Christopher Wink
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Journalist, Entrepreneur: CEO and cofounder of @technical_ly Past publisher @generocity; @RarebreedVC LP; Tired parent of young kids
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Articles by Christopher Wink
This Virginia county outside DC has the highest tech-talent concentration in the country
• Just outside Washington DC, Arlington ranks No. 1 among US counties for knowledge-work concentration — it accounts for more than a quarter of all local jobs. • Arlington roughly ties that figure in office vacancy, though. Federal jobs are down 11% since 2014, while private payroll nearly doubled. • Entrepreneurial engagement is changing the region’s workforce, part of an innovation-led economic development strategy focused on the future.
This is what we know actually helps entrepreneurs grow
• As economic development celebrates its 100th anniversary, the field is shifting toward business creation and retention from costlier attraction. • Less money sooner helps more. Accelerators, incubators, and public startup programs serve as the strongest correlates for expanding knowledge-intensive firms. But quality matters. • Entrepreneurial “ecosystems” require shared communications strategies to coordinate distributed networks. The man had lost patience with me.
Maryland’s Howard County has one of the densest science and software workforces in the country
This story was produced with support from the Howard County Economic Development Authority, which operates the Maryland Innovation Center and helps entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes access the funding, guidance, and connections they need to grow in Howard County, Maryland. All stories are independently reported, with no partner review. • Howard County, Maryland’s concentration of scientific R&D jobs and tech jobs are 10x and almost 5x the national average.
Economic development’s broken math of buying jobs
• State and local economic development strategies developed as “job buying” approaches, trading subsidies to attract and retain established employers. • Tax incentives cost roughly $436,000 per job created; customized services for homegrown entrepreneurs cost a fraction of that. Yet governments spend about 8 times more on the former than the latter. • New firms add roughly 3 million jobs a year.
Lafayette accelerator welcomes 13 early-stage startups with a focus on Louisiana’s top industries
Opportunity Machine announced its fall 2026 Builder 1.0 cohort, bringing 13 early-stage startups and 15 founders into the Lafayette organization’s 10-week pre-accelerator program. All 15 founders are Louisiana-based, a requirement of the program, with the cohort representing a range of industries, from manufacturing and agriculture to energy, healthcare and professional services.
Where US unicorns still cluster — and why copying the map fails
• US unicorns cluster hard in a handful of metros — the Bay Area and NYC above all. But where a “region” starts and ends is fuzzy. • Seed valuations is a valuable signal: Data shows the top quartile become unicorns 5.6% of the time, vs. just 0.8% at the bottom. But it’s a proxy, not a goal. • The job isn’t manufacturing unicorns. It’s widening the credibility pool so more teams get priced into that top bracket.
Visiting the new Museum of the Philadelphian to understand place
Danya Henninger and I are squabbling about this. She’s Technical.ly’s editorial director and before that a longtime culture writer and editor about Philadelphia. I’ve spent 20 years following what changes — or doesn’t — in this place I call home. I also happen to have a longstanding fixation on the concept of micromuseums: small spaces with few objects curated around a tightly defined subject.
Defense tech is an economic development boom. Should it be?
• Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, Gallup finds 55% of Americans confident the government can protect them from terrorism, tied for the lowest on record. • Global military spending rose for the 11th straight year to $2.9 trillion, driven by Europe and Asia. That presents opportunity and hard choices, for state and local economic development leaders.
More Americans have seen a ghost than have visited North Dakota
• Just 14% of Americans have ever visited North Dakota, making it the second least-visited state, ahead of only Alaska. • One in five Americans say they’ve personally seen a ghost (20%), and nearly half hold a passport, meaning more Americans travel abroad than have ever set foot in the state. • Low visitation compounds brain drain and rural decline; North Dakota’s play is exposure through its agtech, aerospace and science engines — because curious visitors become future residents.
What does it mean for a business to fail? Lessons from REC Philly
• REC Philly, the creative membership company founded by childhood friends Dave Silver and Will Toms, closed in December 2025 after a decade that ran from fraternity-basement concerts to a 10,000-sq.-ft. complex in Center City. • Two outside shocks hit the company: a Miami expansion backed by Sean Combs shortly before his arrest, and a pandemic that redefined what physical space was for.
