Latest news with #ChrisWink
Technical.ly
a day ago
- Business
- Technical.ly
Baltimore weekly roundup: A $15M local cyber seed; legal pitfalls; Johns Hopkins' hiring freeze
This week's newsletter features news on an eight-figure seed round for Pixee, a cyber company whose tech not only finds code vulnerabilities, but fixes them, too. Plus, several local founders shared their advice on legal strategies and pitfalls for startups during a panel at our 2025 Builders Conference. Scroll down for more news from throughout the Baltimore region. 📰 News Incubator: What to know • The Economic Development Administration rescinded six of the recent awards it granted to previously designated Tech Hubs earlier this year. Commerce plans to open applications for another funding round this summer and announce awardees in 2026, putting Baltimore back in the running for millions. [ • Johns Hopkins is pausing raises and freezing hiring as federal cuts continue. The university already announced it would lay off 2,000 employees. [Baltimore Biz Journal] • Meta is relying on Baltimore's Constellation Energy to secure nuclear power for fueling AI developments and data centers. [Baltimore Banner] • Harper's Choice Middle School in Columbia has a new STEM center thanks to the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation and the state. The philanthropic org, named after the Orioles player, has set up these centers across the country. [CBS/ • Baltimore City has an RFP open for internet service providers to deliver affordable services in public housing units. [BCIT] • Columbia cyber firm Tenable is acquiring Apex Security. The firm has been busy: Leadership announced the purchase of an Israeli firm earlier this year for $147 million in cash and $3 million in restricted stock units. Tenable also recently announced a new office opening in Tel Aviv and hired a chief product officer. [Tenable/ • Check out how to best deliver your startup pitch, among other lessons from founders and investors. [ • Maryland's AG is suing Trump over attempts to cut National Science Foundation programs. [AG Brown] 🗓️ On the Calendar • Partner event: Learn about the ways innovation, tech and outer space intersect on June 24 at the World Trade Center Institute's next AGILE Global Innovation Series event. [ Details here ] • Techstars showcases its AI Health accelerator cohort at a demo day in the Ravens' stadium on June 5. [ Details here ] • Network with local business owners and celebrate the nonprofit LET'S GO's new offices on June 5. [ Details here ] • Test out the latest in local video games during Indie Game Fest on June 7 at Enoch Pratt Free Library. [ Details here ] • Hear from CEO Chris Wink and leaders in Pittsburgh on June 11 about how elected officials and civil servants can improve local operations. [ Details here ] • Listen to how entrepreneurs have overcome different challenges on June 11 at an event hosted by EO Baltimore. [ Details here ] • Watch demos from local technologists on June 14 at the next Baltimore Code and Coffee. [ Details here ] • Local tech orgs are hosting a cookout on June 28 at Wonderground Park. []
Technical.ly
25-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Economic development has something to learn from — and teach — ecosystem building
Traditional economic development hunts for economic winners and big infrastructure, while ecosystem building focuses on stitching together many disparate parts, yet practitioners increasingly note they have much in common. The two approaches are converging under 'entrepreneurship-led economic development,' with certifying bodies adding courses and professionals code switching between the terms to build broader coalitions. Tensions persist — some grassroots efforts are dismissed as 'nice to have,' and some ecosystem builders scoff at 'fusty' marketing — but history suggests new disciplines mature by setting standards and proving outcomes. → Read on for details and join Chris Wink's weekly newsletter for more Rob Williams remembers an unusual family dinner-table debate from his childhood. His botanist father insisted that ecosystems were strictly natural phenomena. His small business-advocate mother argued that economic development could learn deeply from nature's interconnectedness. They each had a point. Today, Williams is the founder and director of SourceLink, a category-defining nonprofit software platform spun out of Kauffman Foundation research. It is among the first in a constellation of tools that introduced the 'ecosystem building' metaphor to traditional state and local economic development, a big, boring and quietly influential discipline around creation of jobs, business and regional output. Williams has an unusual balance. He's among the earliest definers of entrepreneurship ecosystem building, and he also has traditional economic development training. 