Mark Suster is an LA based venture capitalist, who has been working to advance the LA startup scene. I’ve posted about the NYC startup scene a number of times (here is the biggest one), but never really about LA. I saw a couple posts on Mark Suster’s blog (quite a good read if you don’t follow him already).
This past week he’s made two posts worth considering as they relate to Pittsburgh (or any other city) developing its tech startup community. On Wednesday he contrasted LA to Silicon Valley in 5 ways. I’ve briefly commented on them in terms of the report card I established for startup scenese, but it’s worth a read. If you didn’t read my post on creating a startup scene report card, try reading it while you read Mark’s post. I don’t think he stumbled across anything that doesn’t fit in one of my categories.
- Funding and Tech/Startup Recruiting – We have already discussed this in terms of Pittsburgh and I intend to do so in more detail in the near future. Essentially, Mark’s point and mine would be too, is that no place is silicon valley, but you no longer HAVE to be in silicon valley to succeed. In fact there are some advantages to not being there.
- Commuting – There’s a category that Pittsburgh wins over LA, NYC or the Valley! However, I don’t think it’s worth posting about for anyone other then LA.
- Creative Arts Talent – Mark points out that LA has a “strategic asset” in its access to a stronger film and arts scene then the Valley. I wonder what these assets are in Pittsburgh. Clearly medical, probably robotics from CMU, probably some others.
- The status of the community
The other post Mark made is about a startup mentoring program called Launchpad LA. A program he started up to nurture LA entrepreneurs. There are programs like AlphaLab and others in Pittsburgh, but I’m not sure if they’re on this scale. Somewhere down the line it would be interesting to consider whether we could support it.
