone, replacing them with higher-end stuff. Rather like how the enormous cobblestone plaza in front of St Stanislaus Church in the Strip was asphalted over since my student days. But I get it, it was uneven, it had an old trolley track, nobody wants to maintain cobblestone. So yeah, I would like to see Pittsburgh continue to develop, I just hope people are not in a hurry to displace what makes it cool.
  - keiferski 10y ago
    I'd agree, overall it's a mixed bag. The new-ish Bakery Square complex (which is home to Google) is pretty hideous. Pittsburgh more-or-less has the same type of architecture as large parts of New York, specifically huge (previously) empty warehouse spaces. I'd really like to see more old warehouses kept and retro-fitted, rather than replaced with Bakery Square-esque architecture.
    - cfallin 10y ago
      Wasn't the Bakery Square building itself an old Nabisco factory? I agree that all the new apartment buildings around it are pretty out-of-place, but I do think there are plenty of reasonable attempts at keeping historical bits around...
southphillyman 10y ago
I wonder why Philadelphia hasn't even been considered as a start up hub. Better weather than Pittsburgh, NYC, or Boston Nothing on par with CMU.... but Upenn, Drexel, and Princeton are in the area. As are a ton of other schools. Pretty good size developer base with people working in Telecom,healthcare, education, and finance. Close to NYC and DC Affordable even after recent gentrification Existing start up scene with some examples of local success (duckduckgo) Much more interesting and hip city when compared to Pittsburgh/Boston
- SmellTheGlove 10y ago
  As a native Philadelphian who now lives closer to Boston, my perspective - Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston). The local talent market is much better suited for healthcare than tech. And what talent there is can easily go to DC or NYC, where there are larger job markets. At least for me, 10+ years ago when I moved back to Philly after going to college in VA, I lasted less than a year before going to DC where the better opportunities were. My perception is that it is still true today. My family is still all in South Philly and the close in suburbs so I haven't completely lost touch. I'd totally move back for the right opportunity.
  - noer 10y ago
    > Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston) Chicago is corrupt as they come and there's a pretty robust startup scene.
    - pm90 10y ago
      The difference is that its the only big city in the midwest. So if you're an engineer in Philly you could easily move to NYC/DC for work. Not so much for someone in the midwest who wants to work in the midwest.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
grillvogel 10y ago
RIP Pittsburgh
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
If a city/state wants to be a startup it better demolish any semblance of noncompete agreements against employees. This is an often overlooked feature of California. Skills and talent flowing freely between companies is a benefit to the entire ecosystem and something California did right very early on.
- ghaff 10y ago
  While it's great that California basically doesn't have noncompetes, I'm skeptical that there is such a bright line relationship between the number of startup companies/amount of VC money in California and this fact. Massachusetts has, unfortunately, not been able to change the law in large part because of lobbying by some big employers yet does pretty well on the tech company creation front. (Less than CA but across a broader scope of businesses.) But, if lack of non-competes are such a big deal, maybe Hawaii will become a tech hub, (Mostly :-))
bluedino 10y ago
The location doesn't matter. Companies will pop up where they are going to pop up. Everyone writes an essay about why their city is so great and you should move there so you can build your company. Case in point: Salt Lake City/Provo in the 80's You had companies like Novell and WordPerfect that dominated entire markets. Why Salt Lake City? The weather isn't "great" (unless you like to ski). It's not that large of a metro area, barely over a million people. There are a lot of Mormons (they're the weird people that don't drink caffeine). It's not diverse at all, just a bunch of white Mormons. But it worked.
- ksenzee 10y ago
  a) Mormons drink caffeine. I am a card-carrying Mormon, so if you argue this point with me your sources had better be pretty good. b) Sure, companies pop up where they pop up, but for a city to become a hub for something, you need more than a couple of companies popping up. I wouldn't say Orem was exactly a tech hub in the 80s. You could argue the point better now, judging from the recent BuzzFeed article.
  - bluedino 10y ago
