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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

#191

Post by netman21 »

calbear81 wrote: post #151

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 o…

Long time SE Michigan resident here. You are spot on. Gilbert may be actually be making a change though. Starting to feel different downtown.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#192

Post by timr »

twakefield wrote: post #187
timr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. San Francisco no longer has marginal spaces -- every conceivable inch of it has been claimed, developed, and/or bid into the stratosphere. And it has nothing to do with "NIMBYs" or lack of development. It's a tiny, tiny patch of land, all of the build-able portions of which have been speculated upon since the early 20th century. This is important, because while cafes and universities and whatnot are important, y…

When I walk around SF, I see a lot of underdeveloped spaces...abandoned buildings, abandoned gas stations, huge parking lots full of city trucks. Inexplicably, there's been a huge abandoned building on 18th and Mission (seemingly prime location) for I don't know how long. This article about it is from 2012[1]. So, yes, SF is a small space but it is far from being efficiently (or fully) developed and I think the SF Pl…

I think you're exaggerating when you say you see "a lot" of these spaces. There are some. And they're usually vacant for a reason that involves money. Or there's a more serious problem (like contamination).

For example, the reason that space at 18th and Mission was vacant is right there in the article you linked -- the landlord pushed out the previous tenant, and turning it into a grocery store required extensive renovation. It's not as if the space was sitting empty because nobody had a use for it:

"So when the 99-cent store closed — because of high rent, according to neighboring businesses — and the vacant building went on the market in May 2010, he seized the opportunity and bought it two months later."

But yeah, it would have been nice if the new owner allowed someone else use the space while waiting for his redevelopment plans to go through, instead of letting squatters turn it into a drug house.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#193

Post by Cshelton »

sotojuan wrote: post #150
Cshelton wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't associate "red state culture" and a particular city in that state together. Remember, Austin is a city in Texas.... The 4 major cities in Texas in fact are either well mixed or liberal (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). I hardly move my car on the weekends, get around just fine. My current job I have to commute by car (actually I could ride the train technically...), but many people walk/use public tr…

> Also, what is your definition of a "top university"? Ivy? Great, well-known, research CS university. Think Stanford, Berkeley, etc. In Texas there's UT and to some extent Rice... neither in Dallas.

It doesn't have to specifically a CS research university... A good research university does much more than CS. I'd argue that having a great CS research university in close proximity is somewhat irrelevant to creating a great startup hub. Startups are SO much more than just tech.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#194

Post by drumdance »

davidw wrote: post #76
spelunker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver/Boulder fits most of that bill and already has a startup culture, sorta. Kansas City is nice too, and Google fiber being available is a huge plus. Obviously I'm biased since I've lived in both places.

Boulder is a great place that has a lot going for it. It's also infested with NIMBY's that are possibly worse than those in the Bay Area. https://journal.dedasys.com/2015/06/18/boulder-colorado-vs-b...

I lived in Boulder from '99 until late last year and still own a place there that I rent out. It really is a great place but culturally you start to feel like you've seen everything it has to offer after a couple years. You can't beat the outdoorsy stuff though.

I moved to Denver in December and really like what I see. Lots of startups as well as established companies, easy to get around, and great variety between the various neighborhoods.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#195

Post by nostrademons »

tryitnow wrote: post #100

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…

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).

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#196

Post by Cshelton »

krschultz wrote: post #143
Cshelton wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't associate "red state culture" and a particular city in that state together. Remember, Austin is a city in Texas.... The 4 major cities in Texas in fact are either well mixed or liberal (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). I hardly move my car on the weekends, get around just fine. My current job I have to commute by car (actually I could ride the train technically...), but many people walk/use public tr…

That last fact is a negative. You maximize track miles by having sprawl connected with trains. That's not what you want. Number of riders per mile of track is a much better metric.

I understand that, I was mentioning that because it's interesting, not to say it's better than others. It's an interesting fact because it shows how much of a massive area the Dallas metro is. It's fun to take the DFW area and overlay on other metros on a map. I wouldn't call it negative either. The potential Dallas has BECAUSE we have so much more room to grow is why I stay here.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#197

Post by pesenti »

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!

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#198

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

robg wrote: post #59

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-lante...

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

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.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#199

Post by gravypod »

santaclaus wrote: post #18
gravypod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that's expensive about R&D is the people. The materials, and the ideas are nearly free.

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, le…

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.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#200

Post by spudfkc »

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.

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