Tech and startup ecosystems are booming with events these days. That’s generally a good thing, community members say, but there’s a downside:
Without a central place for coordination, it’s hard to stay abreast of everything going on — and oftentimes multiple events happen are scheduled for the same day.
DC founder Andrey Mikhalchuk is developing a solution.
Using proprietary software from his own startup Craftus to develop iXcelerator, he’s building an AI-powered calendar complete with an interactive map and descriptions, plus a portal for founders, investors and government leaders to connect. The free platform scrapes tech and startup-related events, plus general happenings across the DC region.
“What this platform does,” Mikhalchuk told Technical.ly, “[is] it keeps its hand — AI hand — on the pulse of what’s happening in the ecosystem.”
“It keeps its hand — AI hand — on the pulse of what’s happening in the ecosystem.”
Andrey Mikhalchuk on his new events platform, ixcelerator
Mikhalchuk, a DC resident since 2004 who currently lives in Reston, hopes ecosystem leaders will use iXcelerator to avoid too many overlapping events. It’s been public since fall 2024, and typically has a few hundred unique views a day, according to Mikhalchuk.
“This is started as an idea to unite what we have in the DMV,” he said, “and make it one of the leading startup scenes in the United States.”
He’s also hoping to eventually implement the platform outside his home region, and said leaders in Miami, Oxford and other domestic and global regions have already shown interest.
To address event overlap in Philadelphia, Bo Motlagh, cofounder and managing partner at the startup studio United Effects Ventures, recently launched a page that collects ecosystem happenings in that region. He rescheduled one of his own events after seeing four others the same night, he said.
“We certainly don’t want to be competing for good quality programming,” Motlagh said. “I think if there’s good things out there, I want people to go to them. And so there’s a level of coordination that is missing.”
Pooling events and startup resources
While travelling across the country in 2024, he coincidentally arrived in Orange County, California, during the region’s Innovation Week. Mikhalchuk was lost trying to navigate the two dozen events, and thought there must be a cohesive way to display all of the programming.
His startup Craftus focuses on data visualization, so he knew he had a good starting point, and dedicated a night in his Southern California hotel room to building a portal for the conference. When he got back home, decided to make the same platform for the DMV — filled with 365 days of events.
iXcelerator uses agentic AI to identify organizations that host frequently, automatically find their and other events, and add them to a database, Mikhalchuk said. It also categorizes the posts into different categories, like AI, food and nightlife.
For event hosts in the region, who can sign up for a free account, there is a feature to find free or low-cost venues, and get connected to sponsors. There’s also a portal for startup founders, investors and government program leaders to connect and share resources.
iXcelerator users can also create their own calendars through the platform to keep track of what events they want to attend, and submit ones of their own.
Mikhalchuk said he also uses agentic AI to find potential users, in addition to people organically signing up, but assured that he approves all of the profiles himself.
He wants to keep adding to the iXcelerator platform beyond these initial tools, and is exploring resources to let him keep building, he said. “I’m just talking to people, asking for what’s in demand,” Mikhalchuk said, “and then implementing those features.”
Potential to bring iXcelerator to other regions
Tools like the calendar in Philly and iXcelerator in DC are solid tools to avoid working in siloes, said Motlagh, the investor from Philadelphia. He was particularly impressed by iXcelerator’s map feature, he said.
“I think every region should be doing things like this,” Motlagh told Technical.ly. “If this is working for his community, that’s fantastic, right? I think these are the types of things that we should just go ahead and build.”
Charles Mansfield, startup ecosystem manager at the Pittsburgh nonprofit InnovatePGH, recently created a public calendar for the region using the platform Luma.
How does he know it’s successful? People are telling him they bookmarked the page.
Mansfield plans to stick with Luma, because it requires little maintenance, like a tool built from scratch might. That allows him to focus more on the promotion, he said. He noted that it’s not (yet) automated, so he appreciates that facet of the iXcelerator platform.
In Pittsburgh, the number of events continues to grow, he added. While that means multiple things happen on the same night, he actually appreciates the saturation.
“More people are going to step on each other’s toes, because there’s only so much time in the day,” Mansfield told Technical.ly. “But I’d rather that so much than having one event a week.”