    >> Mormons drink caffeine. I had some friends who were Mormon growing up, they didn't drink caffeinated soda, coffee, tea, and of course alcohol. Is that uncommon in the Mormon world?
    - aji 10y ago
      The rules changed and last I heard it was something along the lines of only hot caffeinated drinks were forbidden, so no coffee tea etc, and things like Coke and Pepsi are fine.
      - ksenzee 10y ago
        Rules haven't changed. They just issued a clarification. Most of us have been drinking all the Dr. Pepper we want for years.
    - 10y ago
server_bot 10y ago
I’ve been in Pittsburgh 6 years now - worked in local tech, currently a grad student at CMU. From my perspective, the “grassroots” community is a massive factor in the region’s success. I’ve gotten more out of the active and inclusive tech community then out of proximity to big-name companies or an influx of investors. I’m not saying those things aren’t important or don’t drive the creation of the community I benefit from, but my touchpoint with the tech scene has been motivated and approachable developers (and aspiring developers!). Example: there’s a local meetup with 2,200 members (http://www.codeandsupply.co/ http://www.codeandsupply.co/) and weekly talks ranging from programming 101 to effectively scaling a micro-service architecture. They’re putting on a conference in August where I’ll be able to see Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Joe Armstrong speak for a $70 dollar ticket price (student price, regular tickets are still only a fraction of what you’d expect).
- abglassman 10y ago
  That's http://abstractions.io/ http://abstractions.io/ - I'll be there too as a CFP speaker! They got a dynamite lineup of invited speakers, and the CFP topics are pretty exciting, too.
rexreed 10y ago
No offense as I'm sure there's some awesome stuff happening in Pittsburgh, but EVERY "up and coming" city with an innovation ecosystem can write this very same piece about themselves. See how Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Raleigh, New Orleans, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, etc. etc. etc. all write about themselves. There's nothing here to say WHY a gigantic shift in the way investment capital is being deployed should be redeployed. Why people with talent and knowledge capital should LEAVE their current places of employment and residence to pick up and move to an unknown. Why people with experience and mentorship building substantial and sizable companies should all of a sudden start doing it in places that they aren't already doing it. WHY? Those questions are never answered. And this is why all those cities above keep striving. As they should. But to say that Pittsburgh is doing something special that other cities aren't doing in many of the same ways requires observing what's happening out there. I'd love to see an update to this article with a compare and contrast. With a list of the successes. With comparisons to other cities successes (especially those of similar size and grit). And perhaps some analysis as to why it's happening in Pittsburgh and not other places (if it is indeed happening like that)
- cfallin 10y ago
  > EVERY "up and coming" city [ ... ] Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Raleigh, New Orleans, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami [ ... ] One unique factor about Pittsburgh is its academic presence, in both CS/engineering (Carnegie Mellon) and medical fields (University of Pittsburgh). At least CMU has spawned off a number of research startups, has created a burgeoning robotics community (NREC, etc), and has attracted major tech companies to create offices here: Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple, etc. I'm not sure you could say that about many of the other second-tier cities on your list. Human/intellectual capital is a big part of city momentum.
  - rexreed 10y ago
    I can equally name a bunch of other cities with similarly well-positioned academic instituions. That doesn't make it unique. For example, look at the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina. Not one, or two, but at least three or four major world-class institutions: Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, and others. With tons of research and supporting institutions. And a cost of living very comparable to Pittsburgh. Or how about Philadelphia with Penn, Temple, Drexel, and more? Or Baltimore with Johns Hopkins? And of course, Boston with its concentration of dozens of the top-rated schools in the world (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, BC, and on and on). So in what way is Pittsburgh unique? It's not -- it's just like many of these former rust-belt cities with world-class institutions and a startup economy that's interesting but not on top.
Animats 10y ago
