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Technical.ly is a digital media company headquartered in Philadelphia that covers local technology communities and startup ecosystems across the mid-Atlantic and beyond. Founded in February 2009 as a WordPress blog called Technically Philly, it has grown into a national news organization that reports on local innovation economies, publishing daily in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Delaware, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. The company combines professional journalism on entrepreneurship, tech careers, and economic opportunity with events, newsletters, and consulting services, and it describes its mission as making innovation accessible to anyone, anywhere, so that all communities can thrive.
Technical.ly was founded in February 2009 by three recent Temple University graduates: Christopher Wink, Brian James Kirk, and Sean Blanda. The three had worked together at The Temple News, the university's student newspaper, and after graduating they found themselves surrounded by the financial collapse of 2008 and the upheaval in how journalism was produced and paid for. Unable to land traditional media jobs, they decided to create their own: a blog covering Philadelphia's technology community, which they sensed was full of substantive work that nobody was writing about.
Wink scraped together about $16,000 from landscaping jobs while the three attended tech events around Philadelphia to learn about the community. Their modest goal at the outset was simply to find journalism jobs in the Philadelphia market. In 2011, after freelance writing gigs, more landscaping, and a year-long stint by Wink with a homelessness advocacy nonprofit, Wink went full-time with the site. Sean Blanda left to pursue other ventures in June 2012 but retained a small ownership stake. The site was rebranded as Technical.ly and began its expansion beyond Philadelphia.
Baltimore became Technical.ly's first market outside Philadelphia in 2012, when CEO Christopher Wink began learning about Baltimore's emerging tech economy, crisscrossing the city by bus to meet the community's early champions. The company widened its mission statement at that point from "a better Philadelphia through technology" to "better cities through technology." Delaware launched in 2014, followed by Washington, D.C., and later Pittsburgh, where the company also publishes.
The expansion reflected a conviction that innovation economies were taking shape in cities across the region and that local business journalism was not covering technology and innovation at the pace those emerging economies were growing. Over the years, Technical.ly has also produced reporting series in about a dozen other American cities, and its audience now spans more than 20 states. The company celebrated its 15th anniversary in February 2024, marking a decade and a half of watching and reporting as tech communities in its markets came together alongside growing companies and tech-focused organizations.
Technical.ly's journalism focuses on entrepreneurship, tech careers, and economic opportunity at the local level. Its reporters cover startups, venture funding, workforce development, STEM education, civic technology, and the local effects of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and commercialized science. The audience is made up primarily of experienced technologists and entrepreneurs, aspiring peers, and their supporters.
The company's local coverage has chronicled both established institutions and new entrants in its markets. In Philadelphia, that has meant coverage of long-standing organizations such as Comcast and Ben Franklin Technology Partners alongside newer groups such as Amplify Philly and 1Philadelphia. The outlet has also examined difficult questions for its community, including the ethics of defense technology: Technical.ly has reported and organized for more than a decade in Washington, D.C., the heart of a defense tech boom, and has published editorials questioning how entrepreneur-support and technology leaders should engage with tools of war, ultimately formalizing a policy against exhibiting weapons at its general networking events.
The company also produces editorial franchises that recognize community members, including RealLIST, newsroom-curated roundups of influential technologists. The RealLIST Engineers series, launched in 2019, highlights software developers and other technologists who contribute meaningfully to product development while bettering their local tech communities, including mentors, meetup organizers, and company leaders both established and below the radar.
Events have been central to Technical.ly's identity and business from early on. The company organizes Philly Tech Week, a week-long celebration of technology and innovation in Philadelphia, along with similar programming in its other markets. It also hosts the annual Technical.ly Builders Conference. These events serve a dual purpose: they generate revenue and they embody the company's conviction that journalism should actively build the communities it covers.
The community-building ethos dates to the company's earliest days. In 2009, there was little sense of community in Philadelphia's tech sector, and the founders believed they had a responsibility to help create one. They hosted computer trainings and coding bootcamps, facilitated early city council hearings in Philadelphia and Baltimore on entrepreneurial engagement, and organized civic hacking and data and innovation policy events. The company's 5,000-person public Slack community continues that tradition of convening technologists online.
