Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them

Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by rwhitman on Monday July 12, 2010 @07:12PM (#1509769)

Every city wants to be the 'next Silicon Valley' but can never retain the companies. Its not a problem endemic to Pittsburgh. Can you think of a city that's not in the west that can honestly claim this title?

Its not just the capital - there's a sense of entrepreneurial manifest destiny mixed in there that can't be stopped. For a tech company that doesn't have hard assets there's nothing stopping wide-eyed entrepreneurs from picking up & moving west. And lets get honest here - Pittsburgh is great but if you're finally making it to the big time, why would you want to stay in a declining rustbelt city?

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by mtomczak on Monday July 12, 2010 @07:23PM (#1509795)

Property values are significantly lower in Pittsburgh, which makes property ownership easier. And the top-quality colleges in the city continue to graduate excellent candidates for tech company employment.

Although a graduate can ship out west, the lower costs in Pittsburgh make the path to ownership shorter. I'll be interested to see if the economic downturn will give graduates pause when thinking about shipping themselves three timezones away into an expensive location, when the cheaper prices in Pittsburgh could offer a lifestyle with less debt.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by rwhitman on Monday July 12, 2010 @07:41PM (#1509828)

Yea but who graduating college thinks about home ownership?

I left Philadelphia for CA shortly after college 6 yrs ago. I still rent here and I know that if I stayed in PA I would probably own multiple properties at this point. Honestly I would rather rent in California than own a mansion in Pennsylvania. My life is just infinitely better here.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by bmj on Monday July 12, 2010 @09:04PM (#1510030)

I know many graduate students that buy homes during their stay in Pittsburgh rather than renting, and simply sell when they leave. Often, those homes end up in the hands of other graduate students.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by timtadh on Monday July 12, 2010 @10:33PM (#1510170)

I mean I am about to do this (in Cleveland at CWRU instead of Pittsburg at CMU) but the principle of the thing is the same. These cities have some of the lowest costs of living to be found anywhere in the US. I would also note that Cleveland has the same problems mentioned in the article to a degree, but is managing to retain bio-tech firms. This is mainly due to the top notch institutions (hello Cleveland Clinic) which are in the city.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by 146 on Monday July 12, 2010 @07:58PM (#1509881)

True, but remember that most startup founders are not just graduating college.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by thwarted on Monday July 12, 2010 @09:03PM (#1510023)

It seems increasingly unlikely that the kind of person who is interested in real estate ownership, for the purposes of living in it, is not the same kind of person who values the flexibility and uncertainty of startup culture, two of the things that are attractive about Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by 146 on Monday July 12, 2010 @07:57PM (#1509876)

> And lets get honest here - Pittsburgh is great but if you're finally making it to the big time, why would you want to stay in a declining rustbelt city?

Luis (the reCAPTCHA founder) wrote a blog post about this recently. Basically to summarize, staying in Pittsburgh helped picking up CMU talent, and Pittsburgh doesn't suffer from a lot of distractions that come with the Valley.

http://vonahn.blogspot.com/2010/06/startups-and-cmu.html

Very importantly to note though, Luis has a professorship, a fiance, and a life built out in Pittsburgh. Similarly, I've heard that a lot of the Google Pittsburgh engineers are family men/women who don't want to leave the area.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by melling on Monday July 12, 2010 @08:22PM (#1509931)

Robots. This is going to be the decade of robots. Carnegie Mellon is a world leader, and Pittsburgh should benefit from the boom. Just Google and see what you come up with. I found a few:

http://www.seegrid.com/seegridoffices.html

http://kotaku.com/5577771/intel-inside-your-mind-serving-you... - Intel Lab in Pittsburgh

http://www.pittsburghroboticssociety.org/

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by jimbokun on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @10:11AM (#1511399)

An interesting thought from that discussion:

"I agree with you, the resources in the Valley can't be beat. Fortunately there is a way to leverage both - we are trying to pave the way for development in Pittsburgh and business in SV. There are many upsides to this approach - incredible team, dedication, outside the bubble, lower costs, better office space, local recruiting, etc. We are testing this all out at the moment - so far so good!"

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by spot on Monday July 12, 2010 @10:32PM (#1510165)

> a declining rustbelt city

Your opinions are about 30 years behind reality. Why do you think Obama picked them to host the G20?

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by natrius on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @12:13AM (#1510341)

Votes? I shouldn't know that Altoona, PA even exists, but thanks to the 2008 campaign season, I do. Swing states get attention.

I know nothing about Pittsburgh, so I'm not suggesting anything negative about the city. There are just plenty of other possible reasons behind the evidence you gave.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by rwhitman on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @12:27AM (#1510362)

I don't think of the G20 as being a marker of endorsement for a city's economic well-being. If anything its akin to putting a big red target mark for chaos & destruction. Pittsburgh may just be well suited to absorbing riots

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by spot on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @10:04AM (#1511384)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_G-20_Pittsburgh_summit

the Obama Administration announced a change of venue to Pittsburgh in order to highlight the city's economic recovery following the collapse of its manufacturing sector in the latter half of the 20th century.

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Re:Pittsburgh gives birth to tech firms, but can't keep them by rwhitman on Tuesday July 13, 2010 @12:35AM (#1510379)

I love how I got downvoted to 0 for telling the truth. I think Pittsburgh is great, its one of my favorite places. But, you can substitute Pittsburgh for Cleveland or Philadelphia, or Chicago or St Louis or Baltimore. At the end of the day successful entrepreneurs typically go to where there is the most upwards economic activity.

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