I'm 24 and, though originally from New York, proud to call Pittsburgh my hometown. I'm a huge Pirates fan and an even bigger Penguins fan. I have been a technology entrepreneur for the last five years, and have had some success, being recognized multiple times in the business pages.

		Former Downtown resident Jason Putorti sold his Internet marketing firm Novaurora to the Fitting Group in August. He now lives in San Jose and is working as the lead designer for Mountain View, Calif.-based Mint Software.

In January, I went out to the San Francisco Bay-Silicon Valley area to attend Macworld, talk to a few people about a new business plan I was working on and begin to carve out my own West Coast network of fellow entrepreneurs. At the end of the week, I had three job offers ranging from brand manager to chief product designer to chief technology officer with startups in various stages of the life-cycle.

After years of trying to find any sustainable traction in Pittsburgh and defending its potential to anyone who suggested that my city was out of touch or backward, I was starting to see why entrepreneurs and techies flocked West. It also was tough for me to believe that it all -- the job offers and offers of cash and equity -- came from meetings set up by a single contact, a friend of mine who has been freelancing in Silicon Valley for a few years, when my network in Pittsburgh has been cultivated over seven years.

The thing about Silicon Valley is that it is one big talent recruitment machine; I didn't think of it that way at first. My partner on my business plan told me as much after the initial teleconference with our first potential investor: "That guy doesn't care if you're pitching e-communism.com right now. He just wants to get you onto his team." I asked him why, and his opinion struck me as ugly at the time. "Because it's obvious that he's not buying into the idea nearly as much as he's buying into having someone with the ability to build it."

I took his comments with a grain of salt, as I couldn't believe that talent was actually scarce. But he was right: I'm continuing to be solicited for startups, networking, etc., and I've begun to send these inquiries out to my Pittsburgh friends.

And that's the point of this article.

Western Pennsylvania leaders talk pretty regularly about the "brain drain," the term the newspapers keep using for the exodus of young talent from the area.

But it doesn't seem that they understand it, and if they do, perhaps they just don't believe it or want to really get in the trenches and do something about it. Meeting after meeting that my partner and I scheduled in Pittsburgh about my business plan was met with no return phone calls or e-mails despite amicable introductions, or a succession of increasingly high hurdles to jump in order to get a seed investment.

We both wanted to establish our company in Pittsburgh, but all the interest we got came from out of town, and to quote one of the prospective investors, "No one wants to get on a plane to see what they bought." If we accepted California money, it would have to be a California company.

Moreover, in Silicon Valley, if you fail at a business, people come out of the woodwork and attach a price tag to it -- considering it invaluable experience, more so than any MBA, which is not often the case in Pittsburgh. Indeed, somebody recently told a friend of mine in Pittsburgh that he doesn't have enough gray hair to be taken seriously by venture capital -- even though my friend is absolutely brilliant and is very successful with his other ventures.

It's time to wake up and shake off this ignorance once and for all. I'm writing this from San Jose, Calif., the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. In 1950, there were 95,000 people living here. Today, there are nearly 1 million. San Jose produces more patents than any other city in the United States, and 35 percent of all the venture capital in America is tied up in this one city. It clearly has formed a critical mass of expertise and experience ready to aid other entrepreneurs, a lure that recruits technologists from Pittsburgh and the rest of the country.

Pittsburgh needs its own culture of recruitment, a mind-set instilled into its private sector if it is going to reverse the "brain drain." As a natural resource, intellect is hard to beat: It is flexible, long-lasting and can improve nearly any kind of business. Then, when those recruits decide to have children, genetically predisposed to achievement themselves, most of the work is already done and they will stick around, too. Having a culture of recruitment seems to pay off over a long period.

I'm not saying Pittsburgh needs to be Silicon Valley. It has its own strengths. But clearly what I have described is not what city leaders and politicians want to have happen time and again: pushing young talent with the drive and determination to make the next billion-dollar company right out of town. It doesn't make good business sense. (That's not to suggest I have a sure-fire billion-dollar company in the pipeline, but it's worth noting that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook reportedly turned down a billion-dollar acquisition offer from Yahoo recently and he is only 22.)

Anyone who knows me would tell you I wish my good fortunes would have happened in a place where I wouldn't have to miss the first Pirates' home opener since 2002, and that I readily boast about Pittsburgh being the most beautiful city in America. It would be nice if those people who have the ability to change the climate in Pittsburgh would go west and try to understand Silicon Valley. It's not the nightclubs, downtowns or the weather: it's the spirit.