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How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#101

Post by Cshelton »

joeblau wrote: post #93
Cshelton wrote: post #80

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-... - 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, S…

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.

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.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#102

Post by abalashov »

Cshelton wrote: post #80

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-... - 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, S…

Yes, but Dallas fails abysmally on the urban livability and density test. It's one giant exurb. Much of it should be reclassified as a rural area.

(Speaking as an Atlantan -- we have the exact same problem.)

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#103

Post by wklauss »

morley wrote: post #56
wklauss wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the actual evidence that strict historical preservation actually matters? In all the historic places you visit and that, in some parts of the world, add up to a significant amount GDP thanks to tourism or related activities. There are some intangible values as well as they help shape the history and evolve a community around specific places (think West Village, Manhattan for example). I know it can be frus…

> historic preservation of places eventually pays off. Historic preservation is no more than collecting, done by the government. There's no guarantee that what they collect will appreciate in value. For example, maybe they're preserving 1970's Kenner Star Wars toys, and maybe they're preserving the ones from 1999.

No guarantee, right. Just past experience. But even if there's no big payoff at the end, I'd argue it is important for the identity building process of a community or a nation. If 100 hundred years from now gov't finds out it has a worthless building, they can torn it down then.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#104

Post by blakeyrat »

hayksaakian wrote: post #48
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #12

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 spee…

sounds like seattle :)

Seattle's already doing fine. Any more of the SF-like tech-bros and I'd have to run screaming somewhere else.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#105

Post by JamilD »

abalashov wrote: post #102
Cshelton wrote: post #80

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-... - 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, S…

Yes, but Dallas fails abysmally on the urban livability and density test. It's one giant exurb. Much of it should be reclassified as a rural area. (Speaking as an Atlantan -- we have the exact same problem.)

I've only been to Dallas a couple times, but it seems like the soul of the city is in the suburbs.

Downtown seems dreary and dismal; it has the potential to be exciting, it's quite a beautiful area — but so few people! Scattered coffee shops and restaurants, but I felt like I could've been literally anywhere else.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#106

Post by atspruce »

cfallin wrote: post #72
minimaxir wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to Pittsburgh's coin-flip weather. Edited OP for clarity. Yes, it really is that bad .

I'm a PhD student at CMU right now. We just went from 75-degree "wow, we skipped spring" weather a few weekends ago to snow last weekend. Who knows what next week will bring. Keeps things interesting as long as you remain indoors!

There's plenty to complain about regarding Pittsburgh's gray, gray weather, but this up-and-down spring is wildly atypical for the area and not localized to southwestern PA. The same thing is happening in Ohio, across the rest of Pennsylvania, through New Jersey, and into the NYC area - and I'm sure in neighboring states as well.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#107

Post by JamilD »

wklauss wrote: post #77
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #12

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 spee…

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 t…

> 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.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#108

Post by ghaff »

davidw wrote: post #39
state wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here's an example I posted on twitter, from Boulder, Colorado: 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.…

>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.

So what city should we bomb to create the next startup hub?

That was obviously very facetious but there was a quote from the eighties or so when the Japanese were doing so well in manufacturing relative to the rust belt. One of the reasons proffered was that the Japanese had to rebuild their infrastructure from scratch after WWII. The quote was to the effect that the problems of American manufacturing wouldn't be solved by dropping an atomic bomb on Gary, Indiana.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#109

Post by throwaway3724 »

joeblau wrote: post #93
Cshelton wrote: post #80

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-... - 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, S…

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.

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.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#110

Post by saosebastiao »

wklauss wrote: post #99
saosebastiao wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In all the historic places you visit and that, in some parts of the world, add up to a significant amount GDP thanks to tourism or related activities. How did ancient Rome ever survive to the extent that it exists today if they didn't have historical preservation statutes? It has a lot more to do with protecting their buildings from angry invaders than it does with protecting their buildings from developers. In rea…

> It has a lot more to do with protecting their buildings from angry invaders Well, time changes. We no longer face the threats of the barbarian hordes of northern Europe but we have modern day speculators that will torn down anything for a profit and not think long term. And again with the culturally valuable. What is valuable today might not be years from now or viceversa, that's why deciding what should be protect…

> Well, time changes. We no longer face the threats of the barbarian hordes of northern Europe but we have modern day speculators that will torn down anything for a profit and not think long term.

You don't think those existed in antiquity? Now that is some survivorship bias.

> What I'm saying is that deciding what gets preserved and what does not is a tough call and a very complex issue.

Of course it is. All I'm asking for is to let the decision be made by the people with the skin in the game: the owners. Otherwise you get committees overrun with people who see it as nothing more than a tool to send "fuck you" notices to developers. Without skin in the game, there is nothing stopping them from being abused as an anti-development tool, and to the detriment of our current culture and quality of life.

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