Pittsburgh should have been the automatic driving hub. CMU was very active in that area. But although there's some automatic driving work there, it's not the center of that activity. It's a center of industrial robotics activity, but doesn't get much press for it.
- ckinnan 10y ago
  Last I heard, Uber's self-driving research base is in Pittsburgh. http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-research-facility-in-pittsburgh-to-build-self-driving-cars/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-resea...
biswaroop 10y ago
One word: bicycles [1]. In summary, make it the most bicycle and pedestrian friendly research city in the world, and wait for founders to turn into investors. [1] http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html
rdl 10y ago
Biggest things I'd do for Pittsburgh (I'm from Philadelphia originally, but I think that's a lost cause): 1) Fix non-competes (state law; maybe fix state wide, or just in the city?) -- parity with California 2) Make life as easy as possible for founders (city and state regulations about employment, etc. should be simple and minimal up to 50-500 employees) 3) Try to get earmarked visas for founders 4) Promote Pittsburgh in China/India. Both for founders and to convince parents/families/etc. of potential hires that Pittsburgh is a great place to live and work. 5) Encourage CMU/Pitt/etc to do some kind of "part time study" or something so students can start startups, particularly those on student visas. Maybe model it on how waterloo does their coop program 6) High speed Internet in as many houses/offices as possible; deregulation, inviting Google Fiber, etc. Possibly allow someone to run gigabit multi-family dwelling Internet without having to cover ever region of the city 7) Focus on hard science/robotics/etc. as a cluster, vs. media, social media, finance, etc. A cluster has higher effective size and density.
- dbcurtis 10y ago
  non-competes came up the last the Pittsburgh was discussed here. That is certainly a biggie. The state could pass a law and have done with it, but also, startups could be coached to drop non-compete clauses from their hiring offers. And of course, hires could cross that section out before accepting -- and be willing to walk away if that doesn't work.
  - rdl 10y ago
    It's not usually the startups having non-competes which are the problem -- it's the previous bigco employers of people startups want to hire, or people who want to found startups.
    - dbcurtis 10y ago
      Good point. That needs a legislative solution.
      - rdl 10y ago
rwhitman 10y ago
All of Pennsylvania in general is highly undervalued. I spend one or two weekends in PA every month and am always puzzled by how little attention and investment there has been in the state during the last few economic booms. PA is littered with top notch universities from corner to corner. It's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. You have a lush, green resource-rich landscape as far as the eye can see (and definitely no water scarcity). Absurdly affordable housing with a surplus of incredible historic architecture. Walkable colonial-era villages and small tightly clustered cities with intact historic shopping districts. Endless square footage of unused warehouse spaces. Huge beautiful parks including old growth forests, mountains, rivers. Fairly decent mass transit in the Philly area at least, (and a lot of legacy transit infrastructure ready to spring back to life at some point). I'm not just talking about Philly and Pittsburgh either - so many smaller "rust belt" type cities in PA with so much to offer that are just completely overlooked. Like the entire Lehigh Valley for instance. Harrisburg is actually a really cool city when you get to know it - very diverse, lots of smart people there, excellent breweries and a lot of economic growth. Plus we often overlook the fact that Pennsylvanians largely founded the SF Bay Area in many ways - look at the map of the SF Bay and you'll see the markers of PA everywhere. (hint the street grid of San Francisco is named after Philadelphia's).. I think the main things that have held back PA is 1) it's been overshadowed by NYC 2) property taxes are absurdly high 3) it's still got a rust belt stigma to shake.. But otherwise for tech folks if you've never been it's really worth checking out
- dionidium 10y ago
  It's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. I love Pittsburgh. But cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis and Nashville deserve a seat at that table, too. In general, the rust belt gets a bad rap. It's full of old, interesting cities that are packed with cultural institutions and fascinating history. They deserve a lot more attention than they get.
bsder 10y ago
Yet a lot of the tech startups seems to leave Pittsburgh once they reach the next level. (I seem to remember some vintage clothing startup thing as being the most recent casualty). People might want to figure out why.