Louisiana has $113 million in federal money for startups, but it isn’t picking who gets it
Louisiana had $113 million in federal money to jump-start a startup economy. It decided the state should not be the one choosing the startups. The result? Federal money distributed by the state is seeding local investors to support a flywheel of Louisiana startup activity, and it comes with all the risks of venture-style investing.
The economic development tenure trap
• Trust among local leaders is the biggest differentiator in economic development, argues consultant Amy Holloway’s new book, “Trust Builders.” • The problem is that the seats holding that trust turn over every 2 to 4 years, while the projects take 30. • Amid declining national trust overall, federal data shows Americans are attending fewer public meetings. Louisiana ranks last.
North Dakota produces more than almost anywhere. Can it turn that into startup growth?
When North and South Dakota joined the union in November 1889, President Benjamin Harrison reportedly had the two statehood proclamations shuffled and their titles covered before he signed, so no one could ever say which Dakota came first. More than 130 years later, the order still isn’t official. If rural innovation works anywhere in America, the raw materials say it should work here. It’s a fitting origin for the northern member of that duo, a big, sparse state without a clear national identity.
When is destroying a surveillance camera justice?
• Amid widespread technology backlash, Atlanta-founded Flock has come to represent surveillance overreach, highlighted by a National Week of Action. • Observation technology varies in type and use. Surveillance should be targeted, time-bound and for an immediate purpose. These boundaries are being tested with new tools.
Rules for human writing in the AI age
AI has no place in writing poetry. It does have a big role in journalism. I came to my reporting career from an interest in creative writing first. I only later became a devotee to informing communities. So I have several rolling conversations with friends about what this era of generative AI means for something I’ve loved for as long as I can remember: assembling words in a particular order to create meaning for others. Tech-forward friends tease me that my life’s work is being automated away.
Everybody loves New Orleans. Why doesn’t Louisiana?
• New Orleans ranks No. 7 among the 50 largest US cities in YouGov’s second-quarter 2026 popularity data, viewed favorably by 58% of Americans placing it in top-tier company alongside Nashville and Boston. • After years of decline, Louisiana’s population has returned to modest growth, yet New Orleans continues to shrink. • Local leaders have a plan to reverse it that will need state support — but the state keeps treating its most beloved city as a problem to manage.
How states build innovation coalitions
• Lessons from two states: Louisiana Innovation is a state-agency catalyst; the Arizona Technology Council is a member-funded trade group. Both try to knit competing metros into one statewide ecosystem. • Research shows that networked smaller cities can “borrow size” from bigger neighbors — or fall into an “agglomeration shadow” if the links are weak.
Technical.ly launches reporting series on North Carolina’s Research Triangle: Tell us your story
• Technical.ly is launching a yearlong reporting series on North Carolina’s Research Triangle, the Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill initiative that 60 years ago set a model for siting research and science next to commercialized industry. • Coverage will focus on the scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs building here, and prioritize social media and AI visibility reach. The series is supported by Research Triangle Park, which has no editorial oversight. • Want to be part of it?
Which state produces the most patents? It depends how you count
• Delaware ranks No. 1 in patents per capita by owner, but No. 12 by where inventors actually live, because so many patenting companies are incorporated there. • Looking at the ranking by where inventors actually live tells you how your state innovation strategy should change. • Invention is local and compounding, so the inventor map — not the owner map — is the one that tracks jobs and mobility. You probably wouldn’t guess the state that produces the most patents per person.
Is population growth still necessary for startup growth? Louisiana offers a messy test case
• 53 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes lost population from 2020 to 2024, yet all 64 filed more new-business applications in 2025 than before the pandemic. • Across all 64 parishes, there’s no statistical link between business-formation growth and population change, but among the 16 largest parishes — where most residents live — the two move together, with Orleans (shrinking, slowest formation) and Lafayette and Livingston (growing, fastest) as the poles.
