“AlphaLab provides the essential elements for startup companies to get off the ground successfully: funding, business assistance, advisors, space, and a supportive entrepreneurial community…Located at 2325 East Carson Street in Pittsburgh’s historic Southside neighborhood, AlphaLab’s location is easy to reach and near coffee shops, restaurants, retail shops, and dozens of other startup software technology companies.”

AlphaLab is a project of Innovation Works (IW), “the Pittsburgh region’s largest and most active seed-stage investor. Since the creation of its seed fund in late-1999, IW has invested over $40 million in almost 120 technology startups in the Pittsburgh region – a pace that places IW among the most active seed-stage investors in the United States.”

jsalvatier: Good point. Makes sense at the national level, though I believe most cities are not averse to competing with other cities for jobs.

relaxing, Jason, and Abe: thanks for the comments and links. Interesting about Michael Mauldin and Paul Graham. Some disadvantages of Pittsburgh you mention are chicken and egg problems: few jobs & urban amenities. If there were more of them, more people would stay and if more people stayed, there would be more of them. Admittedly this is hard to overcome, especially the lack of urban appeal. And some disadvantages are uncontrollable: bad weather, no sun all winter.

Jason, I initially misread you last sentence. You’re saying the investment *could* be enough to create jobs and urban appeal?

Also I just noticed another exception: Intel Labs Pittsburgh.

Abe, let’s hope for your best case. Any chance the city or state government would get serious about this?

I’d be willing to buy Paul Graham’s argument that Pittsburgh has a ton of talent today but can’t capitalize on it (literally) because of an inability to retain wealthy people. It’s telling that Tuomas (combinenet) and Luis (recaptcha) are both affiliated with CMU and so in a sense “can’t leave”. Pittsburgh is a challenging place to live – cloudy, icy, hilly – and it can’t balance that with the urban amenities you find in NYC or even Boston. What it balances the bad stuff with is the extremely cheap cost of living, but the same factors that make it the best place to live on a 30k salary really hurt it with people with much more money than that.

Best case in the immediate future for Pittsburgh is a pool of startup founders based around Luis/the local Google office that hit it big and decide to stay. The “decide to stay” part is the real tough one though, e.g., Michael Mauldin (Lycos), whose work paid for CMU’s Newell-Simon Hall, recently left Western PA for the Texas Hill country http://www.lazytoad.com/.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Paul Graham also grew up in Pittsburgh but unlike you really hated the place (at least, that’s the impression I get from his essays).

No one wants to be in Pittsburgh. No one wants to be in Philly. Even NYC’s startup community is quaint compared to SFO and the Valley.

captcha: “bypass studying”. Don’t mind if I do!