
How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub - _pius
http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html
======
pesenti
I bootstrapped a company in Pittsburgh in 2000 (the founders all came from CMU
- I am from France originally) with a good exit in 2012.

When I moved there the food scene was nonexistent and people in the US still
perceived Pittsburgh as a bad place to be (e.g., a lady I met in CA responded
with "Oh I am so sorry" when I told her I was living in Pittsburgh). CMU also
didn't really understand startups - we were the first company to ever do
something with a technology that CMU released to the founders.

But it was also a time where you could hire CMU CS grads for $30K/year and
rent an office for 30 people for less than $2K/month. And we were a big fish
in a small pond so we got a lot of local press and a first cut at the local
tech talent (one of our first hire ended up becoming co-founder of Tumblr!)

After the exit I tried to get involved in the local scene. And while I found a
lot of talent/ideas/start up to promote it was amazingly hard to attract any
kind of money in the city. That convinced me that Pittsburgh would never make
it as a hub and I ended moving to Manhattan last year.

Now my family (wife and 4 kids) hate me for that move - because even if you
throw huge piles of money on rent it's hard to match the quality of life of
Pittsburgh - and we are reconsidering that move.

Happy to answer any question about starting a company in Pittsburgh!

~~~
brandonmenc
> 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.

~~~
pesenti
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...

~~~
Merad
Appalachia is actually a huge region that comprises probably 1/3 of the
eastern seaboard, stretching from New York to Alabama:
[http://www.arc.gov/assets/maps/Subregions_2009_Map.gif](http://www.arc.gov/assets/maps/Subregions_2009_Map.gif)

------
abalone
I for one "treat the people starting these little restaurants and cafes as
your users" in SF and I can tell you, the permitting process is not the
biggest problem.

It's costs.

Commercial rents have skyrocketed. Moreover, residential rents have
skyrocketed to the point where few people in the service industry can afford
to live in SF at market rates. Even if you can find a space, how are you going
to staff it? Who's willing to commute in from Oakland (which is getting
expensive too) for a low wage job with grueling hours?

Nopa, one of the most successful SF restaurants in the past 10 years, is
posting job ads for cooks _on their menus_ now.

This isn't because of a slow permit process. Nopa hasn't applied for a permit
in years. It's a result of the macroeconomic effects of a tech boom. So while
I'm very happy to see PG highlight macroeconomic factors that foster economic
growth in cities, I see a missed opportunity to fully address their complex
effects.

This is probably because this issue has been politicized here in SF, with the
tech industry often lambasted for "destroying" the city (this comes from a lot
of the people getting pushed out), so tech folks often get hyperdefensive and
contort themselves trying to point fingers elsewhere. I think that's what's
happened here with PG trying to blame the government's permitting process.

But clearly if we want to continue making SF an attractive startup hub, we
need to help "little restaurants and cafes" continue to open and operate. And
the elephant in the room there is quite simply the high rents and high cost of
living for workers in the service industry, driven by a huge influx of
wealthier residents competing for space. You want a startup hub, you need city
policies that manage that growth.

~~~
timr
Yep. San Francisco no longer has marginal spaces -- every conceivable inch of
it has been claimed, developed, and/or bid into the stratosphere. And it has
nothing to do with "NIMBYs" or lack of development. It's a tiny, tiny patch of
land, all of the build-able portions of which have been speculated upon since
the early 20th century. This is important, because while cafes and
universities and whatnot are important, you need marginal spaces to be a
creative hub. Creative people tend not to be wealthy. They need affordable,
amenable places to live and work. And San Francisco doesn't fit the bill --
unless you have connections, power, fame or access to unlimited capital. Which
is why SF is suffering right now.

The last time this city was on discount was probably the late 1980s, when SOMA
was a wasteland and everyone wanted to live in the suburbs. And surprise
surprise...along came the first dot-com boom. All of those (comparatively)
cheap spaces where creative kids were having raves and making art became the
birthplace of the modern web. Creativity happens in marginal spaces.

I was actually surprised that pg kept emphasizing the need for constraints on
development in this essay ( _" The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be
too strict about historic preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the
better they seem to do."_) The conventional wisdom around here is that we must
refer to this kind of thinking as "NIMBYism", and condemn it as backwards-
thinking. "Obviously," says the technorati, "we should be knocking those tiny
old buildings down and replacing them with skyscrapers!"

But he's right. San Francisco was once a cheap, pleasant place to live,
precisely because of those sorts of constraints, coupled with demographic
trends. But it's at a different point in the development curve today. It isn't
for scrappy, poor innovators anymore. It's for ambitious, get-rich-quick types
who will tolerate paying $4,000 a month for an apartment to be part of the
scene. And as soon as the scene moves somewhere else, those people will be
gone, too.

~~~
twakefield
When I walk around SF, I see a lot of underdeveloped spaces...abandoned
buildings, abandoned gas stations, huge parking lots full of city trucks.
Inexplicably, there's been a huge abandoned building on 18th and Mission
(seemingly prime location) for I don't know how long. This article about it is
from 2012[1].

So, yes, SF is a small space but it is far from being efficiently (or fully)
developed and I think the SF Planning Department and other bureaucracies are
partially to blame.

[1] [http://missionlocal.org/2012/07/el-chico-produce-store-to-
op...](http://missionlocal.org/2012/07/el-chico-produce-store-to-open-on-18th-
and-mission/)

~~~
Kinnard
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?

~~~
ghaff
You'd make it impossible for people to come into the city to work and eat? Or
even live there?

~~~
Kinnard
I forgot, "with at least one level of underground parking" so there's no net
loss in parking spaces

~~~
carboncopy
That's incredibly expensive to build.

~~~
tirant
It's not. And it is a common practice (or even required) in lots of cities
with tight space (e.g. Barcelona).

~~~
Balgair
Yeah, cities that are not in the active earthquake zone lovingly called The
Ring of Fire. Remember, the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge cost 1 million
per foot of road up to it.

------
kom107
Born 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 with every point he made, with the
caveat that Pittsburgh needs to be careful with the historic preservation
aspect of things: they vascillate between 'hey let's forget all of our history
and blow this place up' to 'we must preserve every nook and cranny exactly as
it was, even though it's detrimental towards progress'.

We could also stand to improve tax policy (lower them, significantly), and get
our major employers here to knock it off with their ridiculous IP agreements.
Also, I'd love it if our politicians stopped directly trying to ape Silicon
Valley (or New York, or perhaps most ridiculous, the Paris of Appalachia).
Let's be Pittsburgh.

Here's the thing that perhaps Paul missed when he was here, and perhaps others
who aren't here can't see: I feel we've reached a critical mass of people who
just DGAF (in a good way), because the opportunity costs of testing out your
vision here are so low. By that, I mean that you can try out your weird (read:
innovative) vision of the future, and no one bats an eye. On top of that, if
you are producing a signal, it's much easier to cut through noise here. I
spent a fair amount of time interviewing in SF for startup gigs, and it's not
a good value proposition compared to here, to me. Finally, while the
investment scene is terrible, that can be very beneficial to the right
founder, because obviously one will retain more for themselves, and one don't
NEED very much capital to get started in Pittsburgh. I bought my first house
for $80,000 in 2013. 4/2, hardwood throughout, 1944 brick single family, 2 car
garage, yard, granite, stainless, wine fridge, etc, in a good neighborhood.
It's that cheap here. Anecdotal, but if you're smart with your money here, you
can build your own runway.

All of that said, I'm hoping it happens. More than that, I'll work for it to
happen. Onwards and upwards, fellow Yinzers. And Let's Go Bucs.