What New Mexico’s tech economy says about workforce development and startup ecosystems
• New Mexico’s economy reflects a challenging paradox. The state has significant federal research assets and a nascent tech-forward workforce, yet continues to struggle with high poverty rates and persistent outmigration. • The recently formed Elevate Quantum Tech Hub offers a significant federal investment opportunity, but comes with the risk that New Mexico would function primarily as a research supplier for startups that scale in Colorado or Wyoming.
Technical.ly has selected North Dakota as our next market expansion
Technical.ly has selected North Dakota as our first market in the Great Plains. We’ll begin reporting this fall on high-growth entrepreneurship, STEM workforce trends and the local effects of technology and science there. It will be our eighth state of coverage. With just 800,000 residents, the state’s population is ten times smaller than similarly sized Washington state.
A runaway experiment in 1988 built an institution in Pittsburgh. What will this one build?
• When the Morris worm escaped in 1988, the unprecedented part wasn’t the bug — it was a medium where one person’s error could spread on its own, worldwide. The answer was a permanent institution: CERT at Carnegie Mellon, funded within days. • OpenAI’s models just broke out of a test and breached a rival company, Americans settled their opinion on AI years ago and the response is still stuck in committee.
When does advanced science create entrepreneurs — and does it matter?
• Northeast Ohio won a new NSF Regional Innovation Engine. Led by Case Western Reserve University, NEO-SMART can access up to $160M in federal funding over 10 years. • Whether university research spins out into a new startup or gets licensed to an incumbent depends on which institution is organized to carry it across the “valley of death.” Startups are not inherently better.
The United States of Entrepreneurship
• In honor of the US Semiquintennial on this Fourth of July, Technical.ly’s Builders Live podcast reviewed the entrepreneurial activity in all 50 states plus Puerto Rico in just 40 minutes. New business ecosystem building has become a genuine, nationwide movement. • All states may have some pro-entrepreneurship strategy, but they vary in effectiveness and need.
The 80/20 problem: Will AI ever create great art?
• A viral experiment proved millions of people can’t distinguish a real Monet from what they believe is AI. In many cases, context matters more than content. • Creative technologist Jason Prunty argues AI is like the camera — and that taste, curation and choice will still distinguish artists from amateurs. • His key insight: AI makes it easier to get 80% there, but harder to create the 20% of distinction that makes something art.
Entrepreneurship is the start of the American economy
• Young firms — not small, not big, but NEW — account for virtually all net new job creation, plus a disproportionate share of breakthrough ideas and economic dynamism, according to foundational research. • 6.6 million Americans launched businesses last year, with immigrants starting companies at twice the rate. But even as entrepreneurship has surged, the economic benefits have lagged in the face of industry consolidation.
What’s philanthropy’s role in economic development?
In June 1889, Andrew Carnegie published “The Gospel of Wealth,” arguing that the rich had a moral obligation to distribute their fortunes for public benefit. Still entrepreneurially ascendant in his 50s, the Pittsburgh steel baron’s landmark essay helped establish American philanthropy’s distinctive character: private wealth addressing public problems that government couldn’t or wouldn’t solve. A century later, Pittsburgh’s industrial economy was floundering.
Why Nexus Louisiana chose ‘startups’ over ‘entrepreneurship’
Tony Zanders doesn’t use the word “entrepreneur” anymore. Last year he was hired as the CEO of Nexus Louisiana, the nonprofit charged with building the Bayou State’s startup ecosystem. He removed the popular term from his organization’s website within months of taking the role. “That is such a broad term that encompasses anyone who is working on their own business,” said Zanders, who previously founded talent platform startup Skilltype.
Why exactly is storytelling part of entrepreneur ecosystem building?
• Entrepreneurial ecosystems involve dozens of organizations of different sizes, none of which can speak for the whole. The CMO function that coordinates narrative in a company doesn’t exist at the ecosystem level. • Storytelling makes the invisible visible. Ecosystem builders do work that doesn’t show up in grant reports — introductions, trust-building, silo-breaking — and narrative is the tool that surfaces it.
