How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub

_(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](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/dining/pittsburgh-restaurants.html)." 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