99 points by joeyespo 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago

[deleted]

doktrin 10y ago
> Pittsburgh can't be a startup hub due to its extremely poor weather alone. (and that's harder to disrupt!) That strikes me as an odd line of reasoning. It seems fair to say that Pittsburgh can't surpass the Bay Area for any number of reasons (due in part but not principally to weather), but it seems a stretch to argue that it can't be a startup hub simply due to some mildly cold winters. London, Boston, NYC, Berlin, Stockholm - none of these places are renowned for their great weather. Neither for that matter is SF proper, with its notoriously shitty summers. Seems to me like talent and money converge for plenty of reasons that don't involve local weather conditions.
melling 10y ago
"Extremely poor weather" It's not Silicon Valley weather. How much worse is it than Boston or New York, other startup hubs?
- cracker_jacks 10y ago
  The difference is that Boston and New York have transportation hubs that makes it easy to get around to many other places in the East Coast. Pittsburgh is a few hours drive away from any other major city in the area.
  - melling 10y ago
    What does that have to do with the weather, which I am addressing.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      It's directly relevant. If someone in Boston wants nice weather, the places that have nice weather are easy to get to. Not so much for Pittsburg.
      - doktrin 10y ago
        > If someone in Boston wants nice weather, the places that have nice weather are easy to get to. What places are you thinking of? I used to live in NE, and can't really think of anywhere within driving distance that features noticeably different or more attractive weather.
        enraged_camel 10y ago
        Not driving. Flying. It's much easier to get anywhere from Boston/New York than from Pittsburg.
        doktrin 10y ago
        You've lost me. There's definitely an airport in Pittsburgh. It obviously doesn't feature quite as many direct flights as a place like NYC, but on the pro side the airport is a complete breeze to travel through.
        dasil003 10y ago
        Is being a startup hub about coddled one-percenter lifestyles, or is it about a critical mass of ideas and hustlers? Maybe startups are the new finance, but it makes me sick.
        cfallin 10y ago
        If flying to warm places is your metric, PIT has direct flights to LAX, SFO, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and four airports in Florida. I don't think travel connectivity is a good argument against Pittsburgh. It's also really easy to get to other east coast cities from here. Megabus goes to Philly and NYC for ~$15 if you buy at the right time. DC is a four-hour drive away. We may be inland a bit from the true "east coast" but we're not in the middle of nowhere. > Pittsburg Minor nit, but we're also very particular about the "h". It's "Pittsburgh."
- keiferski 10y ago
  Not sure if that's a rhetorical question or not, but: Pittsburgh is warmer than Boston but gets less sunshine, and slightly colder than New York and (also) gets less sunshine.
- crispyambulance 10y ago
  The weather doesn't matter. Pittsburgh is a perfectly fine place to take an idea and create a business around it. There is access to talent, office space, manufacturing space, vendors, services, customers, and other industries. It ALSO has an airport, internet access, roads, electricity and running water. All of these are relatively low in cost as is real-estate if you want to live in a house. What might be an issue is getting regular visitations from VC's. VC's don't have much presence there, but will fly in if sufficiently motivated. That said if you don't need regular meetings with VC's... Pittsburgh is pretty awesome. At some point, people have to start wondering how miraculous it is that start-ups can deign to exist in such a comically expensive place as the Bay area.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    How much influence does the "golf course" of Burning Man still have on the Bay Area?

keiferski 10y ago

As a Pittsburgh native, it's been exciting to see the city develop over the past decade. One of the things that nearly everyone seems to forget about Pittsburgh is that is was once one of the single largest business and manufacturing cities in the country, if not the world. Some of the world's richest men lived and worked in Pittsburgh, including Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, H. J. Heinz, and George Westinghouse, to name a few. Nikola Tesla spent some time here, as well. Many streets are named after industrialists, which adds a unique flavor. If anything, Pittsburgh's recent rise is a return to success.

