Startups: is Pittsburgh making it?

Exciting news lately, Ford/Argo following many others, and the few square miles around CMU looking more and more like a start-up ecosystem.

Time to check what Paul Graham, of Y Combinator fame, wrote about Pittsburgh as a potential start up hub. You can find it here:

In summary, what we need is:
A pool of engineers in the 25–29 age bracket. Checked.
Sense of “there”. Cafes, healthy food places, etc.. Getting there.
A world class STEM university. CMU keeps building.
Interesting architectural features. The stately bricks mansions on shadyside are a huge asset. 5 years from now it can looks exactly like Kalorama.
An urban center. 25–29 engineers like to bike or take the bus. Still a problem. I take the bus every day. Pittsburgh need to do something about its buses. Really.
Investors. We are not there. At least two close friends are leaving in June because of that — they found investors somewhere else.

Looks like it’s our problem to fix. Again, Paul Graham: “…fortunately there are three trends that make that less necessary than it used to be. One is that startups are increasingly cheap to start, so you just don’t need as much outside money as you used to. The second is that thanks to things like Kickstarter, a startup can get to revenue faster. You can put something on Kickstarter from anywhere.”