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southphillyman

I wonder why Philadelphia hasn't even been considered as a start up hub.

Better weather than Pittsburgh, NYC, or Boston

Nothing on par with CMU.... but Upenn, Drexel, and Princeton are in the area. As are a ton of other schools.

Pretty good size developer base with people working in Telecom,healthcare, education, and finance.

Close to NYC and DC

Affordable even after recent gentrification

Existing start up scene with some examples of local success (duckduckgo)

Much more interesting and hip city when compared to Pittsburgh/Boston

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Philadelphia is a much more interesting and hip city to live in, but the crime, high taxes and crumbling infrastructure are a killer. The city government is incredibly corrupt, with a lot of the machinery that empowers city councilmen (I'm looking at you, Kenyatta Johnson...) trying to keep outsiders from coming in and diluting their traditional voter base. So there is a sizable segment of city politics that is not only not interested in improving the city, but is actively working against change because improving the city would harm their political interests (and their ability to give no-show city jobs with six-figure salaries to their family members). Chaka Fattah [1] didn't become that corrupt in isolation.

Pittsburgh is literally just happy that you're there, but in Philly there's a sense that newcomers are not welcome. That feeling extends to businesses as well - if you don't hire union workers, expect things like sabotage and picket lines. You can't just go take over an abandoned warehouse and put your startup in it, you have to grease the right palms to get the zoning permits approved, the right union contractors to do the work, etc. All of that costs money that startups who are trying to be lean don't have. There's a lot more pay-to-play present in Philadelphia, which is IMO the reason why it's not a bigger tech start-up hub than it is.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/05/16/chaka...

I remember Kenyatta Johnson was fighting for his constituents against gentrification. Or at least that's how he positioned it in the community. A quick google brings this up though [1]. Yikes selling land to specific buyers and he can't remember the deals?

[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20160516_Feibush_...

Kenyatta is fighting to make sure he stays in office - gentrification would change the skin color of his district, and that puts him at risk. But his district is full of abandoned houses, burned out lots, and general urban blight that's just too close to a whole bunch of already-gentrified areas: gentrification will happen whether he fights it or not as UPenn expands south.

As a native Philadelphian who now lives closer to Boston, my perspective - Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston). The local talent market is much better suited for healthcare than tech. And what talent there is can easily go to DC or NYC, where there are larger job markets.

At least for me, 10+ years ago when I moved back to Philly after going to college in VA, I lasted less than a year before going to DC where the better opportunities were. My perception is that it is still true today.

My family is still all in South Philly and the close in suburbs so I haven't completely lost touch. I'd totally move back for the right opportunity.

> Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city (compared to NYC or Boston)

Chicago is corrupt as they come and there's a pretty robust startup scene.

The difference is that its the only big city in the midwest. So if you're an engineer in Philly you could easily move to NYC/DC for work. Not so much for someone in the midwest who wants to work in the midwest.

> I'd totally move back for the right opportunity

This. I just think it's a city where "if you build it they will come".

I agree that NYC and DC have more opportunity, but they also are an order of magnitude more expensive. Affordability, proximity, and culture would be Philly's main selling point imo.

That's true, but if we're talking about living in Philly proper in areas where other young, single people would want to live, it isn't cheap either. If you're me, you'd probably be happy that you could get a fairly nice place in a good neighborhood like Girard Estate for 350k because I have a wife and kid and don't care that I live on 20th and Porter with nothing to do at night. In fact, that's exactly what I'd do if I moved back. Ironically, my folks are on a side street near East Passyunk, where people would pay 100k more. But they've had that place since the 70's when it was all older Italians like them.

When people ask me what Philly was like, I tell them, "imagine a town where everyone has at least a little larceny in their hearts."

I miss the cheap beer, though. Cheap compared to DC, at least. Things are easily 75-100% more expensive here.

Also miss my old hackerspace. Not enough people have the anarchist+DIY spirit in the DC area to make a viable run out of a true hackerspace. We get corporate sell-out deals like TechShop in Arlington that will charge you an arm and a leg for the chance to prove you know how to run a table saw without killing yourself. Probably because it's impossible to walk in this town without tripping over at least three lawyers.