'We can't thrive as economic developers without placing entrepreneurship and innovation at the heart of our strategies,' Williams said. Williams is part of an industry transformation, and like other professional and academic changes before, it takes time to sort out standards. In the 1830s, sociology emerged from political philosophy to better understand the 'social physics' of how culture shaped individuals. In the 1980s, behavioral economics began as a splinter group before later shaping the entire field. In both and many other cases, individuals obsessed over a narrow set of differences within a larger, more established discipline long enough that those differences became their own field of study. Local entrepreneurship boosters who identify as 'ecosystem builders' are attempting something similar. In the 2010s, community organizers, startuppers and post-Great Recession economic activists formed coalitions around the country. Stewarded by funders led by the Kansas City-based Kauffman Foundation, these business and economic types took hold of the ecosystem metaphor. Then the post-COVID entrepreneurship boom gave ecosystem building its primetime moment. 'The pandemic showed us the fragility of some of our systems and the power of local entrepreneurship to build resiliency,' Williams said. Today about 1,000 people list ' ecosystem builder ' as a job title on LinkedIn. Overwhelmingly they are entrepreneurs, small business advocates and self-identified connectors. In 2010, published the word 'ecosystem' about 100 times. Last year, we did so over 1,000 times, a 10x increase in 15 years. A similar, if lagging, surge followed in books. Dating to those childhood debates between his parents, Williams understands better than most the nuance of the ecosystem metaphor: Many overlapping, differently-sized, independent species interact in unexpected ways to support each other. Traditional 20th century-style economic development focuses on economic winners (established businesses) and top-down investments (industrial policy and big infrastructure projects). As set down by the Kauffman Foundation, ecosystem building focuses on nascent entrepreneurs and stitching together many disparate parts of a local economy. Economic development is the big-game hunter storming the bush. Ecosystem building is the botanist carefully handling a butterfly. These differences can present discomfort. Politics are an obvious one: standard economic development has been a bastion of American-style conservative capitalism, whereas ecosystem building adopted progressive concepts of mutual aid and, quite literally, environmentalism. Rather than an obstacle, Williams and others see this as an opportunity for coalition building. One of the only ideals that unites Americans across the political spectrum also unites progressive ecosystem builders and conservative economic development leaders: entrepreneurship. 'Entrepreneur-led economic development' The work of integrating ecosystem building into the larger and more-established economic development can now focus on terminology and process. The International Economic Development Council, the trade's primary certifying body with more than 4,500 members, is a natural leader, introducing courses and certifications. The group received more than 100 applicants for its director of entrepreneurship position, according to LinkedIn, a role that Williams's own mother held. IEDC CIO Dell Gines, who spoke this month at the Technically Builders Conference, is a long-standing ecosystem-building champion, dating to his time at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. He has helped incorporate ecosystem building tenets into established economic development. Williams too. For example, Williams adopts IEDC's preferred phrase of 'entrepreneurship-led economic development' (or ELED in the industry jargon) when speaking with more establishment economic development leaders. Other times, he relies on the 'ecosystem building' term. Insiders cite subtle differences but on the whole, they're becoming interchangeable. 'We have so much in common that it's more about language differences,' Williams said. 'You're code switching depending on who you talk with.' The merging isn't complete. At our storytelling-focused Builders Conference, one longtime ecosystem builder sneered on-stage at fusty economic development marketing. On the other side, a traditionally-trained economic development leader confided in me earlier this year that much grassroots 'ecosystem building' seems like 'a lot of Millennial bullshit.' For her, the small gatherings and resource mapping strike her as nice to have but not critical in her budget-constrained reality. The lesson from past discipline changes is that both approaches have something to teach, and to learn. Ecosystem building can sound faddish, and so years of establishing best practices and outcomes are welcome. Williams credits the 2017 book ' Beyond Collisions' as an example. Inspired by this, Technically has put forward a data-backed case for the economic outcomes of storytelling, another demonstrably important but squishy-sounding concept. Likewise, though, traditional economic development can overlook the real-world actions of individual humans. Entrepreneurs don't choose places to start companies. Entrepreneurs choose places to live and then start companies there. Place-based economic development needs humanity. 'It's like a Venn diagram but there's a lot more in the middle,' Williams said. 'There's no entrepreneurship-led strategy that's sustainable without a healthy ecosystem around it, and no ecosystem-building initiatives can work sustainably without critical economic development-led supports.'
