Philly EnterpriseTech Highlights 12/9-12/13: Why is Philly passed over by Big Tech?

I authored the below tweet in a pique of sarcasm, knowing Philadelphia never really had a chance at Apple. Also Amazon, though it might have garnered the 3rd slot given to Nashville.






The New York Times noted a dramatic new trend of west coast tech firms looking to set up east coast operations and find east coast people to fill them. True, but this seems to pass Philly by for the most part.


Among the Big 5 or Big 6 tech companies, Philly barely exists. Amazon is here only because of Ring.com's assumption of assets and people from the company formerly known as Zonoff. And even in that instance they airlifted a large number of people to California.

Boston is facing somewhat similar problems, but looks at them differently . And Boston is said to be getting several hundred new Apple jobs over the next few years. Philly and Boston generally compete for biotech money and jobs, but Boston is gaining more ground.

You might say Pennsylvania is the problem, and that's somewhat true, but Pittsburgh is booming in the high value R&D area, having developed specific talent pools at Carnegie-Mellon and UPMC. And Google just gave its top healthcare job to a guy working in the middle of the state.

So I'm suggesting that people do a deep self-analysis of what the real problem is. Is it the onerous taxes, particularly Philadelphia's, that scare people off? Or some radicalized City Council members who want Philadelphia to become the next Oakland, and don't understand economics? Or is it the presence of Comcast, sucking up much of the best talent.

Or is it the trash? Or the persistent culture of political corruption that nobody internally seems to be ale to challenge? (true in some suburban counties as well). Or the crime, to me the most serious problem due to its very randomness.

Is it, as Kamala Harris once said, a problem of perception, surviving old adages about Philly now largely abated in fact? I'm sure that's been studied by the City, the Chamber of Commerce, and other regional and state organizations.


But regardless of these factors, Philly is doing pretty well in the venture racket, and has developed a small but successful class of repeat entrepreneurs, and some of that is spreading. And it may just have to grow from its own bootstraps rather than relying on corporate natural selection. Which may be the best way to a point.











































































at 6:12 PM 0 comments

Tom Paine's Iron Bridge / BUILDING A UNITED STATE

From http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Tom-Paines-Iron-Bridge/

Tom Paine's Iron Bridge
BUILDING A UNITED STATES
Edward G. Gray (Author)

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The little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Tom Paine’s political blueprint for the United States.

In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams judged the author of Common Sense as having “a better hand at pulling down than building.” Adams’s dismissive remark has helped shape the prevailing view of Tom Paine ever since. But, as Edward G. Gray shows in this fresh, illuminating work, Paine was a builder. He had a clear vision of success for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent a decade planning: an iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia.

When Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1774, the city was thriving as America’s largest port. But the seasonal dangers of the rivers dividing the region were becoming an obstacle to the city’s continued growth. Philadelphia needed a practical connection between the rich grain of Pennsylvania’s backcountry farms and its port on the Delaware. The iron bridge was Paine’s solution.

The bridge was part of Paine’s answer to the central political challenge of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and as geographically fragmented as the United States. The iron construction was Paine’s brilliant response to the age-old challenge of bridge technology: how to build a structure strong enough to withstand the constant battering of water, ice, and wind.

The convergence of political and technological design in Paine’s plan was Enlightenment genius. And Paine drew other giants of the period as patrons: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and for a time his great ideological opponent, Edmund Burke. Paine’s dream ultimately was a casualty of the vicious political crosscurrents of revolution and the American penchant for bridges of cheap, plentiful wood. But his innovative iron design became the model for bridge construction in Britain as it led the world into the industrial revolution.


at 11:15 AM 0 comments

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