~~~
LordKano
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.

~~~
vacri
> _Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically._

I spent three months crossing the US in 2009 as a tourist. I had developed a
light-hearted measure of the patriotism of an area by how many US flags were
seen in suburban front yards. Before I visited Pittsburgh, I had rated '1
house in 4-5 with a flag' as a _very_ patriotic area on this scale. Then I hit
Pittsburgh, and the area where my hotel was had one house in 4-5 that _didn
't_ have a little US flag planted somewhere in the front yard. Even the local
cemetery was bestrewn with Old Glory all over the place... :)

~~~
LordKano
Out of curiosity, where was your hotel?

------
colindean
There are some big things happening in Pittsburgh:

Code & Supply ([http://codeandsupply.co](http://codeandsupply.co)) is growing
very quickly. It is just more than two years old and has nearly 2,200 members
of its Meetup group. It holds 6-10 meetups per month, ranging from language
talks to toolkits, WiFi, mental health, design, career management, and more.

C&S is hosting Abstractions
([http://abstractions.io](http://abstractions.io)), probably the largest ever
software conference in Pittsburgh. It's in August and will likely sell out of
its 1,500 tickets at the current rate (40% sold as of this writing). We've got
big names speaking, like Stallman, Zeldman, Sandi Metz, Scott Hanselman, Mike
Montiero, Raffi Krikorian, Mitchell Hashimoto, Joe Armstrong, Larry Wall,
Allison Randal, Aaron Patterson, Jono Bacon, Kelsey Hightower, and lots more.
The full lineup will be announced in May.

 _Disclosure: I am an organizer of both._

There are lots of other meetups that are big, too. PGH Python just merged into
C&S. The PGH FP meetup is growing quickly, too. Pittsburgh hosted Midwest UX
last year and Pittsburgh Web Design Day is a pretty big event.

TL;DR the Pittsburgh software _community_ is booming.

~~~
dalanmiller
Finished grad school at CMU last year. Loved coming to all the C&S meetups I
possibly could when I had the time (and enjoyed the exercise hoofing it up to
Squirrel Hill from Shadyside). Thank you for organizing such a great community
along with Justin Reese.

------
Cshelton
Dallas:

\- Highest growth rate in the nation (especially for 18 - 30 years old), after
Houston, which is down now due to the oil industry, placing Dallas at #1

\- Highest spending on food and alcohol at restaurants -
[http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/dallas-fort-
worth-...](http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/dallas-fort-worth-spends-
more-on-eating-out-and-booze-than-anywhere-in-us.html/)

\- One of the most affordable places to live in the U.S.

\- Large number of top tier universities within 3 hours (Univ of Texas,
Baylor, TCU, SMU, UNT, Texas A&M, UTD, UTA)

\- Massive amount of wealth/wealthy investors, who, are starting to put their
wealth into more and more seed start-ups

My point is, many cities all fit the same criteria as he listed. But until the
people IN those communities move to make it happen, it won't. In the last 3
years, I've seen a magnitude increase in Start-up/entrepreneur activity
happening in Dallas. And I believe much of the criteria PG said is right and a
good part of the reason, but those things won't just "make" it happen.

~~~
abalashov
Yes, but Dallas fails abysmally on the urban livability and density test. It's
one giant exurb. Much of it should be reclassified as a rural area.

(Speaking as an Atlantan -- we have the exact same problem.)

~~~
eropple
I think you've nailed it with regards to Atlanta--I quite like Atlanta and
have a lot of friends there (when DragonCon rolls around I stay an extra 3-4
days on each side of it to hang out with my local friends too), and I'd _love_
to move there except I would almost have to have a car.

Dallas is a little different in that its suburbs are fairly dense, but you
have to _go_ there, and...car again. And, for me, life is way, way nicer
without a car.

~~~
abalashov
I lived in downtown-Midtown ATL without a car for several years, and currently
reside in Midtown as well. We're a family of five, and drive maybe once a
month. It is definitely possible, but you have to be extremely committed, make
heavy use of on-demand/gig economy services, and incur considerable expense in
structuring your life that way. I made (and make) a point of living near a
MARTA station and other compromises many folks may not be willing to make.
Wife + newborn + two stepkids in a 1200 sq. ft. 2 BR apartment is one of them
--nothing terribly unusual by my native Eastern European standards, but
probably stands out in America.

For most people, the biggest problem would be commuting to work. Since I'm
self-employed and can choose where to have an office (yes, I do have one), I
have one within walking range.

~~~
eropple
Yeah, I get you. What you describe makes sense, from talking to friends who
live there; only one friend of mine down that way seems to have any luck with
that approach, and he lives in Buckhead and a lot of his Uber travel gets
comped by his job.

I really like the city, but I think any benefits I'd get from a cheaper area
(because _Boston is not cheap_ ) would be drowned out by the need for a car or
the expenses from not having one. MARTA's pretty nice though.

I pinged you on Twitter, btw.

------
tryitnow
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 created the perfect environment for
entrepreneurship.

It seems like the formula for success is: (1) Massive exogenous funding (on
scale only the federal government can do) \+ (2) A highly open-minded culture
that accepts failure as an inevitable part of creation.

Honestly, there's just not a lot of places that qualify. Pretty much all of
the east coast, mid-west, and south are too conservative. And nowhere is
really receiving massive loads of external funding like the Bay Area did in
the 20th century.

~~~
nostrademons
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 years before the rest of America does, who
(until recently, with China's resurgence) knows about them 5-10 years before
the rest of the world.

Other huge innovations first funded by DARPA: multitasking (1963), the
Internet (1969), the GUI (1968), GPS (1978), self-driving cars (2004).

~~~
kevan
“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

------
taylorwc
> _If an investor community grows up here, it will happen the same way it did
> in Silicon Valley: slowly and organically._

I love this. I'm in Kansas City and find myself constantly cringing at the
number of projects that all try to be a silver bullet that will magically
transform the startup ecosystem here or in any other midwest city. If you want
to make some place a good place for startups, then you have to play the long
game.

You can't be beholden to any political cycles. You can't jump on the startup
bandwagon because it's suddenly fashionable. You can't run for the hills as
soon as the economy takes a substantive dip.

The only answer is to put your head down and try to build whatever you can,
and stick with it. If a large number of people do that, then over time, good
things will happen.

