Pittsburgh Ventures

Hey Pittsburgh Ventures readers, I’m Matt Humphrey. I am a Pittsburgh native, an alumnus of CMU Computer Science and Tepper MBA, Y-Combinator 2007, and serial startup guy who did a number of things in Pittsburgh from virtual worlds to content delivery to consumer internet and a lot in between. For the last twelve months I have been out in Silicon Valley working on a stealthy company called Kickball Labs and trying to learn about the world. I wanted to offer some SV vs. Pittsburgh insights, having just been back in da ‘burgh for a week.\

Coming back to Pittsburgh a week or so back was excellent, and it was very cool to see a lot of entrepreneurial activity in and around the city. Generally, I was very impressed, and things have gotten noticeably more active, even since only 12 months ago when I left. Kudos to everyone involved.

In this post, though, I want to talk about one of the things I didn’t see as much as I would have liked to in Pittsburgh. It is one of the softest but most crucial elements of entrepreneurship, and that’s scrappiness.

It’s fun to see people ‘just do stuff’ in an incredibly intense manner and ask all the details questions later. If you’re a technical person, scrappiness means getting an idea, doing a back-of-the-envelope validation to convince yourself it’s decent, and hacking it up. If you’re a business person, scrappiness means talking to people who have real problems in life or business, discovering even a simple solution, and putting together a team to create a it.

California lives and breathes this concept of scrappiness, that is, as Nike would say, ‘just do it’. Almost everyone is a self-starter and a risk-taker, not just thinking about wanting to succeed or worrying about failure, but methodically building up success with hard work.

I think Pittsburgh has a little bit of a ways to go to get there. I say this because, when I was back, I heard a lot of the same comments over and over. Here’s a few examples, with comments following:

1) “I am just putting the finishing touches on our great business plan.” — why not talk to customers instead? why not build a prototype? talking to a potential customer for 5 minutes is better than planning in solitude for 5 years.

2) “Yeah you know it’s so hard to find the time with school and everything.” — you can always find ample time to work on an idea, even with something else full-time, if you really want it. it may not be easy or comfortable, but that’s why it’s so rewarding and why so few people can really do it.

3) “I’ll tell you about it in a month or two when we’re a bit farther along.” — get all the feedback right away. you don’t need to be perfect before you exhibit what you have. if you’re scared to get feedback, chances are you won’t be able to adapt quick enough.

4) “I have a great idea, I just need some people to do it!” — more often than not, the idea is 10% and the team/execution is the other 90%. with only the former, it’s nothing to get excited about yet, so work on the latter.

5) “I want to do a startup, I just haven’t had a great idea yet.” — just ‘wanting to do a startup’ doesn’t entitle you to success. be humble and join something, even at the ground floor. in the mean time, immerse yourself in cool work and think critically about interesting markets until you don’t have to make this statement anymore.

In general, I think this scrappiness point boils down to turning every moment of inaction, uncertainty, and fear into one of action, boldness, and opportunity. Scrappy people figure out a way to make money without an elaborately detailed business plan, find every minute they have to work on their company despite outside time sinks, meticulously gather feedback early and often, build excellent teams that win regardless of the ‘big idea’, and voraciously seek out opportunities instead of just ‘wanting’ them. Scrappiness is seeing all of the angles to find a win, versus worrying about all the reasons you might lose. Scrappiness is wanting it really bad.

I think the pervasiveness of the scrappy mentality in California exists because there are so many visible successes. It forces people to be modest and determined, and provides a large supply of successful mentors to teach the up-and-comers how to win. When you’re in somewhat of a smaller pond, like Pittsburgh, there are fewer people to learn from, and not as many competitive forces to drive you to work harder and more meticulously than the next guy. We need to grow the pond and, in the mean time, get some piranhas in the water.

The good thing is, we have so many smart people in Pittsburgh via industry and the universities. We have more than enough raw talent. The trick is grooming these individuals and turning them into scrappy, voracious entrepreneurs who know how to win, and more importantly, want to win more than the next guy, even the next guys in California. And that isn’t an academic exercise or something that can be taught in the classroom, it’s a macro cultural/psychological exercise. And that means improving it is a tougher and more drawn-out battle for sure. We’ll get there, but it will take time.