Kommunity & Technical.ly Partner to Serve Philadelphia's Startup Ecosystem

This is a guest post by Amaury Abreu, founder of Kommunity, and producer of Founders Alley, an event for which Technical.ly is a proud media partner.

The Philadelphia startup ecosystem generated $76 billion in value for Philadelphia between 2022 and 2024. That is a staggering amount of money sends a message that Philly is not a place you should go to sleep on. From our view here at Kommunity this means that opportunities do exist in the Philadelphia startup, tech and b2b space ecosystem.

Startup Genome quoted in a 2024 article about the Philadelphia scene “The innovation ecosystem in Philadelphia continues to thrive thanks to world-leading research universities and economic development partners. Philadelphia’s innovation leadership plays a critical role in elevating Pennsylvania’s position as a global destination for innovation,” says Secretary Rick Siger, Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

This makes sense in part because of the high density of colleges and universities within Greater Philadelphia with a heavy concentration of startups being in the life sciences field. We believe that Philadelphia is more than life sciences and part of our goal with partnering with conferences like Founders Alley is to highlight those startups that are not in the mainstream.

Philadelphia also has a rich b2b events community. We have the convention center making us a go-to destination for conferences like the small business expo and PACT’s Mid Atlantic Capital Conference bringing together startups and investors. Kommunnity fits in by being laser focused on these kinds of events providing a filter for folks looking to attend industry specific events.

Technical.ly fits perfectly into our mission to create a robust b2b events marketplace that is adding value to its users by connecting them with a reliable news source for technologists, entrepreneurs and innovators who are seeking targeted opportunities and information to be delivered to them.

As we grow as a startup ourselves we plan to seek partnerships with organizations like Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners or United Effects Ventures to help us power the b2b event ecosystem of Philadelphia and make Philadelphia the best place to network if you are a company looking to do business with other companies.

For example, UEV is now hosting The Ground Floor which is a spin off of Welcome Wagon which used to be hosted by Philadelphia Startup Leaders (rebranded as Startup Leaders). In a recent article by Technical.ly Frank Schultz, co-founder of UEV expressed “ Shultz told Technical.ly. Taking over the founder meetup Welcome Wagon provides an in-person way to foster connections. Altogether, those efforts will hopefully lead to stronger companies and more investor interest in the region, he said. “

We want to power the engine behind these meetups because we believe that business events drive economic growth in a region if we are able to identify relevant connections, find ways to establish partnerships and develop a sticky market for entrepreneurs to do business with each other and promote each other.

Within our startup the idea is not to simply allow people to organize and find relevant events in their market and leave it at that, we want and need data from our users so we can provide them with connections that will help them drive growth for their businesses. B2B events have suffered from lower or flat budgets (Forester, 2025). This has led to more organisations hosting smaller events instead of larger ones with an emphasis on ROI and growth for the businesses putting these events together.

Freeman, a global leader of events with decades of data stated” Based on decades of extensive research that sought to uncover why people attend events, Freeman has boiled it down to four primary reasons: to have fun, to learn, to network, and to do business.” We know that events can be a revenue driver for both the hosts and attendees but current platforms do not provide insights into people and businesses that are taking part in a particular event.

Business professionals want to find innovative service and products as it was listed as the top reason they are looking to attend an event. The Freeman trends report also states “Samples/demos at booths (68%) and hands-on demos (61%) dominate. Attendees see samples and hands-on demonstrations as the most valuable commercial components, highlighting real-life product engagement.”

This is why Kommunity and Technical.ly’s partnership is essential to the technology and business ecosystem of Philadelphia. The flow of information and relevant industry events creates economic growth within regions (El-Hage, 2025) and this partnership is poised to contribute to the Greater Philadelphia economy.