The new geography of entrepreneurship
• LinkedIn data shows entrepreneurial activity is accelerating across major metros over the past five years, with Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin showing the highest increase. • But founder-to-founder LinkedIn connection rates — a proxy for learning and deal flow — still favor established hubs. And the Bay Area has 2x the founder-to-VC connection density of other metros. • Of the 6.6 million Americans who started businesses last year, more than 4 in 5 will never hire anyone.
You’re wrong: More software developers are working today than last year
• Despite AI hype and a genuine slowdown in tech hiring, the number of working software developers in the United States increased between April 2025 and April 2026. • Software job openings increased 14% year-over-year. The tech unemployment spike of early 2025 appears to have been a correction, not a collapse, though growth came partly from non-tech sectors like construction and healthcare. • The question isn’t whether AI will eliminate developers, it’s what we’ll call the work.
A vision for Philadelphia 250 years from now
Last fall, the Elfreth’s Alley Museum commemorated the assassination of a robot. A decade earlier, a cheeky Canadian research project called hitchBOT captured the world’s imagination. The solar-powered automaton hitchhiked across Canada, then Germany, then the Netherlands — a cheerful symbol of the optimistic technological age we were still living in. Then it arrived in Philadelphia.
The new battleground for economic development is information
• Half of Americans now gather information from AI tools weekly, and editorial media drives 46% of AI responses. The places that invest in independent storytelling are shaping what AI systems say about them. • Regions with dedicated entrepreneurship and economic storytelling received 58% more follow-on coverage and doubled in startup-valuation size compared to peer regions without these resources. • Ecosystem storytelling is less marketing and more infrastructure.
What a decade of reader comments reveals about the 2010s tech ecosystem
• A decade of Technical.ly comments from Philadelphia and Baltimore reveals that debates over gentrification, diversity in tech and regional identity haven’t changed much. We’ve just moved from public forums to private channels. • The most heated threads weren’t about technology; they were about who belonged in the ecosystem and whether growth was worth its costs.
Can entrepreneurship save the American soul?
• 94% of Americans agree that everyone deserves a fair shot to start and build a business. But that consensus may be at risk if entrepreneurship becomes synonymous with tech billionaires. • The K-shaped trend: High-growth startups and poverty-level gig work are both surging, while the middle (firms with 50 employees or fewer) has been cut in half since the 1990s. • In the United States, we once told stories of opportunity. Entrepreneurship alone won’t save anything.
The entrepreneurship boom is real — and so is the hollowing out beneath it
• Nonemployer businesses grew 76% from 1997-2020, but employer establishments grew just 16%, and the share of new businesses that ever hire someone has collapsed. • The “K-shaped economy” framing fits for entrepreneurship too: the lower branch (solo work) is clearly growing, but the upper branch (high-growth firms) is concentrated. • The real squeeze is in the middle. The pathway from gig work or solo business into payroll-building firms looks weaker than the entrepreneurship narrative suggests.
Does civic tech solve problems, or delay systemic change?
• New Jersey cut unemployment insurance applications more than 90% by implementing “frankly basic things” like plain language and mobile-friendly design. • The back end still runs on COBOL mainframes. That tension defines civic technology’s unfinished promise: making government work better without forcing a deeper fix. • As federal civic tech gets dismantled, states are now the front line — and they’re taking wildly different approaches.
You can’t ignore your data privacy anymore. Here’s what to do next.
• Courts have ruled biometric phone unlocks (fingerprints, Face ID) can be compelled in ways passwords cannot. This is the vulnerability the FBI recently used to access a Washington Post reporter’s Signal messages. • Even “secure” apps leak data. For example, iPhone push notifications cache Signal message content in a database that survives app deletion, allowing forensic extraction. • Privacy isn’t paranoia, advocates argue, it’s solidarity.
Women’s sports won’t save your city’s economy. It might do something better.
• Economists have spent 30 years finding that pro sports franchises and mega-events deliver little measurable long-term growth—mostly civic pride and visibility, not jobs or income. • Women’s leagues like the WNBA and startups like Unrivaled don’t require 70,000-seat stadiums or massive public subsidies; they fit into existing urban fabric with smaller venues, streaming revenue and community engagement.
