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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

#271

Post by evantahler »

evantahler wrote: post #270

I love Pittsburgh... but now too many of you know about it... so it's over ;p My Family is from Pittsburgh, I went to CMU for undergraduate and then graduate school. I helped found/bootstrap a video game company there that did quite well for a few years form 2009-2011. The city is manageable, quirky, tolerant, fun, and affordable. I agree with everything PG says here... including the lack of funding. I was with ModCl…

* My thoughts and opinions are current as of 2011, when I moved to San Francisco.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#272

Post by davidw »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #172
davidw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partially political: the University of Oregon is in Eugene, and has always been the main university in Oregon, followed by OSU in Corvallis. Along these lines, I'm quite pleased that Bend is getting a university, OSU Cascades, which is something that has been lacking over here.

What Portland is really missing is a "Northern Oregon University"-a smaller public liberal arts college, along the lines of WOU, etc.

Reed is supposed to be pretty good.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#273

Post by bydo »

seibelj wrote: post #16

Somewhat unrelated, but a lot of people complain about Boston being too expensive, like SF or NYC, but honestly you can live downtown inexpensively if you live in Chinatown, or within subway distance if you live in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, or Roxbury, which become cheaper (and less safe) in that order. You don't need to live in Cambridge / Somerville / Back Bay / Seaport. If you are seriously considering moving to…

Boston is too expensive. Have you looked at real estate prices in Pittsburgh? You can easily get an apartment in a nice neighborhood for less than a bedroom in Dorchester.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#274

Post by dgacmu »

cfallin wrote: post #91
beachstartup wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took for granted having parking and laundry and post-1950s wiring when I was on the west coast having lived in both sf and la, you really can't expect many rental places to have all 3 of these things (or even 2, really), except the newest developments. most buildings in both cities are cheap-ish mass housing built in the 40s-70s. the new stuff gets a lot of attention but is a tiny fraction of the city.

That's true... but I think it just depends on the market. I lived one year each in Mountain View and in Hillsboro, OR (a Portland suburb near Intel's campus), and while Mountain View was competitive, Hillsboro had oodles of nice, modern places ready right away. I ended up in modern ( I'd still say average housing quality in both markets is much better than in Pittsburgh, at least in the neighborhoods near CMU (Squirr…

A core difference is that in Pittsburgh, you can afford to renovate the knob & tube. In MTV, you can't afford the house in the first place. :) In Hillsboro, you get very reasonable, new blah blah housing, but when you decide to walk to the region's major employer, it's four miles away with half your commute on a fairly bleah road that goes around the airport. And, ah, it's a little culturally isolated unless you drive the 45 minutes to Portland.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#275

Post by colindean »

evantahler wrote: post #270

I love Pittsburgh... but now too many of you know about it... so it's over ;p My Family is from Pittsburgh, I went to CMU for undergraduate and then graduate school. I helped found/bootstrap a video game company there that did quite well for a few years form 2009-2011. The city is manageable, quirky, tolerant, fun, and affordable. I agree with everything PG says here... including the lack of funding. I was with ModCl…

PIT is still struggling, but it's added lots of nonstops and new destinations.

"We currently fly to 54 nonstop destinations on 13 carriers via 171 daily flights, and we will continue adding new routes."

http://flypittsburgh.com/welcome-to-the-next-chapter

PIT's "AirMall" was a fantastic concept. I grew about an hour north of the airport and we'd go shopping at the airport frequently. 9/11 basically killed it and much of the expansion of the airport. The 2008 Recession didn't help, either. AirMall business did eventually bounce back to pre-2001 levels in the last few years. I'll bet that if the gov't ever relaxed the security theater of the TSA, the mall could be booming again.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#276

Post by brandonmenc »

ceedan wrote: post #258
brandonmenc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people in the US still perceived Pittsburgh as a bad place They still do. I'm originally from the area and when I mention this everyone thinks I come from either a Deliverance-like backwoods or a bombed-out Detroit-style factory town. No one takes me seriously when I call it The Paris of Appalachia.

