Revitalizing our coverage to connect Pittsburgh’s tech and startup scene

A 31-year-old University of Maine grad who founded a successful 3D-printing shoe repair company — disrupting a classic New England industry! — he moved to Pittsburgh a few years back specifically because of the opportunities for light manufacturing startups.

“It’s way cheaper to build a robotics company here,” Katon told me, “than anywhere else right now.”

As the in-house electromechanical engineer at Innovation Works’ Robotics Factory, the Build Back Better-funded “maker space meets classroom” at the Tech Forge building in Lawrenceville, he helps others create, accelerate and scale their own products and projects.

Katon appears only slightly jealous of the founders he now mentors. “If this were around,” he said, surveying his well-equipped lab, “I’d have moved here just for this.”

His story is the kind of thing Technical.ly reports on — stories of individual people who care deeply about their city and are intentional about helping build its future. It’s also part of what got me excited about this beat. And it feels like Pittsburgh’s time to shine.

Four months into my tenure as Technical.ly’s editorial director, the city’s tech and startup scene is everywhere I look.

It’s helping power NASA’s return to the moon. Pushing AI development forward on a national level. Playing a pivotal role in the discussion around the future of remote work. It’s so trendy it’s even suffusing seemingly unrelated topics, like a recent Wall Street Journal deep dive about presidential election leanings, which revolved in part around a Pittsburgh technologist.

The wide reach is no surprise to anyone who’s been involved in the transformation of the city’s economy over the past couple of decades. Rust Belt pricing backed by a deep well of university support have combined to create an environment ripe for commercial innovation.

It’s also why we’re here. After an initial journalism project on open data in 2018, Technical.ly initially planned to launch in Pittsburgh in early 2020. We all know what happened next. Over the next few pandemic years, our newsroom produced important journalism about Pittsburgh’s innovation economy, as we all rode the roller coaster and tried to predict how the world would change.

I joined the team 100 days ago in part to set the foundation of our editorial strategy. Now that I’m more settled here, especially in Pittsburgh, I’m introducing that editorial plan.

Some things aren’t changing: We’ll continue to focus on the people of Pittsburgh’s tech and startup ecosystem. But other tweaks are coming. We’ve made internal changes, and we’ll dig deeper on a must-read newsletter for technologists and entrepreneurs.

What goes into that newsletter, and Technical.ly’s coverage in general, will stem from our interactions with the community. Have a tip? Fill out the form linked below or send us an email.

Send Technical.ly a story idea

Connection as the key to equitable progress

I recently toured AlphaLab Health in Bellevue and chatted with BotsIQ Executive Director Michel Conklin. At last week’s edition of Christian Manders’ BioBreakfast on Technology Drive, I connected with several founders, scientists and hopeful grad student entrepreneurs. I stopped by the Pittsburgh Tech Council in the North Side to mine Audrey Russo and Jonathan Kersting for insights. I had lunch in Oakland with Innovate PGH’s Sean Luther and Charles Mansfield, the org’s community and research manager, who’s working to connect aspiring founders and Gen Z creators with resources across the city.

And I had dinner in the Strip with a dozen founders of early-stage companies named Technical.ly’s 2024 RealLIST Startups — innovators who enjoyed connecting with one another to discuss the opportunities and challenges they all face.

Pittsburgh’s everyday circumstance has shifted a lot in recent decades, with the former steel manufacturing base replaced by the city’s growing status as a global tech hub. In 2022, Startup Genome ranked Pittsburgh the No. 13 emerging startup economy in the world. Gov. Josh Shapiro has made it an administration priority to foster that growth, evidenced in part by his appointment of successful software entrepreneur Ben Kirchner to lead Pennsylvania’s new Office of Transformation and Opportunity.

Venture capital funding jumped 200% last year to $3.12 billion, the city’s second-highest annual total on record, even as national VC investment slowed. The region was top 10 in the nation for AI and autonomous vehicle investments in 2023, while robotics was also strong.

No question Pittsburgh punches above its weight — but that doesn’t mean it’s all working. The city and region’s population is aging and its size continues to decline, a structural change this economy must confront.

Growth in the number of tech jobs in the Pittsburgh region over the last five years lags other bigger city peers from other parts of the country, including Atlanta, Baltimore and Denver, according to a Technical.ly analysis.

The future of Pittsburgh, and all of Southwestern Pennsylvania, is highly dependent on how these economic factors play out — business transformation, workforce development, labor trends, entrepreneurship and where people choose to live. These are the issues at the heart of Technical.ly’s beat. That’s why I’m here, and why Pittsburgh matters so much to understanding our world.

Journalism as a strategy for connecting a community

The importance of local news amid a continuing decline is what got me interested in journalism in the first place.

I’ve dedicated my career to proving local news organizations can be vibrant and sustainable. National news is good at showcasing ideological divides, but doesn’t have all that much to do with the day-to-day happenings in our lives. Local news is much more relevant to how we live every day.

Some of Pittsburgh’s rise as an innovation hub has been well covered by other outlets.

Along with the national media’s takes on what the WSJ calls the city’s emergence as a “hot tech center,” Pittsburgh is lucky to have a still sturdy local news scene. What is lacking is the deep, focused subject matter expertise on tech and entrepreneurship, from a news outlet with an audience inside and outside Pittsburgh.

I first connected with the region’s media ecosystem in 2016, when I helped launch former news startup The Incline. I became familiar with the city’s general news outlets, many of which still publish. And since then, several newsletter-centric efforts have added to the coverage with close tracking of the tech and startup boom across various sectors.

At Technical.ly, we aim to complement traditional media by going deeper into the people and their unique challenges, and to complement the newsletters by bringing our journalistic practices of storytelling and convening to bear.

Think of us as a neighborhood newspaper for the local tech and entrepreneurship community.

Pittsburgh readers can expect some shifts in our approach over the next few months. We’re hiring a new market editor. We’ll be hiring new reporters to cover the scene as it evolves. I’ll be writing some stories myself.

We’ll continue to report on relevant policy and analyze emergent trends, with a local perspective informed by our regional reach, as we also have journalists on the ground in Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and Delaware. We’ll cover the raises and incubators, the launches and layoffs, but in the end, companies are made of people — and it’s these humans who are our concentration.

What you’ll find at Technical.ly are the insider storylines, the ones that go beyond the headlines.

Our overall goal is to document the community of technologists and entrepreneurs who make Pittsburgh what it is. And we need your help to do it.

Nominate a RealLIST honoree

If you have a great tip, or know someone whose background, efforts, ideas, actions, or attitude warrants coverage, fill out this quick form and a reporter will reach out. You can also nominate someone to be honored on our annual RealLISTs. Or send us a note directly at pittsburgh@technical.ly (I read every one of those emails).

After an especially packed week of meetings in Pittsburgh, I’m ready to focus our editorial strategy. Until then, subscribe to our newsletter, which for the time being will go out weekly, and hit me up on LinkedIn — I’m eager to connect.