Technical.ly
07-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
15 years in, Philly Tech Week still brings the city's tech scene together
2025 marks 15 years of the Philly tech ecosystem coming together for Philly Tech Week — and a lot has changed since that first scrappy conference was announced in 2010. The 15th annual Philly Tech Week (PTW) started on Monday, kicking off over 40 tech and innovation-themed events throughout the city. Today, the celebration is presented by Comcast and hosted by 1Philadelphia, and has turned into a citywide collaborative effort. But it began under as a way for orgs from different sectors and sizes to get to know each other, cofounder and CEO, Chris Wink said. While it'll continue to change, Wink said, the ethos of community gathering that brought innovators and technologists together from the start should remain at the heart of it. So far, it's met that goal, but what that looks like going forward will have to keep evolving to meet the needs of the participants, according to its leaders. 'Philadelphia needed the last 15 years of Philly Tech Week,' Wink said. 'I'm not sure if Philadelphia needs another 15 years of the same, but Philadelphia absolutely needs a place where its entrepreneurship, tech and innovation community comes together.' People across sectors and throughout the region come out to engage with the ecosystem, and 2025 is no exception. Events like the Department of Commerce's Level Up Your Pitch workshop, Out in Tech Philly's PTW Mixer and Builders Conference are happening throughout the city until May 10. kicked it off, but PTW belongs to the entire ecosystem founders, Wink, Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda, hosted the first PTW in 2011, taking inspiration from the annual beer festival Philly Beer Week and joining the 2010s trend of cities hosting startup weeks. They found through their early reporting that traditional institutions like the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations were not connected to tech meetup groups and the startup community, Wink said. These groups were all relevant to the ecosystem, but they weren't connected, he said. The idea was that the city would be more powerful as a collective than as individuals. 'It was more about people who liked each other, coming from very different jobs,' Wink said. 'It's not an industry at that point. It's a community.' It wasn't until 2013 that PTW started to hit its stride. Event attendance doubled, people recognized the format, and they started to lean into the 'spectacle' of the week, Wink said. That year, Drexel University professor Frank Lee organized 'Pong on the Cira Center,' setting a world record for the largest architectural video game display. The goal of having many different organizations host a variety of events across the city was coming to fruition and the community calendar of events was keeping existing stakeholders engaged while also bringing in new people, Wink said. 'Philly Tech Week mattered because we established the format,' Wink said. 'The idea of having a week of events related at all to this topic is ours first.' From a wider lens, PTW puts a spotlight on the potential of Philly's tech and innovation community, Danae Mobley, executive director of 1Philadelphia and CEO of Coded By, said. The legacy of PTW is the collaboration among the community and the people who still care about coming together under a shared vision, she said. 'We've seen the evolution of [PTW],' Mobley said. 'While the people may have changed, I don't think the energy or the sentiment behind wanting Philly to succeed as a tech market has changed.' Bringing the city together and catching the mayor's attention Many memorable and impactful tech moments happened at PTW over its first 10 years. Local data project OpenDataPhilly launched at the very first Philly Tech Week's opening event, providing a resource for Philadelphians to access publicly available data. 'It was a great rollout of an open data catalog for and by a community,' Robert Cheetham, founder of software company Azavea, told The following year, Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order to establish an Open Data Policy for the City of Philadelphia. The city's open data program went on to see a lot of progress over the last decade, but the project has lost momentum over the last few years. PTW has also broken more than one world record, once again for the largest architectural video game display. Drexel's Lee returned in 2014 to organize games of Tetris on the Cira Center that year. This event is a favorite PTW memory for Mobley. Now that 1Philadelphia runs PTW, the memory feels like a full circle moment, she said. 'I thought that that was just so amazing, that there were people that just had that spirit of ingenuity and playfulness and fun around something that brought the city together,' she said. 1Philadelphia takes over to make PTW part of its mission Last year, began the process of handing PTW off to 1Philadelphia, and the org is fully hosting this year's lineup of events. 1Philadelphia, an initiative of tech education nonprofit Coded by, launched in 2020. Coded by had always participated in PTW and the org saw how it brought the community together, according to Mobley. It made sense to get more involved with Philly Tech Week because of 1Philadelphia's mission to bring stakeholders together and create a more equitable tech ecosystem in Philly, she said. 'Because of the work that we were doing as a convener with some of our signature events,' Mobley said. 'We really wanted to see how we could come in and support and bolster this long-standing tradition of a great innovation festival that happens in Philadelphia.' For 1Philadelphia's takeover made sense, too. Wink said he's been thinking about handing the reins to someone else since 2019, but the pivot to online celebrations for its 10th anniversary stalled the process of searching for the next leader. Last year was a transition period. 1Philadelphia cohosted Philly Tech Week alongside helping to organize the community calendar, contributing to the marketing and hosting its own events. This year, the org is ready to fully take over coordinating PTW. As for what's next, it's up to the community that rallies around PTW each year. 'Philly Tech Week is for everyone,' Mobley said. 'It is not the ownership of one entity.' Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Technical.ly
04-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
When do direct flights boost economic output (and venture capital deals)?