During Philly Tech Week, help paint a secret mural commemorating the makers
Philadelphia has more public murals than any city in the country. Now you can help add one more. During Philly Tech Week, Mural Arts Philadelphia and local artist Sean Martorana are hosting interactive community paint sessions inside the Technical.ly Builders Conference. The work in progress: a new mural destined for a prominent wall in Old City, whose location will be announced that week.
The data behind Delaware’s ‘corporate exodus’ tells a different story
• Amid legal rulings and culture-war politics, a series of high-profile large firms relocated their incorporations away from Delaware. The move has been dubbed “the DExit.” • But aggregate formation data show those Fortune 500 moves were the exception. Business applications increased after Musk’s court loss and public campaign against the state. • High-propensity applications, which flag businesses likely to become actual employers, grew even faster.
The United States was boosting its STEM focus. Does AI change everything?
• The 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” launched a 40-year push toward STEM that measurably worked: US high school physics-taking nearly doubled, and STEM degrees rose. • But the US still lags peer nations. China produces nearly 10x more engineering graduates, and Germany’s STEM share far exceeds America’s. • The AI moment doesn’t flip the script, but it does help clarify that the answer isn’t STEM or liberal arts. It’s both.
Why science communication has become a matter of life and death
• Only 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, down from 73% before the pandemic. Only 45% think scientists are good communicators. • Focus groups before Brexit found that people shown data were more likely to support leaving the EU, while those told human stories were more likely to oppose it — a reminder that facts alone don’t persuade.
As US literacy declines, AI images are reshaping how people decide what’s true
• Americans are reading less and skimming more, according to recent research. • AI-generated images are getting faster, cheaper and more persuasive. • That combination is shifting how people form beliefs — from reading to reacting. The Petroglyph National Monument sits along Albuquerque’s western edge, where volcanic rock carries centuries-old carvings from Pueblo people. The images are simple, sometimes faint, but they have endured — visual storytelling as a durable record.
AI is making software cheap. That makes your data more valuable.
• The software layer is under pressure. As AI makes it cheaper to build tools, the competitive advantage shifts from the software you buy to the data you already own. • Companies used to pay others to manage their data—that’s flipping. In 1985, firms spent twice as much building their own software as buying it. By 2024, they spent more than three times more on pre-packaged software. AI may reverse that trend. • HR tech company Phenom is betting on this shift.
Maryland’s lieutenant governor is betting on both Waymo and the Purple Line
• Maryland lost nearly 25,000 federal jobs in 2025, the most of any state, representing 5.4% of its federal workforce. • The state has deployed Microsoft Copilot across government email and has 50+ agencies using AI tools. Lt. Gov. Miller believes the technology should “support thinking, not replace it.” • Miller sees autonomous vehicles and traditional transit investment as complements, not trade-offs: Waymo for first/last mile connections, the Purple Line for the backbone.
Enter the lottery to play the world’s largest video game
Twelve years ago, Technical.ly collaborated with Drexel University professor Frank Lee and got into the Guinness Book of World Records. In celebration of America 250, we’re doing it again — and you’re invited. Come play the world’s largest video game on the side of a Philadelphia skyscraper! To help commemorate the US Semiquincentennial with innovation, games and visualizations developed by area middle school students and inspired by democracy and trust will be on display.
Everybody knows New Orleans. Entrepreneurship week is another reason.
• Every regional ecosystem faces one of two branding challenges: not known at all, or too well known for something else. New Orleans falls squarely in the second category, and has built deliberate programming to address it. • The Idea Village and Loyola University just hosted its 15th annual New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week to serve as an accessible “front door” post-Mardi Gras. Alongside it, organizers developed the Third Coast Venture Summit for more targeted capital conversations.
The best-connected person in your ecosystem might be its biggest weakness
• The “charismatic connector” model has a flaw. Ecosystems that depend on one person have a single point of failure, and often burn out their best organizers. • Succession planning isn’t just corporate jargon; it’s important to document the community building process, create space for new leaders, and treat the work as a relay. • The goal is to become unnecessary.
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