~~~
ASinclair
It also doesn't hurt to have a huge injection of DoD dollars. That played a
big part in how Silicon Valley got its start.

~~~
maxerickson
I took note of a post Katrina suggestion to bring aid to New Orleans by
opening a large federal office there (whoever was making the suggestion
pointed out that DC had plenty of federal spending and the difference showed).

------
cfallin
Pittsburgh has a lot going for it, and it's been really cool seeing the growth
since I moved to Pgh in 2009.

I think the one thing it might have against it is a growing anti-
gentrification/tech movement. It's nothing like throw-rocks-at-busses San
Francisco, but you do see things like this graffiti:

[http://imgur.com/5T0iJQ6](http://imgur.com/5T0iJQ6)

And it's not just the fringe with these views, but (in my experience)
reasonable people who are frustrated with rising rents and they scapegoat tech
growth.

The housing market is also a little wonky. Pittsburgh is cheap on average, but
it's sort of bimodal -- there are nice new shiny apartments being built,
especially around Google (Bakery Square) and thereabouts, but they're going at
maybe 1.5-2x the median rent. Then the rest of the apartment stock is just a
little... _old_. I took for granted having parking and laundry and post-1950s
wiring when I was on the west coast. There are a bunch of places here that
haven't been renovated in 50 years.

In any case, I agree with PG that there's a certain pragmatism here and I
think really great things are coming if the growth continues.

~~~
beachstartup
_> 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.

~~~
cfallin
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 (< 20 yr)
construction in both cases.

I'd still say average housing quality in both markets is much better than in
Pittsburgh, at least in the neighborhoods near CMU (Squirrel Hill, Shadyside,
etc). My current place was built in 1916, still has knob-and-tube wiring, and
I considered it a good find. I'm moving to a 1950s building in August and I'm
looking forward to having enough electrical capacity for a microwave.

All that said -- everyone should still consider moving here -- it's a
beautiful city, with a lot of culture, and the housing market _will_
eventually come to a better equilibrium!

~~~
dgacmu
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.

~~~
cfallin
No doubt, Hillsboro is not for the young and hip, nor anyone with a possible
allergy to suburban un-culture or parking-lot-sprawl. A number of my coworkers
commuted from downtown or the eastside (and MAX light-rail makes that pretty
easy, modulo the time commitment).

But, eh, I didn't mean to turn this into an ad for PDX! One thing I do
appreciate very much about Pittsburgh is the walkability. It's hard to beat a
45-minute walk through Schenley Park as a morning commute, at least in summer,
and I have... 5?... coffeeshops and as many pizza places within a 15 minute
walk. And, yes, if you're in a position to buy a house, there is a lot of
character to be had.

Anyway, my views on the housing market may be slightly colored by PhD-student
glasses (and the two-year west coast industry detour...). To anyone reading,
do consider it here -- it's a very unique city.

------
matt_wulfeck
Im convinced that the next valley will happen in the place that can attract
the most unmarried people ages 18 through 30. What do these people care about?

\- night life

\- high density urban living

\- progressive local governments and freedom (drug and marriage
decriminalization).

\- good public transportation

\- access to high speed internet

\- good universities

As they grow older and get married, affordable and high speed public
transportation will allow them to move without causing terminal urban sprawl.

~~~
forrestthewoods
What if you didn't have to attract the "most" 18 to 30 year olds? What if what
you really needed was to attract an underserved niche of 18 to 30 year olds?

I think Atlanta or Nashville is ripe. Northeasterners can and do move to
California already. Southerners are much less likely to do so imo. The rural
market is grossly underserved right now. Almost none of the efforts to get
people into computer science are hitting rural communities. I'd very much like
to see that change.

~~~
Yhippa
Either of these cities socially liberal? Hard to tell based on my visits
there.

~~~
forrestthewoods
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 working. They shouldn't be overlooked.

~~~
pklausler
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.

------
Animats
Uber is building a self-driving car research center in Pittsburgh. They hired
most of the CMU self-driving car people. Supposedly they're going to renovate
a railroad roundhouse in Hazelwood and use some of the empty space from the
old coke plant for road testing. How's that working out?

In California, anything you do on your own time belongs to you, and the
previous employer can't enforce most non-compete agreements. So you can leave
and do a startup even if your old employer doesn't like it. That's an edge
Silicon Valley has and no other state has had the guts to copy.

~~~
delish
> 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.

~~~
hoodoof
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.

~~~
throwaway_xx9
> 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."

------
minimaxir
I'm a CMU undergraduate who moved to San Francisco.

Every year, the School of Computer Science publishes a survey of where
undergrads go after college: [https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2015-su...](https://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-
destinations/2015-survey/bach-scs-2015-post-grad-report.9.28-15-kc.pdf) [pdf]

About _half_ of the 2015 graduates go to employment in the West/CA.

I'll add that I am not even a graduate in CS (I majored in Business), yet I
know a lot of non-CS majors my year who have also moved out here.

California is where the prestigious jobs are. And that's what matters at the
end. Is Pittsburgh _capable_ of supporting a Silicon Valley? Not as long as
Pittsburgh's weather remains the way it is, anyways.

~~~
boulos
I'll second that I found it strange that the _brutal_ Pittsburgh weather
wasn't mentioned. CMU, Cornell and MIT have an awfully hard time competing for
graduate students in CS when the visit days have to be late March or early
April (there can be nearly a sixty degree Fahrenheit difference once you
include wind chill).

~~~
colindean
Brutal is pretty relative. I grew up about an hour north of Pittsburgh and
moved into the city about eight years ago. I find Pittsburgh's weather to be
abnormally sane for the area. Pittsburgh doesn't get the extremes that much of
a Rust Belt gets. Even 35-50 minutes outside the city gets four or five times
the snow. Sure, the temperature gets into the single digits for a couple of
weeks (negatives with wind chill, but I've found there's not much wind in a
Pittsburgh winter), but most of our summers don't exceed 90˚F. I can heat and
cool a 1400 sq ft house for under $200/mo with gas heating and electric A/C,
plus a house full of geeky electronics, a house inhabited by people who
chronically forget to turn things off.

What's brutal to me? North Dakota. Montana. Maine. Vermont and New Hampshire.
Northern New York and its Buffalo area.

~~~
johnward
Stockholm syndrome. Pittsburgh gets less direct sunlight per year than
Seattle. 6 months of the year you basically can't go outside without freezing
your face off. It's still snowing in April...

------
spudfkc
As a native Clevelander, I love the idea of the a rust-belt city becoming the
next big startup hub. Unfortunately, I can't help but disagree with several
points in this article:

Low cost of living: Sure, it's low compared to SF, but it is increasing at an
alarming rate. Just look at how quickly housing prices have been rising the
past few years. Maybe this isn't something to worry about - maybe it's just a
sign that Pittsburgh is a place people already want to move to.

Bicycle/pedestrian friendly: This is a great point, but it seems unrealistic
given Pittsburgh's geography - it's surrounded by mountains and can experience
some pretty harsh winters. Those factors make it difficult to be friendly
towards cyclists. The public transportation could be much better, but faces
the difficulty of, again, the geography.

Culture: Now I don't mean any offense to anyone from Pittsburgh, but their
culture (in my experience) has been anything but "tolerant". I visit
Pittsburgh at least once every other month, and most people I meet there,
unfortunately, are pretty racist. Now, it's perfectly possible that the people
I have met there are a minority, but I'm just speaking about what I've
observed.

There are also several great points that I agree with: the food scene in
Pittsburgh is great (and growing!) (check out Butcher and The Rye if you have
a chance) , great universities all near downtown (CMU, Pitt), several notable
tech companies there as a foundation (Google, Uber, etc), and every time I
visit there I am optimistic about the city, though I question whether or not
it can become the next big Startup Hub.

Also, don't forget that there are other rust-belt cities that are experience a
regrowth: Detroit and Cleveland. Pittsburgh is ahead in that race, but each
city is unique, and who knows what the actual next Startup Hub will be.