Though the US already has more liquid capital than any other country, regions short on institutional money still chase outside investors with tactics like subsidizing direct flights and flying in VCs for 1:1 meetings. Research does show startups gain measurable innovation advantages (more patents and citations) when direct flights link them to VC centers — with effects far stronger on international routes than domestic ones. So yes, ecosystem leaders should invite investors and host meet-and-greets, but not universally fixate on capital, because entrepreneurs need many resources, including quality of life. → Read on for details and join Chris Wink's weekly newsletter for more Pressed to choose between being a home for investors and entrepreneurs, choose the entrepreneurs every time. Venture capitalists are bankers with better branding. So forgive me for raising my eyebrows whenever I hear an economic development leader tell me they're working on attracting more capital to their region — or that an entrepreneur thinks her hometown just 'needs more capital.' Everybody says this everywhere. The United States has more liquid capital markets than any other country on the planet. We also have more airports than anywhere else. Stop complaining. Still, I admit research shows there are cases where that is sound economic development strategy. So when is it smart for regional economic development groups to chase venture capitalists? And what does it have to do with direct flights? 'Venture capitalists monitor their investments closely,' said Brian Brackeen, the Lightship Capital general partner whose Black Tech Week event series in Cincinnati matches startups directly with VC investors and corporate clients. 'Founders think constantly about capital. They prefer not to, but they have to.' Brackeen was my foil on this topic in the last Builders Live podcast alongside our cohosts Victor Hwang of Right to Start and Maria Underwood, an ecosystem builder turned startup COO from Birmingham, Alabama. Our conversation veered into the role of local events to bring in outside investors — the topic of a separate future story — but our original debate centered on when local ecosystems chasing outside capital made sense. Brackeen assured me that no 'sensible' local economic leader is expecting to attract a top-tier investment firm to open an office in their city or state on a whim. Most US regions are without much institutional capital. Local rich grandees might be angel investors, but can often be unsavvy, or at least limited in their checkbooks. Many economic leaders want to create ties to bigger pools of money to accelerate homegrown inventors — and limit departures for bigger investment hubs. Air travel is often regarded as an economic salve for such far-flung places. One signature initiative from Jobs Ohio, the liquor-tax funded, state economic development powerhouse, is its ' air service restoration program,' in which it effectively subsidizes direct flights from its airports to major financial centers at up to $10 million annually. Northwest Arkansas's entrepreneur support organization is organizing a VC immersion program, in which it flies in investors for 1:1 meetings with inventors. Ecosystem organizer Serafina Lalany posted a video of her team happily distributing posters of the campaign. 'Bringing investors to your city works,' said Underwood, who led efforts to integrate investor pitches into Birmingham's upcoming Sloss Tech event. 'We bring VCs who've never been to Birmingham to meet our founders. It's economical and effective.' Research backs her up, to a point. Startups gain measurable innovation advantages when connected by direct flights to venture capitalists, according to a 2016 MIT paper, with a 3.1% increase in patent filings and a 5.8% increase in patent citations. Interestingly, US communities don't benefit from new direct flights anywhere near as much as international cities do, at least according to a 2018 paper. Foreign cities with new direct flights to Silicon Valley saw an additional $23 million in VC funding over the next year. Any connection between big enough domestic and foreign hubs did the trick. With each newly introduced direct route between a U.S. and Chinese city increased annual M&A transaction volumes by approximately $50 million, according to a 2021 paper. Domestic cities didn't see the same boost. 'For companies farther away, particularly internationally, direct flights matter immensely,' wrote Waters. This advantage is magnified by geographical distance and cultural barriers. Selling bits of an early-stage private company for infusions of cash is always tricky, especially for first-time founders and in untested markets. Network effect is real, and local organizers can change that. Invite investors to your annual events and organize meet-and-greets, but ecosystem leaders ought not universally fixate on venture capital. Entrepreneurs need many resources. As Hwang put it: 'Making connections for entrepreneurs will make good things happen in lots of unexpected ways.'
Technical.ly
04-03-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Technical.ly Builders Conference 2025
Event Description The Builders Conference is an annual two-day conference focused on local ecosystem building and the storytelling that supports it. Hosted by the country's leading ecosystem storytelling news organization, Builders brings together entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders and those that support local entrepreneurial and tech-led economic and workforce development strategies. Our tracks include Founder Fishbowls, in which early-stage entrepreneurs exchange best practices; lightning talks highlighting entrepreneurial ecosystems and workshops; and sessions on storytelling strategies that support entrepreneurship, workforce and other elements of local economic mobility, growth and opportunity. Year-round, CEO and founder Chris Wink shares a weekly Builders newsletter and regular Linkedin Live series on these same topics. Entrepreneurship and technology-led economic development is changing, and the Builders Conference is a destination to understand and exchange how, with others who are doing the work.
