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Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

nytimes.com

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Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#71

Post by blackguardx »

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.

As a CWRU grad, I don't really see what power they have fix Cleveland's problems. One of them is due to the high levels segregation (both wealth and race) and sprawl due to white flight from the inner city.

This is slowly changing as Cleveland tries to revitalize the downtown, but I'm not sure there are any good plans to help out extremely poor areas such as East Cleveland.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#72

Post by iak8god »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #29
theYipster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long found a third drawback, which may be linked to the access to capital issue, is Pittsburgh's geographical isolation compared to the Bay Area and other tech hot spots. There's no major international air hub (anymore) and flights even to nearby cities such as NY, DC, and Philly are relatively pricey with limited schedules. There's no meaningful international service either anymore. This is in comparison to SFO…

I totally agree. I wrote to the mayor about this, and we could definitely use more help raising awareness to the city about this very pressing issue (@billpeduto on Twitter if you're also affected)... I've never had an SFO PIT flight without layovers. Also, we ask everyone here to please continue to refrain from using the pejorative "rust-belt" to describe our beloved hometown and emerging tech center. It is a very u…

> we ask everyone here to please continue to refrain from using the pejorative "rust-belt"

Who is "we"? I spent the first few decades of my life in a great lakes rust belt city and this is the first time I've heard of anyone considering it a pejorative.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#73

Post by nugget »

bane wrote: post #68
nugget wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here's an example - a small startup which occupies an attractive niche, definite market need, product-market fit, and decent traction. The founder developed a software platform in response to market need, but the market also told her that there were opportunities to sell extensive services. Now that the software platform is done and there is a small services team in place, the founder can choose to sell either:…

> This is a classic case of where a smaller PE firm will come in and buy it out for a few million, purposefully cut the services revenue, go hog wild selling software, and flip it a few years later for 10-20x what they paid. Or the classic case where PE buys it, cuts services and all the staff who know anything about the product, go hog wild trying to sell software and realize that that the market isn't there and nev…

Certainly, there is always risk of poor strategy and/or poor execution, with an outcome exactly as you describe. Having seen both scenarios play out however (as both an investor and an operator), in this case I think it would be the right move.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#74

Post by stcredzero »

bane wrote: post #48

Pittsburgh is a great town. It looks a bit like it was on the barely winning side of a fist fight, but it has lots going for it: - Two big, well funded, well respected schools cranking out talent. CMU is one of the top schools in the world for CS. - Cheap rent - If you want to buy a house, some really beautiful neighborhoods - SEI - lots of cyber security talent - Great food and activities, it's not hard to find plen…

Pittsburgh is a great town. It looks a bit like it was on the barely winning side of a fist fight

I was born in Pittsburgh, and I have some experience with towns in the region and other rust belt river towns. Maybe I'm biased, but I'd say that Pittsburgh, in its good parts, looks better than most in the region. Also, I'm old enough to know the benefits of the Clean Air Act on that town. Once, you could literally smell when you were getting into Pittsburgh, and the sulfur from coal burning literally made it smell like excrement! (Not exactly, but it was a smell in the same family of smells, due to the sulfur.) Today, there's not a trace of this!

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#75

Post by autokad »

Game_Ender wrote: post #66
ta201707 wrote: post #36

Last year I was going through a long and grueling job search after taking time off for family reasons. I was based in the midwest after living around the country over the past decade for my recent three jobs. It was the first time I felt totally untethered and able to look at any US locations for a new job. I work in scientific computing and machine learning, so there were various employment hubs to consider. Knowing…

You are assuming just because it's Pittsburgh pay from companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Uber will not be competitive. If there is any discount on salary it's on the 10-15% range, not 50%.

software developers for amazon in Pittsburgh make between 56 and 107k, 78k mean (glassdoor).

Sanfrancisco, its 76 - 131k, 102k mean.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#76

Post by getemback »

graphitezepp wrote: post #63
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some parts of the city are really beautiful and nice places to be, lots of great parks and so on It's hard to understate this point. Compared with San Francisco, Pittsburgh is much more visibly green. There are trees everywhere, grassy areas abound, and the city itself is nestled in green hills. San Francisco is full of concrete. The Bay Area is still really brown from the recent droughts. There are certainly peopl…

There is a remaining conception of Pittsburgh as a dirty industrial wasteland. Today one good look at the city from a high vantage point on a sunny day kills this conception instantly.

Good luck finding a sunny day because Pittsburgh enjoys the fewest hours of annual sunlight of any major city, and continues to have air quality as bad as any other US city, being in the top ten worst according to the Lung Association.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#77

Post by tarr11 »

nugget wrote: post #51
tarr11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, here's an example - a small startup which occupies an attractive niche, definite market need, product-market fit, and decent traction. The founder developed a software platform in response to market need, but the market also told her that there were opportunities to sell extensive services. Now that the software platform is done and there is a small services team in place, the founder can choose to sell either:…

This article from 2011 is relevant:

https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/what-should-you-do-with-yo...

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#78

Post by camerond »

It's always interesting to see articles like this about your town; I must say it has been nice to watch Pittsburgh change over the years though.

In the case anyone's looking to make the leap, I'm hiring for a Research Programmer position at CMU https://cmu.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=2005...

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#79

Post by closeparen »

Avshalom wrote: post #22
nugget wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> lifestyle-type businesses e.g. profitable.

Which is great for the people living off that income, and not great for investors unless it's also valuable. VCs would need to take fewer, smaller risks if they're expecting smaller rewards per success story.

Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover

#80

Post by reneherse »

nugget wrote: post #69
reneherse wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you; it's very interesting to hear the details on this. One question: >she wants to build up the software revenue, but the culture around her (south-eastern city) is so strongly opposed to it, that the execution has been impossible Do you mean the existing company culture, e.g. employees only having service-oriented skills, or the southeastern city culture, somehow being inhospitable for developing software? I'…

All of the above, including her own subliminal bias which is reinforced by being around a lot of peers who run services businesses.

Thanks!
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