Had Brian Gross been born a decade or two earlier, he might have been one of the many Pittsburgh natives all but forced to leave the city for better opportunities. Instead, the 25-year-old computer scientist in 2012 co-founded AthleteTrax, a startup that offers web-based payment processing and other online services for minor sports leagues, in one of the hottest innovation hubs in America: his hometown.
“My business partner and I both grew up in Pittsburgh,” Gross, the company’s chief technical officer, told Salon. “We’re old enough to remember the steel days and the rebirth of the city.” Now if the weather permits, he and fellow co-founder and CEO Jon Halpern sometimes work on the roof patio of their office by Carnegie Mellon University that overlooks a row of restaurants and bars.
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