In Philly, graft starts at the top. So naturally everyone feels entitled to work the system a little. And everyone does, because law enforcement and the civil bureaucracy are a combination of afraid of your neighborhood and lazy (probably a little corrupt too, but I wouldn't attribute to malice what is easily explained by laziness). So you end up with a place where there's a shitload of urban decay, tax dodging galore (ever wonder why there's 3 rowhome "churches" on the same block?), and a lot of people that feel the city owes them without anything in return. I'm a little jaded because in high school/college I used to help maintain some Section 8 rentals, but there's an attitude in Philly that you ought to be doing the most you can to squeeze every penny out of the system. And it's led to middle class erosion and perpetual election of officials who continue to promise what they can't deliver. As a result, money gets taken away from having ridiculous, unnecessary things like a good public school system, reliable transportation, contiguous stretches of pavement and even cleaning up all the fucking trash on the side of the road.

Sorry, Philly being the poster child for how not to run a city really gets to me. It was my home for a while, and it sucks that moving to the suburbs was the only real solution we had.

> Philly has rampant corruption and I'd be nervous about investing in the city

How does this intersect with running a startup? Grifting startups with social media expertise won't go over well.

> The local talent market is much better suited for healthcare than tech.

Perhaps for existing workers, but between Drexel, UPenn, Temple, and Penn State, the market for CS talent is great.

> And what talent there is can easily go to DC or NYC, where there are larger job markets.

And a terrible real estate market in both locations.

>How does this intersect with running a startup? Grifting startups with social media expertise won't go over well.

Shitty landlords, arcane permitting bureaucracy, Philly wage tax, etc.

> Perhaps for existing workers, but between Drexel, UPenn, Temple, and Penn State, the market for CS talent is great.

Fresh grads are not the solution to all tech problems. My network of experienced developers and managers is much thinner in Philly than it is in the greater DC and NYC areas. If I were setting up shop tomorrow in NY or DC, I know exactly who I'd call first. Philly, not so much, and it's not for lack of knowing professionals in the area. Now if you need a physician, chemist, biologist or mech eng, Philly's a great place. I realize this is just me and my opinion, YMMV.

> And a terrible real estate market in both locations.

Fair point, but there's a reason DC and NYC real estate costs more. People and businesses are there. And depending on your product space, DC is especially attractive because a certain uncle keeps spending even in recession.

How do you conclude that Philadelphia is a much more interesting and hip city when compared to Pittsburgh/Boston?

I can't speak to Boston, but having lived in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and a suburb of NY (Fairfield county CT), Pittsburgh has the most accessible cultural outlets. The local art scene is incredible, there is a top tier orchestra, the city is mostly bikable (with more protected bike lanes on the way), there are 3 professional sports teams that are within 20 minutes on public transportation of anywhere in the city. The list goes on. There may be more things to do in NYC than Pittsburgh, but I constantly felt like I had to pick and choose because it was just so expensive.

Not a knock on Pittsburgh per say. Philadelphia has all of those things and more. It gets more artists/major concerts, has more highly regarded restaurants, more museums, has one of the bigger malls in the country. Though it's as segregated as chicago/nyc it has larger diversity as well. It's just a larger more vibrant city imo.

Philly is great for a startup! See: duckduckgo, RJMetrics, and Curalate. Good talent, good culture, relatively affordable (though the city is definitely getting more expensive as it gentrifies).

Also, there is stuff outside the city (country, Baltimore, DC, NJ, NYC, beaches), which is really tough to argue for Pittsburgh.

You need talented expats from "the institution" to create great startups.

Seattle has Amazon and Microsoft.

The Bay Area has em all. Cisco, Yahoo, Adobe, Google, Twitter, Facebook...

But Philly has everyone's favorite company, Comcast! I think the city wage tax is a huge barrier for new tech companies from setting up here. The burbs around Philly aren't bad for jobs though

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