Pittsburgh is a great town. It looks a bit like it was on the barely winning side of a fist fight, but it has lots going for it:
- Two big, well funded, well respected schools cranking out talent. CMU is one of the top schools in the world for CS.
- Cheap rent
- If you want to buy a house, some really beautiful neighborhoods
- SEI - lots of cyber security talent
- Great food and activities, it's not hard to find plenty of things to do, some innovative areas that are turning around dead warehouse and industrial areas
- Some parts of the city are really beautiful and nice places to be, lots of great parks and so on
But there's some realities that I don't think limit what can come from the city, but rather shape what kinds of businesses should set up shop there.
- Geographic isolation
- Parts of the city can be pretty rough still, rougher than what you might find elsewhere
- hard to bring in quality talent if they aren't being sourced from the schools
- Non-tech talent comes from completely different industries
So I think that if you can shape a business that targets a large domestic market and solves real problems, even non-sexy B2B ones, you can probably grow a thriving business there. You probably won't end up hitting it big on social media, but many B2B problems are billion dollar businesses.
- Two big, well funded, well respected schools cranking out talent. CMU is one of the top schools in the world for CS.
- Cheap rent
- If you want to buy a house, some really beautiful neighborhoods
- SEI - lots of cyber security talent
- Great food and activities, it's not hard to find plenty of things to do, some innovative areas that are turning around dead warehouse and industrial areas
- Some parts of the city are really beautiful and nice places to be, lots of great parks and so on
But there's some realities that I don't think limit what can come from the city, but rather shape what kinds of businesses should set up shop there.
- Geographic isolation
- Parts of the city can be pretty rough still, rougher than what you might find elsewhere
- hard to bring in quality talent if they aren't being sourced from the schools
- Non-tech talent comes from completely different industries
So I think that if you can shape a business that targets a large domestic market and solves real problems, even non-sexy B2B ones, you can probably grow a thriving business there. You probably won't end up hitting it big on social media, but many B2B problems are billion dollar businesses.