~~~
harshaw
Those are Hills dude, not mountains :) I am from the Pittsburgh area and the
geography is tough for a cycling culture, but mostly because of extremely
steep terrain. See Canton Ave.

Pittsburgh has a fantastic cultural scene. Performing arts, visual arts, it's
all great and cheap.

I think the Elephant in the room is the weather. The partly cloudy weather
pattern is tough for me. I prefer for more consistent sun (which I get in
Boston or the West Coast).

~~~
mtanski
The Andy Warhol Museum is fantastic. I go every time I happen to be in
Pittsburg. Besides Wahrols and history of Andy Warhol they usually have a
pretty good visiting exhibit.

Sadly, I don't travel to Pittsburg as much as I did post collage (used to go
every year or so).

------
saosebastiao
Where 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 history whatsoever. Things like old mechanics
garages and derelict wooden apartment buildings that had already rotted
through.

Strict historical preservation is nothing more than an anti-development
attitude codified into law.

~~~
wklauss
> Where is the actual evidence that strict historical preservation actually
> matters?

In all the historic places you visit and that, in some parts of the world, add
up to a significant amount GDP thanks to tourism or related activities. There
are some intangible values as well as they help shape the history and evolve a
community around specific places (think West Village, Manhattan for example).

I know it can be frustrating and that sometimes is poorly implemented but
historic preservation of places eventually pays off. Maybe not all of the
landmarked buildings will pay off, but sure some of them will(not unlike
startups in that regard).

And what is not culturally important today might be a century form now, or
viceversa. You are applying survivor bias. Think of all the historic places no
longer with us because they were not deemed culturally relevant or properly
protected in first place.

~~~
saosebastiao
> In all the historic places you visit and that, in some parts of the world,
> add up to a significant amount GDP thanks to tourism or related activities.

How did ancient Rome ever survive to the extent that it exists today if they
didn't have historical preservation statutes? It has a lot more to do with
protecting their buildings from angry invaders than it does with protecting
their buildings from developers. In reality, developers have little innate
interest in destroying the culturally valuable...it is too expensive.

> And what is not culturally important today might be a century form now, or
> viceversa. You are applying survivor bias. Think of all the historic places
> no longer with us because they were not deemed culturally relevant or
> properly protected in first place.

It is true, I'm applying survivor bias. But you are applying a bias of your
own. Think of all the future historic places that won't exist because they
never get built. At least with my bias we can reason that the buildings that
were torn down were, at one point in time, more of a burden than they were
worth. Can you imagine not having Independence Hall today because historic
preservation statutes decided to preserve all the historic Chestnut Street
homes that were torn down for it?

~~~
wklauss
> It has a lot more to do with protecting their buildings from angry invaders

Well, time changes. We no longer face the threats of the barbarian hordes of
northern Europe but we have modern day speculators that will torn down
anything for a profit and not think long term.

And again with the culturally valuable. What is valuable today might not be
years from now or viceversa, that's why deciding what should be protected
usually requires quite a lengthy process.

> Can you imagine not having Independence Hall today because historic
> preservation statutes decided to preserve all the historic Chestnut Street
> homes that were torn down for it?

Or having it two blocks up from the current location? But listen, I'm not
arguing that everything should be preserved for ever. And I don't know any
preservation society that thinks in those terms. What I'm saying is that
deciding what gets preserved and what does not is a tough call and a very
complex issue.

You asked where's the evidence that historic preservation, as a whole,
matters. I'd argue its pretty evident. Yes you are right when you point out
that the system can be abused but that doesn't diminish the importance of
building preservation initiatives, specially in country that has a short
history.

Also, no such thing as survivor bias when applied to hypotheticals, for
obvious reasons.

~~~
saosebastiao
> Well, time changes. We no longer face the threats of the barbarian hordes of
> northern Europe but we have modern day speculators that will torn down
> anything for a profit and not think long term.

You don't think those existed in antiquity? Now that is some survivorship
bias.

> What I'm saying is that deciding what gets preserved and what does not is a
> tough call and a very complex issue.

Of course it is. All I'm asking for is to let the decision be made by the
people with the skin in the game: the owners. Otherwise you get committees
overrun with people who see it as nothing more than a tool to send "fuck you"
notices to developers. Without skin in the game, there is nothing stopping
them from being abused as an anti-development tool, and to the detriment of
our _current_ culture and quality of life.

------
50CNT
I'm not sure whether YC is actually that great for startup hubs outside of SF.
After all, the most ambitious founders seem likely to just go through YC and
then stay in SF because all the other ambitious founders have stayed in SF,
the VCs are there, the talent is there. Yes, they could head back to
Pittsburgh, but that's 2 moves for a fledgeling startup, and they have little
to gain from the second.

It kinda reminds me of Front[0], another YC startup from France, which decided
to eventually move their entire team to SF. I'd wager that the cultural
differences in this move outshine those of a Pittsburgh-San Francisco move,
and they still decided it was the most sensible option.

And if they are sucessful, you file them under SF startup instead of French
startup, or Pittsburgh startup, or Berlin startup, because that's where
they've spent the majority of their time, and that's where they are right now.
Through some mental fudging, it becomes another data point for "If I want to
start a startup, I need to go to SF".

[0][http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/pros-and-cons-of-
distri...](http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/pros-and-cons-of-distributed-
teams/)

~~~
minimaxir
A class project from a CMU class, PayTango, ended up becoming a YC S13
startup: [http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/society/2013/spring/fingertip-
co...](http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/society/2013/spring/fingertip-
convenience.shtml)

What happened afterwards? Everyone moves to SV for YC, then 3/4 of the
founders went to Google.

------
robg
Not 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...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/10/mental-health-startup-lantern-
raises-17-million-series-a-round/)

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
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, whereas CMU is more competitive
nationally.

[http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp](http://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp)

I'm definitely not saying it doesn't matter, but it's not as significant as
CMU, and PG's argument seems to be that you benefit from having a really apex
research institution for making a startup scene.

~~~
mcburton
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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Pittsburgh#Research)

------
seibelj
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 Pittsburgh or someplace similar
because of cost, look at Boston, which is _way_ closer culturally to Silicon
Valley than any second tier tech city, and don't focus on living in the prime
locations.

~~~
TTPrograms
Living near Davis/Porter/Harvard/Central is pretty damn awesome, to be fair. I
wouldn't live downtown even if it was cheaper.

~~~
cushychicken
>I wouldn't live downtown even if it was cheaper.

...which it may be soon! In fact, for office space, it already _is!_

------
hawkice
Surprised no one has mentioned the gravitational effect these hubs have --
Sacramento will never really blossom in the tech industry because so much
talent gets sucked into SF.

But as plane ticket prices go down, those areas get larger and larger. It's
worth saying: "Pittsburgh, this is time sensitive! Boston will eat your lunch
by default, so make your moves quickly."

Also, if plane trips get cheap enough, look at how the Hong Kong / Shenzhen
area fares. Plenty of money and tech talent, and China's pushing a lot of VC
money (although, who know where that ends up). If plane tickets get below the
price of a video game console before an American city pops up as a cheap-
dense-livable-tech-hub, HK/SZ will probably gobble them just due to order-of-
magnitude advantages (4x the VC, 30x the population of SF, with preposterous
numbers of PhDs, at some point the advantages will compound into something
like SF but 100x more powerful).

