Why startup communities need better storytelling for growth

Looking back, I got plenty of grief as a 20-something journalist reporting on tech and startups in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Back in 2008, neither the subject matter nor those cities were taken seriously. But two friends and I realized no newspaper would hire us, and believed we Silicon Valley’s startup culture was already spreading to other cities. The year prior, Wall Street Journal veterans launched AllThingsD to add journalistic rigor to tech startup coverage, which TechCrunch had begun in 2005.

It seemed clear that the rise of the internet, software and consumer electronics could be found anywhere there were enough smart, forward-thinking people. We weren’t alone.

From the late 2000s through the early 2010s, other under-employed journalists and tech enthusiasts started tracking local startup communities through spreadsheets, maps and social media. Many launched newsletters, blogs, and news sites – like Technical.ly.

Most of these efforts have come and gone, reflecting the broader and ongoing challenges of the local news business. But as tech becomes more central to economic strategy, civic leaders are investing more in workforce and entrepreneurship programs. With local newsrooms shrinking, there are fewer places for people to follow those investments — and even fewer outlets to tell stories beyond their immediate community.

That’s why the least solved part of what I call the “Innovation Ecosystem Stack” is storytelling — aka publishing narrative change about a specific scene. It’s the role I want Technical.ly to play in more places (hmu if you wanna talk about it!).

In 2019, Technical.ly produced a report for the Kauffman Foundation on how local entrepreneurship communities were getting news and information. Five years and a pandemic later, I returned to that report and want to share what I see.

What kind of storytelling do you want…or is it a need?

The onset and effects of the pandemic reversed declines in entrepreneurship, underscored the need for digital access and reinforced demand for a STEM workforce. Every US state now has at least one organization focused on startups or technology — or both.

With growth comes complexity. In a community’s early days, a few key connectors can serve as nodes of information. Eventually, startup and tech activity grow to a point where it’s not possible for a few individual connectors to do this on their own. Rather than a problem, it’s actually a sign of success.

By my count, however, there are currently less than two dozen dedicated publications focused on a given region’s tech and startup issues.

Most specialize only in startups and are based in a single market. A notable exception is BostInno, a startup blog founded in 2008 that was acquired in 2012 by American City Business Journals (ACBJ). The “Inno” brand is now used for ACBJ’s tech coverage across multiple markets, though much of it is behind a hard paywall.

A few publishers, including Technical.ly, pair important information sharing with original reporting on hard-but-useful truths.

The biggest tech markets, Silicon Valley and New York City, are awash in national tech and business coverage, though they each have local resources too, like the San Jose Mercury’s SiliconValley.com and AlleyWatch. Chicago’s Crain’s has built a well-liked tech vertical, and publications like GeekWire in Seattle and dot.LA in Los Angeles have emerged to serve their respective communities.

Smaller hubs also use storytelling to connect local ecosystems: Around the same time we launched Technical.ly, Silicon Prairie News became a beloved resource across the Midwest, and in 2022 was donated to the Nebraska Journalism Trust, where it continues. The Research Triangle’s local NBC affiliate has published its TechWire since 2002.

Like Technical.ly today, all of those are independent news resources, offering distance from the people and organizations directly creating programming for startups. That’s in contrast to respected efforts like Startland News in Kansas City and Refresh Miami in Florida, which are different in that they’re entrepreneur support organizations that employ journalists.

Several other efforts don’t employ journalists at all, and most avoid challenging subject matter — like, say, a failing startup or touchy issues with elected officials.

No matter their provenance, all these publications share a common goal: to promote the local innovation culture and guide new entrants to the ecosystem. A few, including Technical.ly, go further by reporting on the hard truths and uncomfortable realities within the local scene.

Local startup news is easy to envision, hard to sustain

While most local efforts focus on internal storytelling, many civic leaders want their innovation stories to reach outside their markets.

This can be a challenge for single-market publications, though good stories occasionally break through. In a recent survey, nearly a third of Technical.ly readers reported researching regions beyond their own.

With limited storytelling resources, local business and talent attraction executives often lump a variety of tactics under the “storytelling” banner — including standalone websites with catchy slogans, splashy photos and fluttering data. Some organizations have gone further, such as Milwaukee’s chamber of commerce, which launched in 2022 its own standalone news site focused on startups.

What most efforts overlook is how tough it is to sustain a media business.

With digital tools, the cost to start an online publication is effectively zero, but a crowded marketplace has spiraled the cost of growing an audience. Of roughly 150 regions with some entrepreneur or tech engagement strategy, fewer than 15% of regions have a dedicated news resource.

The best evidence of how difficult this work is can be found in the number of efforts that no longer exist. After changing ownership in 2018, Tech.co, founded as TechCocktail by Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo, was turned into a tech review site. The erratic COVID era was especially challenging: Multi-local, biotech-focused Xconomy, Iowa-focused Clay&Milk and Midwest minded Mug.news all ceased publishing. And these were the strongest. Many more never got to their level of traction.

Fifteen years after launching Technical.ly, the beat’s importance has grown. The examples of doing it well haven’t.