Isamu 10y ago
It is exciting, and I have mixed feelings. For instance, there is a lot of new development down along the Strip. I don't see how this won't end up eventually pushing out many of the old-Pittsburgh businesses that make the Strip awesome for everyone, replacing them with higher-end stuff. Rather like how the enormous cobblestone plaza in front of St Stanislaus Church in the Strip was asphalted over since my student days. But I get it, it was uneven, it had an old trolley track, nobody wants to maintain cobblestone. So yeah, I would like to see Pittsburgh continue to develop, I just hope people are not in a hurry to displace what makes it cool.
- keiferski 10y ago
  I'd agree, overall it's a mixed bag. The new-ish Bakery Square complex (which is home to Google) is pretty hideous. Pittsburgh more-or-less has the same type of architecture as large parts of New York, specifically huge (previously) empty warehouse spaces. I'd really like to see more old warehouses kept and retro-fitted, rather than replaced with Bakery Square-esque architecture.
  - cfallin 10y ago
    Wasn't the Bakery Square building itself an old Nabisco factory? I agree that all the new apartment buildings around it are pretty out-of-place, but I do think there are plenty of reasonable attempts at keeping historical bits around...

southphillyman 10y ago

I wonder why Philadelphia hasn't even been considered as a start up hub. Better weather than Pittsburgh, NYC, or Boston Nothing on par with CMU.... but Upenn, Drexel, and Princeton are in the area. As are a ton of other schools. Pretty good size developer base with people working in Telecom,healthcare, education, and finance. Close to NYC and DC Affordable even after recent gentrification Existing start up scene with some examples of local success (duckduckgo) Much more interesting and hip city when compared to Pittsburgh/Boston

SmellTheGlove 10y ago
As a native Philadelphian who now lives closer to Boston, my perspective - Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston). The local talent market is much better suited for healthcare than tech. And what talent there is can easily go to DC or NYC, where there are larger job markets. At least for me, 10+ years ago when I moved back to Philly after going to college in VA, I lasted less than a year before going to DC where the better opportunities were. My perception is that it is still true today. My family is still all in South Philly and the close in suburbs so I haven't completely lost touch. I'd totally move back for the right opportunity.
- noer 10y ago
  > Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston) Chicago is corrupt as they come and there's a pretty robust startup scene.
  - pm90 10y ago
    The difference is that its the only big city in the midwest. So if you're an engineer in Philly you could easily move to NYC/DC for work. Not so much for someone in the midwest who wants to work in the midwest.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

grillvogel 10y ago

RIP Pittsburgh

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

If a city/state wants to be a startup it better demolish any semblance of noncompete agreements against employees. This is an often overlooked feature of California. Skills and talent flowing freely between companies is a benefit to the entire ecosystem and something California did right very early on.

ghaff 10y ago
While it's great that California basically doesn't have noncompetes, I'm skeptical that there is such a bright line relationship between the number of startup companies/amount of VC money in California and this fact. Massachusetts has, unfortunately, not been able to change the law in large part because of lobbying by some big employers yet does pretty well on the tech company creation front. (Less than CA but across a broader scope of businesses.) But, if lack of non-competes are such a big deal, maybe Hawaii will become a tech hub, (Mostly :-))

bluedino 10y ago

The location doesn't matter. Companies will pop up where they are going to pop up. Everyone writes an essay about why their city is so great and you should move there so you can build your company. Case in point: Salt Lake City/Provo in the 80's You had companies like Novell and WordPerfect that dominated entire markets. Why Salt Lake City? The weather isn't "great" (unless you like to ski). It's not that large of a metro area, barely over a million people. There are a lot of Mormons (they're the weird people that don't drink caffeine). It's not diverse at all, just a bunch of white Mormons. But it worked.

