Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Jeff Maki, left, new products lead, and Nathan Martin, chief executive officer, along with Carl DiSalvo (not pictured) founded DeepLocal Inc., which creates software than allows communities to share information on the Internet.

By Corilyn Shropshire
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Less than a decade ago, Nathan Martin was a punk-rocking artist-cum-activist whose network consisted more of politically driven hackers and anarchists than profit-hungry investors.

Now, on the verge of turning 30, Mr. Martin isn't any less of a rebel, but he's channeled his purpose into a money-making software venture, DeepLocal Inc.

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He's among a small gang of twenty- and thirtysomethings -- some natives, others newcomers -- who have chosen Pittsburgh as the ideal launch pad for their businesses for reasons that would seem to be less-than-ideal: The city's old fashioned clubbiness, they say, is more opportunity than obstacle.

That Pittsburghers are rumored to have two or three degrees of separation between them rather than the standard six actually has helped Mr. Martin and his partners, Jeffrey Maki and Carl DiSalvo, grow their not-yet-year-old firm.

"It's easy to be well-networked in this city," said the Greensburg-bred Mr. Martin, who lived in San Francisco at the tail end of the dot.com gold rush but later returned to be an artist-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University.

The company, which is developing Web-based software that allows users to collect and share information to create maps, grew out of a project he started while at CMU.

Everyone in Pittsburgh is connected in some way, it seems, whether professionally, socially or genetically -- and sometimes, a combination of the three. So word spreads fast if you're doing good work or bad, according to Mr. Martin. And connections are made sometimes in unlikely ways. He pointed to DeepLocal's first programmer, Scott Connelly, whose mother sold the Squirrel Hill home of the firm's chief financial officer, Beth Friel.

While Pittsburgh's fabled small-town closeness is smothering for some, for a young business just getting started, having your name and story spread like spilled milk can be an advantage.

It certainly helped 25-year-old Baltimore-native and CMU graduate Shanna Tellerman, who wasn't thinking that her graduate school project developing software that simulates real-life emergency situations would morph into a business, SimOps Studios. It did when, in less than a year, introductions made by a CMU professor and a local tech attorney led to a slew of e-mails and phone calls that led to coffee dates and more connections.

"If I came to this city cold," the 25-year-old Ms. Tellerman, said, "I'm not so sure those doors would've been so easily opened."

Drawn to the universities and persuaded to stay by the city's affordable, easy-living amenities, this group of business upstarts also is cracking the mold of the typical business-minded, buttoned-down Pittsburgh entrepreneur -- and using their differences to stand out in the crowd.

It shows, since some of the area's most-talked about young tech firms are led by young anti-geeks, with roots steeped in disciplines such as art or design -- not in business, engineering or number crunching.

Like DeepLocal's Mr. Martin and SimOps' Ms. Tellerman, Eric Brown is an artist whose socially focused video gaming startup, ImpactGames, seemed to naturally emerge from a research project he and partner Asi Burak, a former Israeli intelligence officer, were doing as graduate students at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center. Simulating conflict in the Middle East, "PeaceMaker" plants players in the shoes of the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president dealing with a violent event. What these company chiefs lack in experience is offset by passion and other skills that are helping them get ahead, say some of the business veterans who are assisting them. They are "natural networkers," said Michael Matesic, CEO of Idea Foundry, the Oakland-based tech startup generator.

"There's an openness that comes with their backgrounds that enables them to interact with broad groups," he said.

Mr. Martin considers it part of his job as DeepLocal's CEO "to get people excited [about his firm]. It's not much different from my role being a singer in a band."

They also are young and look it. Long and lanky, Mr. Martin sports a "faux hawk" haircut that, he says, is the closest he's ever been to looking like a CEO.

Then there's Marcel Bruchez, a Silicon Valley transplant who's tongue piercing could belie the fact that he co-founded and ran a biotech firm that he sold in 2005.

Dr. Bruchez, 33, a chemist who's mulling starting his second biotech startup in Pittsburgh, has "the advantage" of having his accomplishments offset any potentially raised eyebrows over his "nontraditional" appearance. He figures his nontraditional look probably reminds the business people he meets of their children, and it plants him firmly in their memory.

And while California may have a reputation for being more open to the looks and ambitions of young turks such as Dr. Bruchez, Pittsburgh's strengths -- affordable, easy-living -- make it an attractive spot for a growing group of Generation X and Y'ers to plant their firms.

"The rent is low, the talent is here, people are looking for a place to stay -- there just aren't [enough] jobs," Dr. Bruchez said, a problem he hopes to help solve when he launches his firm.

Pittsburgh's selling point, these entrepreneurs say, is the ability for newcomers to the city's business scene to find open doors to money, advice, workers and customers -- not to mention the exposure that being connected to the universities provides.

But Mr. Martin cautioned that Pittsburgh's close-knit coziness can also bite. "You don't want to burn bridges ever in Pittsburgh. It lasts a lot longer than it might in other cities."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 27, 2007) In this story as originally published Feb. 18, 2007 about young entrepreneurs in Pittsburgh, the age of Marcel Bruchez was incorrect. He is 33.