How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

[How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub]

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| April 2016(This is a talk I gave at an event called Opt412 in Pittsburgh.
Much of it will apply to other towns. But not all, because
as I say in the talk, Pittsburgh has some important advantages over
most would-be startup hubs.)What would it take to make Pittsburgh into a startup hub, like
Silicon Valley? I understand Pittsburgh pretty well,
because I grew up here, in Monroeville. And I understand Silicon
Valley pretty well because that's where I live now. Could you get
that kind of startup ecosystem going here?When I agreed to speak here, I didn't think I'd be able to give a
very optimistic talk. I thought I'd be talking about what Pittsburgh
could do to become a startup hub, very much in the subjunctive.
Instead I'm going to talk about what Pittsburgh can do.What changed my mind was an article I read in, of all places, the New
York Times food section. The title was "Pittsburgh's Youth-Driven
Food Boom." To most people that might not even sound interesting,
let alone something related to startups. But it was electrifying
to me to read that title. I don't think I could pick a more promising
one if I tried. And when I read the article I got even more excited.
It said "people ages 25 to 29 now make up 7.6 percent of all
residents, up from 7 percent about a decade ago." Wow, I thought,
Pittsburgh could be the next Portland. It could become the cool
place all the people in their twenties want to go live.When I got here a couple days ago, I could feel the difference. I
lived here from 1968 to 1984. I didn't realize it at the time, but
during that whole period the city was in free fall. On top of the
flight to the suburbs that happened everywhere, the steel and nuclear
businesses were both dying. Boy are things different now. It's not
just that downtown seems a lot more prosperous. There is an energy
here that was not here when I was a kid.When I was a kid, this was a place young people left. Now it's a
place that attracts them.What does that have to do with startups? Startups are made
of people, and the average age of the people in a typical startup
is right in that 25 to 29 bracket.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.So being a magnet for people in their twenties is a very promising
thing to be. It's hard to imagine a place becoming a startup hub
without also being that. When I read that statistic about the
increasing percentage of 25 to 29 year olds, I had exactly the same
feeling of excitement I get when I see a startup's graphs start to
creep upward off the x axis.Nationally the percentage of 25 to 29 year olds is 6.8%. That means
you're .8% ahead. The population is 306,000, so we're talking about
a surplus of about 2500 people. That's the population of a small
town, and that's just the surplus. So you have a toehold. Now you
just have to expand it.And though "youth-driven food boom" may sound frivolous, it is
anything but. Restaurants and cafes are a big part of the personality
of a city. Imagine walking down a street in Paris. What are you
walking past? Little restaurants and cafes. Imagine driving through
some depressing random exurb. What are you driving past? Starbucks
and McDonalds and Pizza Hut. As Gertrude Stein said, there is no
there there. You could be anywhere.These independent restaurants and cafes are not just feeding people.
They're making there be a there here.So here is my first concrete recommendation for turning Pittsburgh
into the next Silicon Valley: do everything you can to encourage
this youth-driven food boom. What could the city do? Treat the
people starting these little restaurants and cafes as your users,
and go ask them what they want. I can guess at least one thing
they might want: a fast permit process. San Francisco has left you
a huge amount of room to beat them in that department.I know restaurants aren't the prime mover though. The prime mover,
as the Times article said, is cheap housing. That's a big advantage.
But that phrase "cheap housing" is a bit misleading. There are
plenty of places that are cheaper. What's special about Pittsburgh
is not that it's cheap, but that it's a cheap place you'd actually
want to live.Part of that is the buildings themselves. I realized a long time
ago, back when I was a poor twenty-something myself, that the best
deals were places that had once been rich, and then became poor.
If a place has always been rich, it's nice but too expensive. If
a place has always been poor, it's cheap but grim. But if a place
was once rich and then got poor, you can find palaces for cheap.
And that's what's bringing people here. When Pittsburgh was rich,
a hundred years ago, the people who lived here built big solid
buildings. Not always in the best taste, but definitely solid. So
here is another piece of advice for becoming a startup hub: don't
destroy the buildings that are bringing people here. When cities
are on the way back up, like Pittsburgh is now, developers race to
tear down the old buildings. Don't let that happen. 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.But the appeal of Pittsburgh is not just the buildings themselves.
It's the neighborhoods they're in. Like San Francisco and New York,
Pittsburgh is fortunate in being a pre-car city. It's not too
spread out. Because those 25 to 29 year olds do not like driving.
They prefer walking, or bicycling, or taking public transport. If
you've been to San Francisco recently you can't help noticing the
huge number of bicyclists. And this is not just a fad that the
twenty-somethings have adopted. In this respect they have discovered
a better way to live. The beards will go, but not the bikes. Cities
where you can get around without driving are just better period.
So I would suggest you do everything you can to capitalize on this.
As with historic preservation, it seems impossible to go too far.Why not make Pittsburgh the most bicycle and pedestrian friendly
city in the country? See if you can go so far that you make San
Francisco seem backward by comparison. If you do, it's very unlikely
you'll regret it. The city will seem like a paradise to the young
people you want to attract. If they do leave to get jobs elsewhere,
it will be with regret at leaving behind such a place. And what's
the downside? Can you imagine a headline "City ruined by becoming
too bicycle-friendly?" It just doesn't happen.So suppose cool old neighborhoods and cool little restaurants make
this the next Portland. Will that be enough? It will put you in
a way better position than Portland itself, because Pittsburgh has
something Portland lacks: a first-rate research university. CMU
plus little cafes means you have more than hipsters drinking lattes.
It means you have hipsters drinking lattes while talking about
distributed systems. Now you're getting really close to San
Francisco.In fact you're better off than San Francisco in one way, because

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