ksenzee 10y ago
a) Mormons drink caffeine. I am a card-carrying Mormon, so if you argue this point with me your sources had better be pretty good. b) Sure, companies pop up where they pop up, but for a city to become a hub for something, you need more than a couple of companies popping up. I wouldn't say Orem was exactly a tech hub in the 80s. You could argue the point better now, judging from the recent BuzzFeed article.
- bluedino 10y ago
  >> Mormons drink caffeine. I had some friends who were Mormon growing up, they didn't drink caffeinated soda, coffee, tea, and of course alcohol. Is that uncommon in the Mormon world?
  - aji 10y ago
    The rules changed and last I heard it was something along the lines of only hot caffeinated drinks were forbidden, so no coffee tea etc, and things like Coke and Pepsi are fine.
    - ksenzee 10y ago
      Rules haven't changed. They just issued a clarification. Most of us have been drinking all the Dr. Pepper we want for years.
  - 10y ago

server_bot 10y ago

I’ve been in Pittsburgh 6 years now - worked in local tech, currently a grad student at CMU. From my perspective, the “grassroots” community is a massive factor in the region’s success. I’ve gotten more out of the active and inclusive tech community then out of proximity to big-name companies or an influx of investors. I’m not saying those things aren’t important or don’t drive the creation of the community I benefit from, but my touchpoint with the tech scene has been motivated and approachable developers (and aspiring developers!). Example: there’s a local meetup with 2,200 members (http://www.codeandsupply.co/ http://www.codeandsupply.co/) and weekly talks ranging from programming 101 to effectively scaling a micro-service architecture. They’re putting on a conference in August where I’ll be able to see Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Joe Armstrong speak for a $70 dollar ticket price (student price, regular tickets are still only a fraction of what you’d expect).

abglassman 10y ago
That's http://abstractions.io/ http://abstractions.io/ - I'll be there too as a CFP speaker! They got a dynamite lineup of invited speakers, and the CFP topics are pretty exciting, too.

rexreed 10y ago

No offense as I'm sure there's some awesome stuff happening in Pittsburgh, but EVERY "up and coming" city with an innovation ecosystem can write this very same piece about themselves. See how Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Raleigh, New Orleans, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, etc. etc. etc. all write about themselves. There's nothing here to say WHY a gigantic shift in the way investment capital is being deployed should be redeployed. Why people with talent and knowledge capital should LEAVE their current places of employment and residence to pick up and move to an unknown. Why people with experience and mentorship building substantial and sizable companies should all of a sudden start doing it in places that they aren't already doing it. WHY? Those questions are never answered. And this is why all those cities above keep striving. As they should. But to say that Pittsburgh is doing something special that other cities aren't doing in many of the same ways requires observing what's happening out there. I'd love to see an update to this article with a compare and contrast. With a list of the successes. With comparisons to other cities successes (especially those of similar size and grit). And perhaps some analysis as to why it's happening in Pittsburgh and not other places (if it is indeed happening like that)

cfallin 10y ago
> EVERY "up and coming" city [ ... ] Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Raleigh, New Orleans, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami [ ... ] One unique factor about Pittsburgh is its academic presence, in both CS/engineering (Carnegie Mellon) and medical fields (University of Pittsburgh). At least CMU has spawned off a number of research startups, has created a burgeoning robotics community (NREC, etc), and has attracted major tech companies to create offices here: Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple, etc. I'm not sure you could say that about many of the other second-tier cities on your list. Human/intellectual capital is a big part of city momentum.
- rexreed 10y ago
  I can equally name a bunch of other cities with similarly well-positioned academic instituions. That doesn't make it unique. For example, look at the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina. Not one, or two, but at least three or four major world-class institutions: Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, and others. With tons of research and supporting institutions. And a cost of living very comparable to Pittsburgh. Or how about Philadelphia with Penn, Temple, Drexel, and more? Or Baltimore with Johns Hopkins? And of course, Boston with its concentration of dozens of the top-rated schools in the world (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, BC, and on and on). So in what way is Pittsburgh unique? It's not -- it's just like many of these former rust-belt cities with world-class institutions and a startup economy that's interesting but not on top.

