About Ben Werdmuller

I'm a technologist and product leader focused on building technology that serves journalists and communities.

I started my career building websites for local news – in 1995, less than a year after the first ever news website was launched. I’ve built platforms that have been used to organize communities, train specialists, share stories, and send footage back to newsrooms from war zones, the Sochi Olympics, Air Force One, and the top of Mount Everest.

I built Elgg, an open source social networking platform that formed the basis of my first startup, from scratch with no external funding. It was translated into 80 languages and used by governments, global NGOs, Fortune 500 companies, and social movements. Many communities still use Elgg today.

As well as working alongside newsrooms for decades, as Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica and Chief Technology Officer at The 19th, I've worked extensively inside mission-driven newsrooms. My teams created forms with client-side encryption and zero tracking to gather anonymous tips, replatformed a website hosting 17 years of journalism, and created new data pipelines to gather data from across the organization. These experiences have given me a strong understanding of how technology can empower journalists – and how it can fail them.

At Matter Ventures, I invested in early-stage media startups with the potential to change media for good. I taught venture design thinking to both startup teams and innovation teams from organizations like the Associated Press and the New York Times, helping them to overcome some of their biggest challenges.

Across these experiences, I've learned first-hand what makes projects fail. And I've learned what makes them succeed: human-centered, prototype-driven thinking, sustainable business models, and teams that understand and represent their communities.

I build teams around psychological safety, rapid experimentation, and transparent, 360-degree feedback. I've found that the best products emerge when engineers talk directly to the communities they're serving, and when every team member feels empowered to challenge decisions. Creating space for experimental innovation and failing fast has been key to every successful team I've led.

I care deeply about the open web and technology movements that provide alternatives to extractive business models. I understand how open, values-aligned technology can transform businesses and communities. As well as being an active participant in the open social web movement that includes Bluesky and Mastodon, I'm a board member of A New Social.

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