There's a growing amount of hype and momentum coming out of Pittsburgh's emerging startup and innovation ecosystem, yet there's seemingly no unified index to quantify various events like funds raised, employees hired and exits made throughout the community.
Or so argues InnovatePGH, a public-private partnership based in Oakland that's looking to advance and champion the region's startup scene.
As part of that mission more broadly and as part of an effort to better quantify the progress of the region's startups, InnovatePGH has launched a research portal called ASTRI — short for Access to Startups, Tech, Research and Investment — which is looking to streamline the breadth of innovation happening in southwestern Pennsylvania, not only for those who live here but also for local trade groups or investors who wish to better showcase the region's potential at exhibitions and conventions around the world.
Jason Griess, ecosystem director at InnovatePGH, has worked on ASTRI for the past six months. ASTRI is powered in part by various data points sourced by both Netherlands-based Dealroom, a global data platform of insights on startups and investments, as well as by Griess himself, who audits all of the companies that appear on the portal to ensure they are legitimate and that they call Pittsburgh home or that they have a significant presence in the region.
The need for such a platform, Griess said, has been a long time coming.
"We've been in this place, in this cultural narrative here in Pittsburgh for a while of the tech world sort of coming as a pillar of our economic recovery, but it's still a little bit anecdotal. We've heard these stories and that story, so what you're going to see today is a product that is the first attempt to sort of wrap our arms around this concept and put borders around what we call an innovation ecosystem," Griess said. "This is a tool for in-market partners in the region to streamline the process of, let's say, corporate investors or corporate innovation teams finding the startups in Pittsburgh that they may be interested in helping to scale or investing in."
That's phase one of ASTRI, Griess said, which officially launched on Thursday. Phase two, still under development, is aiming to create an analogous database for the research that's coming out of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC so that said research can more easily be searched for and found by those who stand to benefit from it. Griess didn't offer a timeline on when phase two will rollout, noting that he's in continued conversations with the various involved entities about what this component of the platform will ultimately look like.
Startups do not have to pay a fee to be featured on ASTRI, they just have to have a registered website that references their company. On the user side, an account isn't necessary to make for the use of the platform but making one, which also doesn't come at a cost, allows for additional features to be unlocked and saved to a profile.
Despite its similarity to other platforms, ASTRI is not a database built around only the startups that are better known in the region nor is it striving to be a social media tool. Quantifying Pittsburgh's success is its core, Griess said.
"The whole thing is to increase attention and investment in the local ecosystem, but this is not a social network for founders. This is not necessarily a tool for founders to find themselves. They could use it that way or find each other if they wanted to. They could see in the Pittsburgh region 'who is in my industry, and if I don't know, I can go find them' if they want, but that's not what this tool is primarily designed for," Griess said. "There are other tools out there that are really interested in that social aspect of ecosystem building. This is really focused on investment and bringing that attention to the ecosystem outside."