Animats 10y ago

Pittsburgh should have been the automatic driving hub. CMU was very active in that area. But although there's some automatic driving work there, it's not the center of that activity. It's a center of industrial robotics activity, but doesn't get much press for it.

ckinnan 10y ago
Last I heard, Uber's self-driving research base is in Pittsburgh. http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-research-facility-in-pittsburgh-to-build-self-driving-cars/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-resea...

biswaroop 10y ago

One word: bicycles [1]. In summary, make it the most bicycle and pedestrian friendly research city in the world, and wait for founders to turn into investors. [1] http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

rdl 10y ago

Biggest things I'd do for Pittsburgh (I'm from Philadelphia originally, but I think that's a lost cause): 1) Fix non-competes (state law; maybe fix state wide, or just in the city?) -- parity with California 2) Make life as easy as possible for founders (city and state regulations about employment, etc. should be simple and minimal up to 50-500 employees) 3) Try to get earmarked visas for founders 4) Promote Pittsburgh in China/India. Both for founders and to convince parents/families/etc. of potential hires that Pittsburgh is a great place to live and work. 5) Encourage CMU/Pitt/etc to do some kind of "part time study" or something so students can start startups, particularly those on student visas. Maybe model it on how waterloo does their coop program 6) High speed Internet in as many houses/offices as possible; deregulation, inviting Google Fiber, etc. Possibly allow someone to run gigabit multi-family dwelling Internet without having to cover ever region of the city 7) Focus on hard science/robotics/etc. as a cluster, vs. media, social media, finance, etc. A cluster has higher effective size and density.

dbcurtis 10y ago
non-competes came up the last the Pittsburgh was discussed here. That is certainly a biggie. The state could pass a law and have done with it, but also, startups could be coached to drop non-compete clauses from their hiring offers. And of course, hires could cross that section out before accepting -- and be willing to walk away if that doesn't work.
- rdl 10y ago
  It's not usually the startups having non-competes which are the problem -- it's the previous bigco employers of people startups want to hire, or people who want to found startups.
  - dbcurtis 10y ago
    Good point. That needs a legislative solution.
    - rdl 10y ago

rwhitman 10y ago

All of Pennsylvania in general is highly undervalued. I spend one or two weekends in PA every month and am always puzzled by how little attention and investment there has been in the state during the last few economic booms. PA is littered with top notch universities from corner to corner. It's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. You have a lush, green resource-rich landscape as far as the eye can see (and definitely no water scarcity). Absurdly affordable housing with a surplus of incredible historic architecture. Walkable colonial-era villages and small tightly clustered cities with intact historic shopping districts. Endless square footage of unused warehouse spaces. Huge beautiful parks including old growth forests, mountains, rivers. Fairly decent mass transit in the Philly area at least, (and a lot of legacy transit infrastructure ready to spring back to life at some point). I'm not just talking about Philly and Pittsburgh either - so many smaller "rust belt" type cities in PA with so much to offer that are just completely overlooked. Like the entire Lehigh Valley for instance. Harrisburg is actually a really cool city when you get to know it - very diverse, lots of smart people there, excellent breweries and a lot of economic growth. Plus we often overlook the fact that Pennsylvanians largely founded the SF Bay Area in many ways - look at the map of the SF Bay and you'll see the markers of PA everywhere. (hint the street grid of San Francisco is named after Philadelphia's).. I think the main things that have held back PA is 1) it's been overshadowed by NYC 2) property taxes are absurdly high 3) it's still got a rust belt stigma to shake.. But otherwise for tech folks if you've never been it's really worth checking out

dionidium 10y ago
It's culturally and historically richer than almost anywhere else in the US. I love Pittsburgh. But cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis and Nashville deserve a seat at that table, too. In general, the rust belt gets a bad rap. It's full of old, interesting cities that are packed with cultural institutions and fascinating history. They deserve a lot more attention than they get.

bsder 10y ago

Yet a lot of the tech startups seems to leave Pittsburgh once they reach the next level. (I seem to remember some vintage clothing startup thing as being the most recent casualty). People might want to figure out why.