Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
nytimes.com
Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
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Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#2As 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.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#3The 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?
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#4As 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.
Cleveland would do well to create industrial and R&D ties to Pittsburgh. It's relatively close in proximity. Creating a regional tech hub would benefit both.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#5Paul Graham essay on Pittsburgh:
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#6The 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 intense advantages that make that unlikely to occur within the next 50 years.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#7I 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 tees from google, uber, duolingo, ibm, amazon, apple and others. Pittsburghers are very prod of their city, as they should be. I just hope it doesn't reach the level of discourse that we've seen in San Francisco.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#8I 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 experienced non-technical talent (our C-suite ended up in DC) and raising significant funds. It's just really hard to get serious VCs to pay attention to Pittsburgh.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#9I 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 instead of software revenue) when, in my opinion, they could have achieved much greater exits. Whether justified or not, I know many other investors with a similar bias based on similar experiences.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#10I 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…
On balance, maybe not such a bad thing.