The steel mills are gone. Our national image is more a reflection of history and the popularity of our beloved football team than anything else.

But Pittsburgh has completed its wonderful transformation from a smoky, industrial city into not only one of America’s most livable cities, but also one of the best cities for new entrepreneurs to blossom. With the help and mentoring of other entrepreneurs, business veterans and, most importantly, the AlphaLab startup accelerator program, my company–The Resumator–was able to blossom as well.

The Resumator is an easy way for growing businesses to hire. Instead of relying on an HR e-mail address and Excel spreadsheets to manage the hiring process, employers can use our Web-based tools to promote jobs and review resumes. Our software helps employers spend less time on tedious hiring tasks and more time on growing their businesses.

I had the idea for The Resumator in June 2008. Before then I was a senior Web designer at a local design firm, and one of my responsibilities was to help review resumes. My boss would send me a zip file of resumes and I would download them all to my computer, open them one by one, and before I knew it I had lost 15 minutes and all I had accomplished was opening resumes. I still needed to review them and share my thoughts with my boss. It was a huge pain.

Being a software person, I was curious as to why I could not think of a product that made reviewing resumes easier. I was looking online for the “Quickbooks for recruiting” and found nothing. There seemed to be an opportunity, but how big it was was not something I thought about. I didn’t look at market size, nor did I do projections; I just started writing code.

I need to be honest here and say the rest is kind of fuzzy. I started writing code at night for this thing called “The Resumator.” I planned to charge money for it, but I never really thought much about whether or not someone would pay for this kind of service. I just continued writing code, designed a logo and sort of assumed it would all work out. But there was this one word that always loomed in my mind: risk.

Like many wannabe entrepreneurs, I didn’t find stability in working for someone else. I knew someday I would make the “jump” to start my own thing because I was never risk averse when it came to my career. I had endured a rough childhood of poverty and had become moderately successful. That makes you somewhat fearless. But I soon discovered my “fearless threshold,” and that was the idea of quitting my job with no funds to support my new business. That simply was not going to happen. I had a wife who relied on me to keep up my end of the bargain. We had some money but taking $25,000 out of savings to start a company was past my threshold. I could not make that leap. I needed help.

After he heard my dilemma, Jim Jen, an executive in residence at Innovation Works (a Pittsburgh regional economic development organization) encouraged me to reapply to the AlphaLab program, which is IW’s startup accelerator program. AlphaLab provides new entrepreneurs with seed capital, great mentors and an entrepreneurial peer group to help launch their startup. I had applied before and did not make the cut. This time I did.

The months I spent in the AlphaLab program were crucial to my development as an entrepreneur. Here I was a veteran design professional, awards and all, but I was essentially ignorant when it came to launching a business.

The most important thing I learned during AlphaLab was the power of mentoring. People with bright pasts can help you make your future bright as well. I remember dithering about quitting my job even after I received the seed funding, and Frank Demmler, one of my mentors, gave me the best advice: “You’ll know when to start your startup when not starting it is no longer an option.” That moment for me was when I earned my first paying customer. I felt loyalty and an obligation to that person. “Not starting” was no longer an option. I quit my job a week later.

Outsiders sometimes view the $15,000-$25,000 provided by startup programs as being too little. They’re wrong. You’ll need to lease a server. You’ll need to buy computers or software manuals. You’ll need to pay contractors to do some dirty work. You’ll even need to pay an attorney to look at the document that GETS you the investment. If I had to pay $2,000 out of my pocket simply to incorporate and get legal documents produced, I probably would have never started my business at that time. Being able to chip away at a small five-figure bank account to support the business operations is extremely helpful.

Another thing I learned was how the investment world works. You do some meetings. You forward documents to an attorney. You make calls. You sit in a room and they hand you probably the biggest single check you’ve ever received. Throughout that GLORIOUS process, you learn about important issues like dilution, option pools, pre and post money, convertible notes, etc. You need to be able to speak this language fluently in order to be taken seriously when negotiating later. The experience of convincing the program to invest in your startup at least lays the foundation for when you may be negotiating for that $1 million round.

Finally, remember that everyone roots for startups. Everyone roots for startups.

I cannot tell you how amazing it is that some very important people will do almost anything for a startup in these programs. Venture capitalists and other influential people will contact prospective customers, make introductions, share tips, and do so many other things with no expectation of anything in return—expect for you to succeed. The startup program organizers will work hard to get you press, help you find employees and advisers, and even raise more capital. You never feel alone or abandoned unless you’re not asking for help. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons to get into an incubator. You’re going to have one hell of a stable of talent to help you get off the ground.

