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Emerging markets are trending. In and out of fashion. First, Austin was the next big thing, then Atlanta and, more recently, Miami. Pittsburgh has had its moments so far, but all the signs are there that it could be next. It also doesn’t hurt to have local expertise in the category every VC is currently looking to invest in.
The Steel City has all the ingredients to be a hotbed for startups: a great university system, a cheap cost of living — certainly compared to places like New York and the Bay Area — and a rapid proliferation of seed firms and startups. Additionally, he has seen a home-grown success story in language learning app Duolingo, which is expected to be valued at nearly $4 billion by 2021.
Startups in the city have raised more than $534 million through Dec. 12, 2022, according to PitchBook, which, while not a lot of capital, is better than 2021, when they raised $336 million. And while the data isn’t consistently trending to the right and up— In 2019, there was a major foreign deal (Uber Advanced Technologies) that raised the annual investment to 1.3 billion dollars – investors on the ground can feel the potential of the city. (I’ve talked about Pittsburgh’s startup ecosystem on the City Take Pittsburgh podcast in the fifth season of two recent high-profile startup failures there, the Ford- and VW-backed Argo AI and the robotic vertical farming outfit. You can listen here .)
Ven Raju, president and CEO of Innovation Works, said he has seen the market grow 10x in the last ten years and 6x in the last three years.
“The ecosystem is on an incredible upward trajectory,” he added.
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