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Comment by dbul | Hacker News Reader

Well unfortunately not everyone can get into YC or save up enough money to go move to the bay area to fund themselves while developing connections.

If Google had been started in Pittsburgh, they still would have been successful. I heard about Google through IRC back in the late 90s and immediately switched from Altavista because Google was so damn good.

Incidentally, AlphaLab is new, but Pittsburgh/PA has had seed funding through InnovationWorks and IdeaFoundry for some time. It used to be more like "here's $100,000 and you are on your own." AlphaLab is trying to develop a community. Again, I think it remains to be seen how these seed funding ventures turn out. Admitting SV is the only logical choice is premature. Give it time.

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> If Google had been started in Pittsburgh, they still would have been successful.

I'm not a huge Silicon Valley booster (I like MA, thankyouverymuch), but I think the idea that Google would have been able to hire as much top notch talent, as quickly as they did, in PA is nonsense.

The only way that Google could have started in PA and been as successful as they have been is if they very quickly moved to Silicon Valley (or - maybe - MA).

You must have missed the point. Google was successful because the founders developed a brilliant algorithm.

But in anycase, Carnegie Mellon is apparently a top CS and business school drawing talent from all over the world including SV. If you really think Google's success was because of additional talent, then I still say Pittsburgh would have been a solution.

No, I don't think he has.

A brilliant algorithm isn't tantamount to business success. Plenty of great ideas languish, while lesser ones manage to gain traction.

As important as any idea or innovation is the ability to connect it with the people who can help spread that message.

I'd love it if this weren't true, but I'm afraid it is.

But it is absurd to say that it can only be done in the valley. Did Microsoft go to the valley when HP and Apple had a huge presence? No. People came to them.

If it couldn't be done elsewhere, we wouldn't be working on ours in Vancouver. ;-)

Still, if I were 22 and single, I'd start my start-up in the valley without a moments hesitation.

Oh yes, and as for Microsoft--the rules are different for them. (When your revenues dwarf the GDP of some small countries you get a little more latitude.)

I heard Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft

I'm not sure that's true. Microsoft and Amazon, for instance, did pretty well in Seattle. And Pittsburg does have CMU, whose CS program comes in right after MIT, Stanford and Berkeley's. It was probably easier for Google in the Valley. How much easier is hard to say.

It was only easy for Google because the had tons of cash to hire people when everyone was getting laid off in the tech bust. They owned the market for top people because of the rare event that many top people were on the market.

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