~~~
malloryerik
Could be good, but Hong Kong is massively expensive and mainland China is
censored, with slow int'l data connections, presumably because they have to
scan for words like "Panama Papers." Goodbye Google, Facebook, real news...
well you can have (need) a VPN, but that could also be attacked at any moment.
You also kind of end up having to be a member of the Party, and are reliant on
fickle gov't approval. Which makes one think that for quite a while China may
be only for Chinese. Hong Kong, we'll see.

~~~
hawkice
So, obviously that is the core issue -- a tiny correction is that very few
Chinese people are members of the communist party, less than 7%, and there is
no expectation that foreigners join considering they have not been allowed to
be members of the party since 1956.

------
outworlder
> What does that have to do with startups? Because startups are made of
> people, and the average age of the people in a typical startup is right in
> that 25 to 29 bracket.

So Paul Graham is now helping to perpetuate the current Silicon Valley ageism.

How useful is that data point? That bracket could be the current average of
SV's founders, due to forces in action at that region. Another region could
have an entirely different age bracket.

And that's founders. As the article touches upon, there won't be many
investors. And certainly not at that age.

What you actually need to do is to get bright people to go to a region and
_stay there_. If you just try to optimize for that age bracket, you won't have
Silicon Valley.

~~~
khuey
There are good reasons for startup employees to be young. Front loading risk
when you don't have dependents (a spouse and kids, or parents of advanced age)
to worry about is a big one. Also when you're young the pay differential
between working at a startup and Google is smaller. If you're experienced
enough to make Staff Engineer or something the economics of a startup look a
lot worse.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Also when you're young the pay differential between working at a startup and
> Google is smaller. If you're experienced enough to make Staff Engineer or
> something the economics of a startup look a lot worse.

Here's the thing, though. IMO successful entrepreneurs (startup or otherwise)
have to _want_ to be working for themselves. Money as a concern is of the form
"Do I have enough money to make this work?" rather than "Can I make more money
at MicroAmaGoogBook?". Personally, as someone who ultimately wants my own
company and doesn't really want to sell portions of it to get there, I see the
high-paying BigCo jobs as stepping stones to get to where I ultimately want to
be. I don't see them as drawing me doen an alternate path.

------
kriro
It's an interesting article but I feel like the investor/entrepreneur
relationship isn't quite as simple. I'd be really interested in a meaningful
analysis of why investors cluster in SV. The obvious explanation is because
that's where the talent is. However I feel there are a lot of social factors
at play, too. It's cool to be in SV, people start companies there and change
career path from selling their company to becoming investors etc. [lifestyle
wise the city of SF doesn't sound all that great and Cali seems to be full of
strange regulations and the like]

What if investor seeding would be hugely beneficial for a hub to become "the
next SV". Imagine this thought experiment...pg overcome with nostalgia
convinces YC to permanently move to Pittsburgh and change the standard
recommendation to "stay 3 month in Pittsburgh". I'm not convinced YC would
implode..there'd be some difficulties sure. But I'd also expect (some of) the
money to follow YC.

A "Pittsburgh batch" (to go along with the regular one) might actually be an
interesting experiment to run.

~~~
tim333
>why investors cluster in SV

A lot comes down to the seed planted when Shockley co-invented the transistor
and then moved to be near his mum's place in Palo Alto. The whole thing went
from there. The 'traitorous eight' left his company and:

> would go on to found other companies after that, including legendary venture
> firm Kleiner Perkins, AMD and Intel. Over the next 20 years, 65 companies
> would be started by first or second generation defectors from Shockley
> Semiconductor Lab, giving it a legitimate claim as the birthplace of the
> chip industry that gives Silicon Valley its name.

And then the people who made millions/billions from those invest it in new
ventures in the tech field they understand. It's pretty hard to reproduce that
else where.

------
calbear81
Detroit fits the bill on the whole lots of old buildings that were once built
when the city was rich but then turned poor. You can buy a 6 bedroom placial
estate in Indian Village for $350,000 and live next to estates once owned by
the Fords and the Dodges, etc.

It's near a world class University (UMich) and has an abundance of office
space, mostly owned by Dan Gilbert. The challenge is that it's just not that
safe of a place once you venture outside of the protected downtown bubble and
public transit is dismal. It's becoming a refuge for artists and free thinkers
priced out of Brooklyn, seeking space that still retains it's edginess and
grit. The problem is what they're bringing is aimed at the new Detroit
urbanites and don't really help solve problems for all of the other normal
working class folks in Detroit.

Disclaimer: I live in the Bay but spent a lot of time in Detroit over the last
few years when my SO was doing a residency in Clinton Township in the Detroit
suburbs. She would vehemently disagree with me on my assessment and sees a
frontier spirit emerging there.

~~~
netman21
Long time SE Michigan resident here. You are spot on. Gilbert may be actually
be making a change though. Starting to feel different downtown.

~~~
ssharp
Gilbert seems to have seen the trend of midwesterners embracing their central
cores well ahead of everyone else.

What he's done in Cleveland has been pretty smart. He started by purchasing
the Cavaliers and becoming a relatively vocal owner (at least compared to the
previous owner). That won him a lot of favor with public. He opened up a
Quicken Loans office in the city, providing jobs. He then was able to put a
deal through public election granting him a casino monopoly in the city. He
leased (and later bought) a mostly empty old department store building to
house the casino that conveniently connected to the Cavs' arena. He later
bought the Ritz hotel that also connects to the casino and arena and just
recently purchased the shopping mall / train station that is the connecting
piece to all of those.

There are definitely some negatives to be seen from what he's doing, but I
think in the end it will be an impressive improvement for that part of
downtown, which was already in the upswing.

------
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.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
It's a good suggestion. Besides things like Hyperloop and such, even with
today's train technology, a fast train (TGV, Pendolino, etc) could connect
Pittsburgh to NYC in 2.5 / 3 hours. Unfortunately it would take 20 years to
build it.

~~~
rwhitman
The frustrating part is that Pennsylvania has had tons of railway planning,
infrastructure built - but it's mostly been abandoned or neglected for the
last 70 years. So much of the state was born out of investment in rail
connections and then economically smothered by the end of the railroads and
never recovered.

Pennsylvania became an economic powerhouse because of the railroads, but
without them it's just a sad shadow of it's former glory. If someone took the
lead on rebooting the railroad industry in PA it would reboot the entire
economy of the state.

------
jl
"But if a university really wanted to help its students start startups, the
empirical evidence, weighted by market cap, suggests the best thing they can
do is literally nothing." This is an important insight and will be totally
counterintuitive to universities.

