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Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

nytimes.com

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Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#11

Post by pesenti »

nugget wrote: post #9
pesenti wrote: post #8

I lived in Pittsburgh for 17 years. I bootstrapped a company out of CMU, grew it to $25M/year in revenue and sold it to IBM. Pittsburgh is a great place to start a company, lots of tech talent, lots of support and exposure in the community, cheap rent. And it is today a much more enjoyable place to live than 20 years ago (great restaurant scene, bike paths, revitalized downtown). There are two big drawbacks: finding…

> It's just really hard to get serious VCs to pay attention to Pittsburgh. I'm an angel investor in a few dozen tech startups, about half in the Bay Area and half spread elsewhere around the country. The biggest problem with those outside of the Bay Area is that for lack of a better term "they don't think big enough". A lot of the promising ones turn into lifestyle-type businesses (e.g. a focus on services revenue in…

It's a good point, I have noticed that as well. But it's both a cause and consequence of the lack of easy access to capital. Early stage big ideas that require a lot of initial capital just won't get funded in a place like Pittsburgh. Once they pick up, then they have a chance (see Duolingo for example). But by that time most have had to make ends meet...

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#14

Post by CydeWeys »

joeblau wrote: post #7

I moved to Pittsburgh a year and a half ago after living in SF for 5 years and I can say that I really love it here. Food is great, people are extremely friendly, and the town is just a great town to be in. I met a Pittsburgh native and I told him that I've noticed that parts of the city are getting "SFed." A few neighborhoods which no one would be caught dead in 5-10 years ago are suddenly bustling with tech company…

Can you speak to Pittsburgh's zoning policies? SF makes it nearly impossible to add a significant number of new housing units because the zoning policies don't allow less dense housing to be replaced with larger, taller apartment buildings. Hopefully Pittsburgh isn't like that.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#15

Post by Hydraulix989 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #14
joeblau wrote: post #7

I moved to Pittsburgh a year and a half ago after living in SF for 5 years and I can say that I really love it here. Food is great, people are extremely friendly, and the town is just a great town to be in. I met a Pittsburgh native and I told him that I've noticed that parts of the city are getting "SFed." A few neighborhoods which no one would be caught dead in 5-10 years ago are suddenly bustling with tech company…

Can you speak to Pittsburgh's zoning policies? SF makes it nearly impossible to add a significant number of new housing units because the zoning policies don't allow less dense housing to be replaced with larger, taller apartment buildings. Hopefully Pittsburgh isn't like that.

It is not. I am a fourth generation Pittsburgh native. The bigger problem is the NIMBYs in SF that vote for things like "zoning policies" to protect the value of their houses. This situation is a very uniquely San Francisco one. The vast majority of houses in Pittsburgh aren't million dollar homes (yet) so this NIMBY-ism just doesn't happen.

It goes without saying that ludicrous regulations like "historically protected" homes that you can't remodel without bribing the city and trees on your property that you don't own (the city owns) that exist in SF don't exist in Pittsburgh.

On another note, the nice thing about Pittsburgh is that you don't have such an oppressively high cost of living compared to SF. You don't have $10 toast here, and you can rent a 1 bdr apartment for the cost of renting a single parking spot for your car in SF. Every single cost from utilities to parking to insurance for your car is a significant fraction of the equivalent cost in SF.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#16

Post by Hydraulix989 »

smaili wrote: post #3

The author seems to place most of the credit for the recent 'boom' on CMU for its rich history in the Machine Learning and Robotics fields. So my question is, what happens when other top universities begin to catch up or even possibly dethrone CMU? Would Pittsburg still continue to attract talent and businesses?

CMU has consistently been ranked #1 in the world for computer science. Generally, university rankings are VERY consistent over time. Harvard isn't going to stop being Harvard any time soon.

Also, "Pittsburgh" is spelled with an "h" at the end.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#17

Post by adventured »

smaili wrote: post #3

The author seems to place most of the credit for the recent 'boom' on CMU for its rich history in the Machine Learning and Robotics fields. So my question is, what happens when other top universities begin to catch up or even possibly dethrone CMU? Would Pittsburg still continue to attract talent and businesses?

> So my question is, what happens when other top universities begin to catch up or even possibly dethrone CMU?

What happens when CMU gains an even greater advantage over other top universities? Will Pittsburgh be able to handle the deluge of talent and businesses wanting to move there?

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#18

Post by tarr11 »

nugget wrote: post #9
pesenti wrote: post #8

I lived in Pittsburgh for 17 years. I bootstrapped a company out of CMU, grew it to $25M/year in revenue and sold it to IBM. Pittsburgh is a great place to start a company, lots of tech talent, lots of support and exposure in the community, cheap rent. And it is today a much more enjoyable place to live than 20 years ago (great restaurant scene, bike paths, revitalized downtown). There are two big drawbacks: finding…

> It's just really hard to get serious VCs to pay attention to Pittsburgh. I'm an angel investor in a few dozen tech startups, about half in the Bay Area and half spread elsewhere around the country. The biggest problem with those outside of the Bay Area is that for lack of a better term "they don't think big enough". A lot of the promising ones turn into lifestyle-type businesses (e.g. a focus on services revenue in…

Interesting, can you expand on services business being lifestyle vs product being venture?

I had never heard of that distinction before and usually just thought of lifestyle businesses as slower growing vs faster.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#19

Post by thearn4 »

moultano wrote: post #13
thearn4 wrote: post #2

As a Cleveland native, I look at Pittsburgh somewhat jealously as a city that is achieving what Cleveland has been slow to do over the last 30 years: find a post-industrial midwestern identity.

Case Western has to step up its game.

Cleveland Clinic and NASA could have a role too, but could really use some coordination.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#20

Post by Hydraulix989 »

nugget wrote: post #9
pesenti wrote: post #8

I lived in Pittsburgh for 17 years. I bootstrapped a company out of CMU, grew it to $25M/year in revenue and sold it to IBM. Pittsburgh is a great place to start a company, lots of tech talent, lots of support and exposure in the community, cheap rent. And it is today a much more enjoyable place to live than 20 years ago (great restaurant scene, bike paths, revitalized downtown). There are two big drawbacks: finding…

> It's just really hard to get serious VCs to pay attention to Pittsburgh. I'm an angel investor in a few dozen tech startups, about half in the Bay Area and half spread elsewhere around the country. The biggest problem with those outside of the Bay Area is that for lack of a better term "they don't think big enough". A lot of the promising ones turn into lifestyle-type businesses (e.g. a focus on services revenue in…

Which is more of an issue with those VCs than the founders; there are a number of self-driving car startups here and they have a unique advantage: they aren't biased by the immaculate freeways and roads in California -- Pittsburgh has a much wider variety of challenging driving situations, weather, and conditions than California so it is a great test bed for developing autonomous vehicles (indeed, CMU won 1st place in the DARPA Grand Urban challenge, readily beating the likes of Stanford and Berkeley).

Some California VCs are mistakenly under the impression that anywhere outside the Bay Area must be Siberia. It's going to eventually bite them in terms of missed future opportunities and ROI on their funds.

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