Technical.ly built a diversified revenue model unusual among local digital news outlets. Around 2016, co-founder Brian James Kirk estimated that about 40 percent of revenue came from events, 40 percent from consulting engagements, 10 percent from advertising, and 10 percent from grants. The company finished 2016 with $1.67 million in revenue. Native advertising, newsletter marketing, and events allow the company to help clients reach its audience of technologists, entrepreneurs, and their supporters.
The company's services business helps technology employers, service providers, and others reach its coveted audience through content, newsletters, and events. Place-based economic development organizations also financially underwrite the company's freely available reporting as a communications, engagement, and storytelling strategy. Charitable giving to the Technical.ly Journalism Fund helps keep its information free and accessible for residents seeking workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. The company's professional reporting reaches about 150,000 monthly unique visitors on its website, with newsletters averaging open rates above 35 percent to some 35,000 professionals, and more than 50,000 social media followers.
Christopher Wink serves as cofounder and CEO of Technically Media, overseeing both the editorial and business sides of the company. He started publishing in February 2009 and came on full-time in December 2010, and has been the public face of the company's community-building philosophy. Brian James Kirk, the other remaining cofounder, has directed the company's business development. Sean Blanda, the third cofounder, departed in 2012.
The company's newsroom employs journalists trained in entrepreneurial ecosystems, STEM workforce trends, and the local effects of technology. Team members have described the company's culture as mission-driven, with staff working across editorial, events, and business functions. The company has been candid about the pressures facing its model: in 2025, a departing staff member wrote that despite successful fundraising, support had not arrived soon enough in Maryland, D.C., or Virginia to sustain his role overseeing coverage of those areas, attributing the shortfall to federal economic policies trickling down to the economic development organizations and foundations that funded the work.
Technical.ly's mission has evolved alongside its geography. The founders' earliest attempt at a mission statement was "covering the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia," sometimes shortened to the tagline "a better Philadelphia through technology." When the company expanded to Baltimore in 2012, the mission widened to "better cities through technology," reflecting an unusually city-first approach at a time when technology was still seen as a suburban phenomenon. The argument was that greater urban density of tech business would benefit innovators and make tech careers more accessible.
Today the company describes its vision as making innovation accessible to anyone anywhere by keeping news and information accessible, to ensure all places thrive. It believes innovation can come from anyone, anywhere, and contributes to that vision with local journalism on entrepreneurship, tech careers, and economic opportunity. The evolution from a city booster tagline to a broader vision of accessible innovation reflects both the company's growth and the maturation of the startup ecosystems it covers.
Newsletters are a core product for Technical.ly. The company distributes its professional reporting through its website, free newsletters to tens of thousands of professionals, and social media. The newsletters' consistently high open rates reflect the engaged, professional character of the audience. The company's annual Builders Conference and its public Slack community of 5,000 members provide additional venues for convening the technologists and entrepreneurs it covers.
The RealLIST franchise has become one of the company's signature editorial products, with editions recognizing engineers, technologists, and other community contributors across its markets. Nominations are vetted by panels of technologists as well as the newsroom, and the lists aim to include both established figures and those below the radar who solve problems, build solutions, and guide the next generation.
Technical.ly has been studied as a model for sustainable local digital journalism. Nieman Journalism Lab profiled the company in 2012 and again in 2017, examining how it diversified its business with a focus on community. The Columbia Journalism Review has covered its work, and the company appeared on "Michele's List," a ranking of community-based news startups, as one of the top niche sites by revenue.
The company's approach, building a media business around convening and serving a professional community rather than chasing mass traffic, has influenced thinking about local news sustainability. Its executives have argued that when a publication helps build the community it covers, the community's success becomes the publication's success, a philosophy that has guided its investments in events, training, and civic engagement.
Technical.ly's model depends on the health of the innovation economies and the economic development organizations that support them. The company has acknowledged that funding from those organizations can be volatile, particularly when federal economic policies squeeze the foundations and agencies that underwrite its reporting. The departure of staff covering the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia markets in 2025 illustrated the fragility of the model even for a company that has survived more than 15 years.
Nevertheless, the company's longevity is itself remarkable in digital media. Few local news startups founded in 2009 have survived, let alone expanded to five markets. Its leaders point to continued expansion as evidence that the model works, and the company's 15th anniversary in 2024 was an occasion for the tech communities it covers to reflect on how far they have come. The central question for its next chapter is whether its community-centered, diversified-revenue model can continue to sustain local technology journalism as the ecosystems it covers keep evolving.
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