"I'm originally from the area and when I mention this everyone thinks I come from either a Deliverance-like backwoods or a bombed-out Detroit-style factory town." This has been my perception of the city until recently. I grew up in Florida, and my perception of the city had been formed mostly/entirely by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team (and city by association) has a very hard-nosed, blue collar kind of vibe... sim…

> The team (and city by association) has a very hard-nosed, blue collar kind of vibe

True. Where else could a player like Heath Miller become the fan favorite?

> It's naive that my perception of the city was/is based mainly on sports

Well then, the Steelers' now high-flying offense and the Bucs snapping their 20 season losing streak could be a sign of things to come for the city.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#277

Post by beachstartup »

pesenti wrote: post #232
brandonmenc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people in the US still perceived Pittsburgh as a bad place They still do. I'm originally from the area and when I mention this everyone thinks I come from either a Deliverance-like backwoods or a bombed-out Detroit-style factory town. No one takes me seriously when I call it The Paris of Appalachia.

Oh my, never considered Pittsburgh as part of "Appalachia" - I thought that was West Virginia! I guess the US looks at Pittsburgh like Pittsburgh looks at WV...

as soon as you leave the city, it's evident. it's hilly and the coal industry is everywhere (but shrinking...)

probably why steel found its way there too. plenty of fuel to make steel.

the people are friendly too. i had no idea what to expect but everyone was really friendly and open minded.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#278

Post by rwhitman »

Pittsburgh is unfortunately kind of isolated transportation-wise, which I think is a bigger disadvantage than it looks on the surface.

It was founded when waterways were the main transportation access point, and boomed as it was the intersection of 3 rivers. But today Pittsburgh has an airport that isn't a major airline hub, with limited flights that need a connection from most cities. Rail by Amtrak is infrequent and impractically slow. The drive from NYC is 6 hours, 5 even just from Philly. And extremely treacherous in winter, too - winding Appalachian mountain passes with icy roads, blizzards, fog, narrow lanes. The nearest neighboring city is Cleveland, which isn't exactly a big boost economically.

Contrast to Philly on the other end of the state and you're 2 hours from NYC, Jersey, DC with high speed rail, a major intl airport etc. Sure there are west coast cities with worse problems, but they still have the optimism of manifest destiny working in their favor. Getting caught in a blizzard driving to Denver just feels more exciting than a blizzard driving to Pittsburgh..

If Pittsburgh doubled down on the airport or got cash from harrisburg to improve rail links to NYC (we can dream), maybe build up as a tourist destination even, it could be competitive. Till then, yinzers are going to have to enjoy the secrets of their charming city on their own.

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#279

Post by kevan »

nostrademons wrote: post #195
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 ye…

“I also explore the social and cultural forces that provide the atmosphere for innovation. For the birth of the digital age, this included a research ecosystem that was nurtured by government spending and managed by a military-industrial-academic collaboration. Intersecting with that was a loose alliance of community organizers, communal-minded hippies, do-it-yourself hobbyists, and homebrew hackers, most of whom were suspicious of centralized authority.” Excerpt From: Walter Isaacson. “The Innovators.”

It's harder to see these roots now, but for a long time military-industrial competitiveness was a huge driver of advancement in the field

Re: How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

#280

Post by simonebrunozzi »

From Wikipedia [0]:

In a 2013 ranking of 277 metropolitan areas in the United States, the American Lung Association (ALA) ranked only six U.S. metro areas as having higher amounts of short-term particle pollution, and only seven U.S. metro areas having higher amounts of year-round particle pollution than Pittsburgh. For ozone (smog) pollution, Pittsburgh was ranked 24th amongst other U.S. metro areas.

Pittsburgh can be cool, but I wouldn't consider moving to a city where my health is in serious danger.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh

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