------
robg
This is perhaps the first essay I read from pg and thought "You're hopping
aboard this bandwagon now?". Even he admits to following the lead of the NY
Times Food section. Having attended grad school in Pgh from 1999-2004, it was
clear back then the city was on it's way back. Now with Apple, Google, and
Uber, the question isn't how to make Pgh a startup hub, it's how much it will
be.

~~~
CptJamesCook
What successful startups are in Pittsburgh?

~~~
_delirium
Celsense, Rorus, and PieceMaker are three that come to mind. There are
especially a lot of biotech startups. Not as many of the consumer-web type
startups that are more commonly seen on HN though.

------
evantahler
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 ModCloth when they had to "move the
core team to SF to get investment". My video game company's troubles can be
traced to lack of funding (and the CEO used too much personal capital remain
objective).

I would add one more negative: a bad airport. The Pittsburgh airport _used_ to
be a world-class hub for US-Airways and offered a ton cheap flights
everywhere. A good airport is important for attracting talent and business...
now this huge airport is less than 1/2 utilized and due to poor mass transit,
it's hard to get to (I guess Uber is fixing that for the city). You _could_ be
in Philadelphia, DC, and NYC within an hour... but I always opted to drive to
save on those overpriced domestic flights tier-2 airports are known for.

There _are_ investors in pittsburgh (like
[http://www.bluetreealliedangels.com](http://www.bluetreealliedangels.com)),
but they aren't used to investing in "digital" tech. There are some early-
stage incubators ([http://alphalab.org](http://alphalab.org) and some others)
but they don't have the network reach to justify their high stake in the
company. I would argue that capital exists, but isn't as loose as it is out
west. The folks who have it aren't as risky... which might be because they
don't have as much to play with, but I think it simply is that they aren't
used to the type of businesses Silicon Valley is starting... and that seems
too risky.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airpo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_International_Airport)

~~~
colindean
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](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.

------
mtviewdave
_> Focus on historic preservation. Big real estate development projects are
not what's bringing the twenty-somethings here. They're the opposite of the
new restaurants and cafes; they subtract personality from the city._

 _> The empirical evidence suggests you cannot be too strict about historic
preservation. The tougher cities are about it, the better they seem to do._

Interesting contrast to the common belief here on HN that historic
preservation is just unimportant NIMBYism and should be opposed in the name of
bringing down housing costs.

------
overgard
I think the question of where the "next" silicon valley will be is the wrong
question; the question of where is way less significant than the question of
what.

I don't think the next hub of cultural and economic significance is
necessarily going to be about what we think of as startups, it will probably
be something that doesn't even register with most people today.

------
rafaelc
Money quote: "I've seen how powerful it is for a city to have those people.
Five years ago they shifted the center of gravity of Silicon Valley from the
peninsula to San Francisco. Google and Facebook are on the peninsula, but the
next generation of big winners are all in SF. The reason the center of gravity
shifted was the talent war, for programmers especially. Most 25 to 29 year
olds want to live in the city, not down in the boring suburbs. So whether they
like it or not, founders know they have to be in the city. I know multiple
founders who would have preferred to live down in the Valley proper, but who
made themselves move to SF because they knew otherwise they'd lose the talent
war."

------
fvargas
As a current CMU student and startup founder, I agree with Paul's observations
about the environment and the kind of people Pittsburgh attracts. I've
witnessed firsthand the startup culture that is churning, and I don't doubt it
will continue to grow.

However, the comparison between Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh Paul omitted has
to do with the weather. Any freshman at CMU can tell you that the winter (and
fall, and spring) in Pittsburgh are less than pleasant. Just last week it was
snowing, in April. The fact is, for more than half the year, people won't be
able to fully enjoy all those cafe's, restaurants, and cycling. The cold,
rain, and snow do impact the day to day life of the people who live here and
it's a factor of life that can't be overlooked. For many people, the choice
between similar jobs in San Francisco and Pittsburgh is an easy one in favor
of San Francisco.

Pittsburgh's startup culture _is_ growing, and there are great companies
springing up here. But as a founder, I see Pittsburgh as a jumping off point.
I don't wish to live with this kind of weather any longer than I have to. Not
when I have the option to setup an HQ in San Francisco. And I know the people
I want working with me now and in the future feel the same way.

~~~
bluedino
The weather isn't that bad. There isn't the 40 degree below zero temperatures
of Minnesota or North Dakota. There are dumplings of 20 inches of snow in one
day. You can do lots of activities in the winter: skiing, snowmobiling,
hiking, ice fishing...

~~~
fvargas
There are many places with colder, rainier, and snowier weather. But that
doesn't change the fact that between San Francisco and Pittsburgh, San
Francisco is a clear winner in terms of weather. Many people will take climate
into account when deciding between job offers, and it's not a difficult choice
to choose the warmer, more stable climate of the Bay area.

------
shriphani
I remember my time in Pittsburgh. Mostly fond memories. However 8 to 9 months
of the year the atmosphere is really gloomy (not just the weather - take a
walk in the downtown - feels like everything is falling apart) - when things
are not going right in life that is just the worst thing to put up with.

------
lewis500
I used to live in pittsburgh. I wish I still did but I have to live here in
the Bay for work. Other than the work environment, unless you're a
millionaire, this place sucks compared to pittsburgh: takes an hour to get
anywhere, insane cost-of-living and sanctimonious locals who openly loathe
"the tech elite" while they sit in their million-dollar ranch houses.

------
p4wnc6
I live in the Midwest and would be happy to continue living here. Pittsburgh
would in many ways be ideal.

But if start-ups flock to Pittsburgh and start engaging in cargo-cult
replication of the idiotic open-plan madness of SV, poor wages relative to
cost of living, poor employment culture that places importance on inane things
like how much alcohol you consume, then count me out.

I frankly don't understand why a region would _want_ to become like Silicon
Valley.

Don't get me wrong. I understand why unrealistic founders would want it and I
understand why exploitative VC firms might want it. But why would employees or
residents want it? It will only accelerate wealth concentration, establish
monoculture, lead to absurd corporate corruption, gentrification issues, and
on and on.

Quick, Pittsburgh. Stop this before your local politicians have completely
sold you out!

------
timv
_Can you imagine a headline "City ruined by becoming too bicycle-friendly?" It
just doesn't happen._

It's pretty close to that in Sydney. Conservative media voices are fairly
unanimous in their derision of Sydney City Council's attempts to build a
network of bicycle lanes through the CBD.

I hold the opposite view, despite never riding in the city, but it's
definitely a strongly divisive issue.

[http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2016/04/why-sydney-hates-
cy...](http://www.governmentnews.com.au/2016/04/why-sydney-hates-cyclists-and-
melbourne-loves-them/)

------
georgecmu
I was going to attend this event (mainly because of pg's participation), but
regrettably had to miss it (family claimed the Saturday). Thanks for the
write-up.

The video of PG's keynote is available here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI)

------
AndrewKemendo
How to make any place a startup hub: Have connected investors/money that is
willing to take risks (drives job growth) and founders who have exited to
encourage and promote new startups (creates the ecosystem).

There are almost no cities in the US outside of SF that meet those two
criteria. Even NYC which has VC money (nowhere near that of SF) doesn't have
more than two major exits (Etsy, Tumblr).

All those other things are nice to haves. Job opportunity and money are
everything.

Pittsburgh has none of those. Nowhere on the East coast does, and I can verify
it as we are HQ in D.C.

Also Pitt is cold.

------
sheel
I am an investor, with 500 startups. Originally from Pittsburgh, went to CMU-
tremendous love for the place. Will come to find great companies to give them
money. I particularly look at FinTech but would love to look at other stuff.
Drop me a line if I can be helpful. Not hard to find me.

------
vincvinc
If you prefer the spoken version, here is the actual talk:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfdtgW6_oI)

------
ausjke
I went to Pittsburgh a couple years ago, the downtown is just slightly better
than Buffalo, not fully a ghost town but pretty close.

Buffalo is worse because someone made the wise decision to move UB out to the
suburb, which essentially rendered the already lost town to a ghost city.

Put young people into the center of town helped to sustain it, however a
city's future is more decided by the overall economy development, both
Pittsburgh and Buffalo are just _lost_ in recent decades on that part.

