Very similar dynamics happening in Philadelphia. Go PA!
How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
241–250 of 367 posts
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#242Born in Pittsburgh, raised in Pittsburgh, started (and failed, 2009-2014) my own company in Pittsburgh, currently have an excellent tech job in Pittsburgh and am going to launch the beta product of my new company (YC reject) in Pittsburgh in June. So. First off, I nearly cried reading this headline, and did tear up reading it. So whether or not he reads this, thanks, Paul. Second. To the hard work of it all. I agree…
If you're not set on living in the city, housing is fantastic in the Pittsburgh area.
I live 20 minutes from Downtown and I bought my house for $74,900 in 2008. 3/2, two car garage and driveway sitting on about 1/8 of an acre.
It blows my mind when I hear how much money people are paying for housing in bigger cities. The salary would need to be significantly higher to make it worth my while to move to a place like SF or NYC to take a job.
Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically. Sure, it's Democrat heavy but there are a lot of conservative, blue collar Democrats that balance out the urban intellectual Democrats and we have a small but intense Republican population so we never go too far in any direction. That's an intangible thing that is very important to me.
The low cost of living, the low housing costs, the abundance of college educated professionals and the variety of experiences around would make this place attractive to all kinds of people. It could become a startup hub. I'm not sure I want to see that but I'm also not blindly opposed.
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#243Points I would like to have seen mentioned:
1. Non-competes are enforceable in Pittsburgh, PA. Unlike in California.
2. Intellectual property rights over personal projects.
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, there are waaaaaay too many parking lots in SF. If you covered every parking lot in the city with a 4 story multi-use building, what impact would that have?
You'd make it impossible for people to come into the city to work and eat? Or even live there?
I forgot, "with at least one level of underground parking" so there's no net loss in parking spaces
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements. I work in Pittsburgh, and recently learned that my employer can own intellectual property that I created on my own time in my home. I was appalled.
It's a normal employment clause, don't freak out. Just fix it. Tell them that you would like your own projects excluded and your agreement should exclude your own personal projects as long as you inform them in writing of what those projects are. It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords.
> It's not something to be appalled about. They aren't trying to be evil overlords.
Not so fast. A lot of East Coast companies aggressively enforce contract provisions, EMC being one of the worst.
If it's in your contract, and it's not illegal in that jurisdiction, you should be very concerned.
Most companies require board-level approval to change a contract, and you will usually be told, "I want you to leave the premises now."
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#246Where is the actual evidence that strict historical preservation actually matters? The culturally important buildings tend to stay around whether they are "protected" or not...its really only at the margins where they do anything. And those margins tend to be pretty ridiculous. Seattle, for example, has upheld historical preservation status on buildings that were completely vacant and had no discernible written histo…
Historic building preservation in NYC came about as a direct result of the destruction of the old Penn Station. If you've ever been to NYC via Penn Station you'll realize what a tragedy it was. The torn down station looked much more like Grand Central than a rat maze.
As always, laws are reactionary and laws can be abused for personal gain. But I don't think the idea of historically preserved buildings is fundamentally bad.
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either of these cities socially liberal? Hard to tell based on my visits there.
Less liberal than the coasts. More liberal than their surrounding rural neighbors. We talk about how women make up 50% of the population and if we don't hire women then we're leaving a lot of talent on the table. Well 50% of the country is conservative and if we don't hire conservatives we're also leaving a lot of talent on the table. Conservatives are people too. Many who are incredibly smart, talented, and hard wor…
I don't think that tech companies are discriminating against the more conservative parts of the country because they're conservative, per se, but because the more conservative parts of the country tend (with exceptions, like Utah) to have low levels of funding for attractive amenities like good public schools. I'm not going to draw causation arrows, but the correlation is sure there.
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#248Not 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, wher…
You are correct that CMU and Pitt are not on the same level, but you have your dirctionality flip. Pitt is in top 10 in research expenditures nationally[1], I don't think CMU is even in the top 50. Don't ignore the significance of a medical school. NSF has a 7 billion dollar budget, but NIH is 30 billion. Don't even get me started on endowments.
Pitt+CMU == complementary research institutions that have had a long tradition of collaborating (for example the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) and BOTH provide strong intellectual anchors for the city. BOTH are significant.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh#Res...
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#249It's as if he's never spoken to a Carnegie Mellon grad as to why they get the hell out of Pittsburgh after graduation...
Out of curiosity, why do CMU grads leave?
At CMU there's a lot of rhetoric about how bad Pittsburgh is. There's a surprising amount of talk by students at CMU about how much Pittsburgh sucks. Many students never venture far off campus, never actually get a feel for the city itself. Then, once they graduate, the jobs are in SF or Seattle or NYC, so having no other attachments to the area, they move.
Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why 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.
I 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.
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?
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?