To date, I’m proud to say I’ve created four new jobs for my city, including my own. We are also in the closing stages of raising our first Series A investment (cross your fingers). That will bring another five or so jobs to my city as well. That’s one of the greatest things about a startup accelerator program—you can pay back the investment many times over, and in many ways other than money. I want to mentor future AlphaLab companies, and lead by example.

Perhaps what I am trying to say is that in Pittsburgh, if you can make a little noise, not only AlphaLab, but an entire city will be supporting you. There’s a lot of opportunity here. So until we choose a new nickname, I emphatically encourage you start a business in my Steel City. And let AlphaLab help you make it happen.

My company had early investment inquiries, great buzz (see here and here), so I just figured I just had to keep generating some buzz, blow out the product, and slowly grow the company. I also had a small amount of seed stage investment through the Pittsburgh-based AlphaLab program, which I was sipping, and I was buoyed by the complete arrogance that The Resumator was too good for an investor to pass up on once I left AlphaLab. Yes, I was that idiotic young entrepreneur who, despite reading everything out there from seasoned colleagues, was intoxicated by that first paying customer.

Your first customer is like the first person who ever liked you. They provide you with a rush of exaggerated confidence. A belief that you are are indeed a hottie, despite your insecurities. Sure it was just a, “I think you’re cute” compliment in the hallway at school, but you’re projecting that moment way out into the future, using it to predict your potential. You’re imagining your “cuteness” trend is hockey sticking so far up and to the right that some woman, or some man out there, will have no choice but to acquire you. In essence they are taking you off the market, freezing out competitors as you walk down the aisle. And you assume you’ll have many choices too, as I assumed I would have many investment offers.

I now realize how easy it actually is to get a few customers. Take that moment, love it, and then realize it is the easy part. It’s behind me now, and as I look at my non-hockey-stick-looking “soup bowl” trend, I take joy in the simple fact that the trend is not a downhill slalom. Sure, it’s paid traffic, costing good money a month. Many sign up for the Free Plan. I of course am banking that they will outgrow that plan. But with my expenses being ridiculously low—I mean less than a car payment—I can afford a little ad spend to drive traffic, generate usage, and in the process alleviate my anxiety when I have low sign up days. I have a 30-day free trial, which means no sign ups today equals little chance of revenue next month.

How I wish I could travel back in time, bleep slap the living bleep out of myself and focus on traffic growth, traffic growth, and traffic growth. This is a numbers game, people. You can predict your revenue simply based on the amount of traffic that comes to your site. You must scale your traffic to scale your business. This means every month you must know if your traffic grew or fell, and why.

Here’s an important tip—separate usage traffic from sales traffic. If your site involves daily usage by customers, or the driving of non prospects to your website via those customers, your traffic numbers are flooded with visits that were most likely not intended to generate revenue. You must devise ways to get at exactly how many people visit your website as a potential customer. Here’s some tips:

• Use a special character pattern in all your ad links so you can easily search for that traffic in Google Analytics. I use /home/s:source
• If possible, use a subdomain or some other URL than your home page for users to log in. This cuts out some of that loyal traffic from the sales traffic
• Track the average number of log ins per day and then always subtract that number of visits from the tally for the home page

Do these things and it is amazing how you can zero in on exact conversion stats. I have some funky tools for doing the math on this quickly. It’s a little obsessive, but incredibly valuable. When the template is perfected, I will share it with you.

I digress.

Now I have to show investors how I will scale The Resumator, and yesterday’s late night exercise was my attempt to mathematically predict how my company would do that. See, I hate projections that are just numbers thrown out there. I need data to base projections on. So after half a year in business, I had numbers to plug in—and let me tell you—my conversions need to get much better in order for me to make a nice business out of this.

So here’s the plan:

• The introduction of recruiter-focused product plans (more expensive, easier customer to acquire)
• A buzz marketing tactic that provides me with a 350% boost in traffic (gotta make it happen)
• 40,000 visitors to my web site’s sales funnel by October (via the buzz)
• Doubling the conversion percentage of all my plans by optimizing my landing pages (I think the conversion can be that much better from where I am)
• Convince this investor that I can do this

I’ve already convinced myself, but the anxiety of not knowing the future sure makes a gray hair grow.