~~~
TillE
Buffalo is crippled by truly awful winter weather, especially downtown where
the wind from the lake is incredibly strong. You could spend billions
renovating the area, turning all the parking lots into something useful, and
it would still be a fairly miserable place to live.

I've only spent a little time in western PA, but it's definitely better than
that.

~~~
thrownaway2424
If Buffalo is crippled by winters, then Pittsburgh is crippled by having the
worst air quality in the nation and the least sunlight.

[http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/states/pennsylvania/allegh...](http://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/states/pennsylvania/allegheny.html)

[http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-
data/pctposrank.txt](http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-
data/pctposrank.txt)

------
shas3
Strange comment about Pittsburgh's diversity and strangeness! In my
experience, outside Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, perhaps Monroeville,
and some working class neighborhoods, Pittsburgh is a fairly conservative
South-US-ish city.

~~~
chetanahuja
Bingo. The farther suburbs are fairly conservative, midwesternish in culture.
Though the areas you mentioned (SqHill, Shadyside etc.) provide enough of a
cool college-town vibe to perhaps be sufficient as a nucleus to attract (or
rather, keep) the young college graduates required for general optimism... not
just startups.

------
nahual
Evan Miller's essay "Marketing your startup hub"[0] comes to mind.

[0]: [http://www.evanmiller.org/marketing-startup-
hubs.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/marketing-startup-hubs.html)

------
markaduffy
Regarding the “startup” thread. When i first came to Pittsburgh, 2003, there
was very little jobs in IT. When I came back in 2010 and every year since, its
been noticeably better. The cost of living, and housing is significantly lower
than UK. I worked in Belfast for a London based company. Lots of London based
companies outsourced IT jobs to regional cities, because they could pay lower
wages, as the employees didn’t have the expense of living in London. I always
thought Pittsburgh could follow Belfast. In Dublin, they attract the American
companies because of the low corporation tax. It also helps that they are a
english speaking country in the eurozone. I think if US fixed the broken
immigration (it takes a year for work authorization, compare to 2-3 weeks in
UK), and Pittsburgh had some international flights, that would help investment
in the city. I love Pittsburgh, and amazed at the speed of the changes since i
first came here. Keep er lit!

------
crispyambulance
I've been born and raised in Pittsburgh, went to CMU for undergrad and Pitt
for grad but eventually left for other places.

Pittsburgh has plenty of business opportunities. There is A LOT of industry
within the metro area. A small group of folks can relatively easily set up
shop and make excellent careers doing tech in Pittsburgh.

The "bones" of the city are excellent. It is a medium-size compact urban area
surrounded by streetcar main-streets, industrial areas, and older 'burbs.
Neighborhoods are relatively stable, there aren't insane fluctuations in
property values, many places are walkable/bikeable and there's at least a
corner in pittsburgh for every taste.

As for it being a "start-up hub" where "start-up" is defined in the silicon
valley sense of going from idea to VC investment to IPO in a few dozen
months-- no that is not common. But that's such a narrow band of activity, can
you really say it is common anywhere?

------
dj_doh
Probably too late in the conversation. I'm a Pittsburgh product, as in I did
my grad schooling from there. I've always found pgh vibrant! I was residing in
the Oakland area. I liked everything about it. To this day I call it one of my
favorite places to live or visit.

Circa: 2008-09

------
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh)

------
beatpanda
Paul Graham is giving deadly advice for maintaining housing affordability.
Those cute historic building become an albatross around a city's neck in a
hurry once a lot of people start moving in.

------
dietlbomb
I agree with PG that Mississippi probably isn't the right place for a startup
hub, but it is disappointing that he contributes to the spin that
Mississippi's religious liberty bill represents intolerance. It's these sort
of religious protections that allow people of differing beliefs to live
together, as opposed to the enforcement of secular norms found in
jurisdictions that are supposedly more tolerant.

------
gkop
Would you help me compile a list of interesting software companies in
Pittsburgh? (I'm seeking to relocate there from SF but am having a hard time
sourcing an attractive employer)

* DuoLingo

* Google

* Oculus (Facebook)

* ShowClix

~~~
colindean
Have at it:
[https://discover.imaginecareers.com/](https://discover.imaginecareers.com/)

------
femto
" Can you imagine a headline "City ruined by becoming too bicycle-friendly?"
It just doesn't happen."

Except in Sydney, Australia. Welcome to Murdoch's backyard:

"On a bike path to chaotic traffic: new cycleways could mean more gridlock for
city drivers "[1]

"The cycle of waste will cost us $76 million" [2]

"SLOW LANES: If they don’t want it, take it off them" [3]

[1] [http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/on-a-bike-path-to-
ch...](http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/on-a-bike-path-to-chaotic-
traffic-new-cycleways-could-mean-more-gridlock-for-city-drivers/story-
fnii5s3x-1226869211260)

[2] [http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/the-cycle-of-
waste-w...](http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/the-cycle-of-waste-will-
cost-us-76-million/story-fnii5s3x-1226718069142)

[3]
[http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/d...](http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/slow_lanes/)

------
hyperion2010
This sounds very similar to the actual process that Durham has gone through
over the past 15+ years, and the first visible signs were in the restaurant
business too (concerted efforts by the city and local businesses were less
visible, but preceded the visible signs). Pittsburgh seems like it has an
incredibly similar social and historical setting, so hopefully they can pull
it off as well.

------
rquantz
Because being a startup hub has been so good for SF? Not everywhere needs to
be a startup hub, for goodness sake.

------
anonu
Early on in my undergrad life in Pittsburgh (circa 2001-2005) I remember
seeing this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip,
[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1985/12/20](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1985/12/20)
. It took a while to really understand the rather negative perception people
had of Pittsburgh, but that comic strip helped. After undergrad I moved to NYC
and sort of regretted that a little bit. I realized the same things PG
mentions: low cost of living and constant influx of young people from the 20+
universities in the area creates the right ecosystem for a startup culture.

------
caseyf7
Philly checks these boxes much better than Pittsburgh and doesn't have a tech
scene of note. These cities will also need an anchor company to keep the
talent there. Maybe autonomous cars can do that in Pittsburgh.

------
Mz
I really love the comments about making a city more pedestrian and bicycle
friendly.

------
grillvogel
hurry there are cities that haven't been completely turned to shit yet!

------
srinivasan
Points 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.

