Pittsburgh as a Startup

When I first moved to Pittsburgh in 2002 and joined Innovation Works to help build the technology community, one of my early mentors framed my new role in a way that resonated: “Jim, you were part of startups in CA…think of Pittsburgh as your startup now.” This analogy of Pittsburgh as the startup was incredibly powerful and motivating for me. It changed my mindset from focusing on what Pittsburgh didn’t have at the time to thinking about the potential of Pittsburgh as a startup region. Every time I noticed a contrast between the resources available there and here, I reminded myself that Pittsburgh was the startup and that Silicon Valley was like Microsoft or IBM. (Google was still relatively early then and Facebook, Twitter hadn’t even started.)

Not only did this approach help me psychologically (I’ll admit it — there were moments early on where I wondered why we moved here), it also felt intellectually honest — after all, if we’re working with startups and providing them advice on how to build, market and scale — it would make sense that we would apply the same standards to ourselves. As we started AlphaLab (and later AlphaLab Gear), this has been a guiding principle — to think and act as a startup — that we have aspired to create in our culture, in our strategy and operational plans.

In recent years, the Pittsburgh ecosystem has grown and we’ve certainly enjoyed the increased awareness and attention. But as with startups, even as you move from one stage to the next (e.g. first customer revenues, seed round, even profitability), you can’t celebrate or declare victory, as you face the next set of challenges.

This is what I’m seeing in Pittsburgh. While we have moved beyond some of the early insecurities and perceptions of Pittsburgh when I moved here (e.g. “Why did you move here?”, “You can’t start a company in Pittsburgh”), we are having more complex discussions about how we should grow Pittsburgh as an entrepreneurial region and the challenges we face. (e.g. “How do we attract more growth capital?”, “How do we create a more inclusive innovation ecosystem?”) There are no easy answers and I find myself applying the “Pittsburgh as a startup” analogy to form my thinking.

These thoughts are still evolving in my mind and my goal is to contribute to the conversation about how we grow the Pittsburgh startup ecosystem. I recognize that there is a broader discussion about how we improve Pittsburgh as a city/region and that tech/startups is only a part of that conversation but just as we tell startups to focus on what they know best, I am going to try and do the same.

I will continue to share my thoughts about applying startup lessons for Pittsburgh and I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas.