Pittsburgh Ventures

While at an Open Coffee Club meeting a few weeks back, I heard tell of Matt Harbaugh’s blogging adventures under the title of “Pittsburgh Ventures”.  Checking it out, I realized it had been several months since Matt had last posted, and I knew right away what was wrong:  it is hard to do something like this by yourself.

I have been thinking about starting a blog myself, but I know myself too well – what sounds like a good idea often fails in the execution.

What Matt needed was the same thing I did:  a partner.  Someone to share the load (much easier to post half as often consistently), someone to “compete” with, someone to put the stick about when busy-ness got in the way of keeping up with the blog.

Not unlike some of the great Olympic partnerships we saw in The Games:  the beach volleyball pair of Misty May and Kerri Walsh, the synchronized diving duo Lin Yue and Huo Liang (really?!?  Are you serious?!? What’s next?), the men’s 4X100m freestyle relay that whipped it up on the talkity French.  That last example is especially apt, as we watched four US swimmers who all swam better than their individual abilities, all because each pushed the other to be the better as a team than as an individual.

So what in the world is this blog about?  Matt and I represent a couple of guys on the investment side in Pittsburgh, PA.  Matt is the Chief Investment Officer at Innovation Works, and represents a seed-level investor’s point of view; I am a partner at Meakem Becker Venture Capital, and represent an early-stage and later investor’s point of view.  We want this to be a thoughtful series of discussions about what is happening on the investment side in Pittsburgh, which by definition means it will be opinionated and may raise some people’s dander, but we also want it to be good for the local ecosystem.

We are going to post on several topics – Western PA companies, the local entrepreneurial ecosystem, how seed investing works, how venture capital works, the national investing scene, hot startup trends, to name just a few.  Look for us to post once or a couple times a week – so we will keep your (likely) overactive feed reader alive but not too busy.  We will also keep the posts fresh by including guest blogs from other local and national luminaries.

AND we love feedback!  Please feel free to drop either/both of us an email, and we welcome your public comments to be included along with our posts.  You can find us at www.pittsburghventures.com; this is a new address, so please update your feeds accordingly.

Thank you.