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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,
by 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 agonon-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 agoIt'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 agoGood point. That needs a legislative solution.
- rdl 10y agoYou might be able to get the big "incumbent" tech employers in a region, specifically in some industries you care about, to voluntarily give up these non-competes from new or existing contracts, in exchange for the benefits of being part of a vibrant startup community. In some industries and markets it might just take a couple companies -- in WA, if Microsoft, Amazon, and a couple others did it, that should be enough. But legislation (or court action) is probably the best solution.
- joekrill 10y agoJust curious: why do you think Philadelphia is a lost cause?
- rdl 10y agoToo close and too inferior to NYC, DC (so great stuff just goes there instead -- Philadelphia would be ok relatively if it were in the midwest or south). Odd mix of expensive (city taxes and other costs) but lacking redeeming value. It's not Camden or Baltimore, but not great. UPenn, while a solid standalone university, isn't as integrated into a startup culture as even CMU, and certainly not as much as Columbia/NYU, themselves vastly less so than Stanford. Legacy infrastructure, corruption, costs. Lots of big biotech/pharma/etc. companies to sustain it and crowd out tech -- sort of the same problem as NYC (finance) and DC (Government).
- patio11 10y agoFYI and YMMV, Philadelphia is in my top two places in the US I'd move to run a small software company. (The other is Chicago.) Substantial community of people doing that around N3rd St ("Nerd Street", get it?) Enough local tech firms (Wildbit, Freckle, etc) to achieve a community of practice. Reasonably inexpensive by the standards of big cities. Houses available in quantity.
- rdl 10y agoBetter than Pittsburgh? (I also dislike Chicago, so maybe there's a hidden variable. I'd do Seattle, Berlin, Austin, SLC, Boulder, Prague, Budapest, some German cities, Vancouver, Montreal, Pittsburgh, maybe Boston. I've never really lived in Chicago though, but did spend ~10y in and around Philadelphia. It's better now than in the 80s/90s for sure.)