~~~
colindean
I feel that the non-compete thing is one of the biggest problems that PA
technologists face. I'd be willing to put money on a state legislature
candidate who would vow to get rid of them.

------
intrasight
CMU grad here (EE, CE, Math '89). My wife is a native Pittsburgher. Her
parents still live in the house she was born in – which I believe is not
uncommon in this city. Anyway, I have her perspective too. Met wife shortly
after graduating, got married, moved to Toronto to study neuroscience. After
our daughter was born, we moved back to Pittsburgh to be with the
grandparents. Can't say enough about how great an experience that was for our
daughter. Pittsburgh is still very much a family town with deep roots and deep
history. Daughter didn't go to CMU (had worked on robots there in HS and
wanted a change) but if she had, she would have been 4th generation.
Grandparents are great. Consider that you young adults coupling down. Are the
soon-to-be grandparents in San Francisco?

Having lived and traveled plenty, I think I can give a pretty honest
assessment of Pittsburgh. The first thing I need to share is that this is a
racist city. Granted, things have improved from the 80s when most of my
Pittsburgh-born friends would think nothing of using the n-word. But I
dismayed how often I still hear it from thirty-somethings. It is something
I've never experienced outside of Pittsburgh. Check out "The most racist
places in America, according to Google" in the Washington Post. A city can be
amazing in many ways, but it is going to take a serious hit in terms of
attracting a global diverse tech community with that shortcoming.

But now for the good stuff. First, as PG discussed and others did mention,
Pittsburgh is now a great food city. I think it easily holds its own against
cities much larger. Seconds (and related to first) the city is getting more
diverse. The fact that the universities have become so diverse (~80 non-Anglo-
Saxon) plays a manor role in this transition. Most of these people will not
stay in Pittsburgh, but their presence does change the culture. More and more
are staying or moving here to start their careers.

On the tech front, things have been slowly improving. CMU and Pitt have always
fostered tech spin-offs, but things are really changing now with Google,
Apple, Facebook, and Uber setting up research centers. Without a doubt, this
is going to change Pittsburgh. You can already see the changes with the
construction of hundreds of $2000+/mo apartments in what used to be the
"ghetto". I am hopeful that this will change one of the current shortcomings
of the local tech scene – that this is an "eds and meds" town, and if you want
to get funded, you are more likely to meet with success if your business in
that space.

Pittsburgh has MANY cool, walkable neighborhoods. This is a huge draw for
young adults. There are up-and-coming hip, walkable neighborhoods were you can
still buy a nice house for $80K. FIOS is readily available. Taxes are pretty
average. The weather is relatively mild (granted, I came from upstate NY). The
geography is beautiful - the rivers, the hills, the parks, etc. We have an
excellent system of bike trails. I'll be biking to DC later this spring.

Pittsburgh is very active on the city-data forums. There is no better place to
put your finger on the pulse of a community in my opinion. You'll find many
threads on the issues I've discussed here. I remember reading a couple threads
worth paraphrasing. In one, someone commented that Pittsburgh must be a very
rich city because it has more mansions than any other city. He clearly didn't
understand the history of Pittsburgh and how much wealth was created during
the industrialization of the early 20th century. But his assessment is
accurate in that the city has WAY more than its fair share of mansions build
during the timeframe when houses were built big and beautiful by craftsmen who
cared. If you do move to Pittsburgh, do yourself and the city a favor and buy
one of these diamonds in the rough and renovate. Another lasting legacy of the
robber-baron era is that Pittsburgh has an amazing arts and cultural heritage.

In another interesting city-data thread, the discussion was on how Pittsburgh
is still a place where people of average means can still live a middle-class
life. The reason is two-fold. First, the cost of living is relatively low. But
just as important is that Pittsburgh is a very hardworking and entrepreneurial
city. This is the city that, in a sense, built itself and also much of the
rest of the country. Steel, electricity, glass, etc. – they all came from
Pittsburgh. That work ethic is still very much present. People here work hard,
play hard, drink hard, and love their sports teams.

Sorry for the long post, but since so much of what I read on this thread
wasn't about Pittsburgh, I felt I had to help shift the balance back. Finally,
check out pittsburghtoday.org which will tell you most everything, data-wise,
that you'd want to know.

------
jrochkind1
Sometimes I Feel Like I'm The Only One Trying To Gentrify This Neighborhood

[http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-
th...](http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/sometimes-i-feel-like-im-the-only-one-
trying-to-ge-11249)

------
surfmike
interesting perspective by ‏@kimmaicutler:

"@paulg's advice to Pittsburgh is _so_ the opposite of what @sama, @justinkan
want SF to do.
[http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html](http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html) "
[https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/720031161989267461](https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/720031161989267461)

------
nxzero
I would be curious if there's ever been a city built from scratch with any
success around startups; seems unlikely, unless it more of an R&D city funded
by a very large entity.

------
PhillyPhuture
Very similar dynamics happening in Philadelphia. Go PA!

------
krebby
ctrl-f Duolingo. No matches.

Aside from Duolingo (who have been there for ages) and Uber (who aren't really
based there) what's so exciting about Pittsburgh?

------
rdl
I would love to see this happen.

(I'd also love to see Portland Oregon, mentioned as an alternative, get the
world-class research university it lacks now.)

~~~
santaclaus
Given unlimited funds, could a school like OHSU or PSU realistically gear up
to 'world-class research' status quickly?

~~~
davidw
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.

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

~~~
davidw
Reed is supposed to be pretty good.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
And pretty expensive. A public liberal arts college in PDX is needed.

------
tacos
It's as if he's never spoken to a Carnegie Mellon grad as to why they get the
hell out of Pittsburgh after graduation...

~~~
avn2109
Out of curiosity, why do CMU grads leave?

~~~
nunobrito
I'm from Europe but lived in Pittsburgh and graduated in CMU (software
engineering). Really enjoyed the city and the people I've met there. CMU is
really a place where you can discuss engineering breakthroughs while having
breakfast or a coffee.

It is true that the coffee houses there tend to have their own personality and
become really good places to study.

But still left the city and just returned to Europe. I've left because the
poverty rate in the city was high at that time (2010) and was too easy to
either get mugged on the street or get yourself inadvertently involved in some
violent event.

Still, Pittsburgh is a special place in my heart and I still keep contact with
friends there. Was happy to read this article, really happy to see the city
getting better.

------
shaneckel
As a yinzer, this is really fun to read.

------
hoodoof
Isn't Silicon Valley a black hole with unrelenting monetary gravity that would
pull all skilled software engineers down towards it? Any young developer who
is any good will go from the minor leagues to the big league attracted by the
cash, leaving Pittsburgh or whereever behind.

Budding "Silicon Valleys" would simply be the target of aggressive and
unrelenting talent raids.

~~~
drumdance
Not necessarily. Companies like Facebook and Google build offices outside of
the Valley partly because it's _less_ competitive. Google has been expanding
in Boulder because they know their employees won't be poached as frequently as
in SV.

------
swalsh
I think VR has so much potential to make people in remote places work together
in close productive ways, that I wouldn't be surprised if the next silicon
valley isn't even a real place.

