pittsburghparks
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2016–2019
26:40 · 18K views · Apr 11, 2016
Paul Graham gives a keynote in his hometown of Pittsburgh, reflecting on the old and new city and arguing that it could become a startup hub.
Cited as the video version of his essay on making Pittsburgh a startup hub, and as a talk that persuaded at least one commenter to move there.
3 comments from Hacker News
PG actually wrote an essay[0] about this a few years back. It also happens to be one of the few available on youtube[1] if you would rather watch than read. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
I'm a full-time freelancer/remote worker. In late 2016, I made the decision to move to Pittsburgh, partly persuaded Paul Graham's talk about how Pittsburgh could become a startup hub. (PG grew up in Monroeville, 10 miles east of Pittsburgh.) Transcript: [LINK] Video: this video I feel really good about the decision, CMU feels like a peer of Stanford and MIT but living here is substantially cheaper than living in Cambridge or Palo Alto. (I pay ~$750 for a 1-bedroom apartment that's ~1.5 mile from CMU campus.) The legacy of Randy Pausch's Building Virtual Worlds was also a draw for me personally, as I work in game development and was coming of age when Randy Pausch's delivered his famous Last Lecture (if you had asked me in 2008 who my personal heroes were, Randy Pausch would be the first name out of my mouth). Going to gamedev meetups has kind of allowed me to insert myself into the CMU alumni network post hoc. Very green (lots of beautiful neighborhoods), hip enough for my tastes, and the intellectual climate is everything I had hoped it would be. If you want to live in a city where companies like Google, Uber, Amazon, and Apple have offices, Pittsburgh may be your cheapest option. Some discussion of Pittsburgh's (tech) climate on this article from last year: [LINK]
I was going to attend this event (mainly because of pg's participation), but regrettably had to miss it (family claimed the Saturday). Thanks for the write-up. The video of PG's keynote is available here: this video