Innovation & Job News

Icrontic guys turn hobby tech writing into new high-tech jobs

Thursday, January 08, 2009

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Brian Ambrozy grew up in a blue collar family where auto-manufacturing jobs sustained his parents and his grandparents and so on. But he knows those jobs won't last forever.

It's one of the reasons why he thinks this will be a break-out year for his website, Icrontic. It's basically a online-only tech journal about what computer geeks love, such as hardware and software, networking and security, gaming, and digital media.

"Those (manufacturing) jobs may not be there for my children," Ambrozy says. "I think Detroit is ripe for entrepreneurship in the social media landscape."

The Warren-based business is backing up Ambrozy's claim with its success. The website started in 2000. The founder who came up with the name sadly died a few years ago without explaining what it meant or where it came from.

Today the website employs four people and a huge stable of freelance writers around the world. It has more than doubled its monthly average of page views from 300,000 last year to 750,000 today. That jump allowed Icrontic to hire its first non-partner employee and greatly expand its independent contractor base.

Ambrozy sees more growth like that and more in 2009. He wants to push the page-view average past 1 million this year and get more product previews from high-tech firms. That would allow them to add two more people this year.

"We're calling it the year of Icrontic," Ambrozy says. "Everything we have done in 2007 and 2008 has been laying the foundation for 2009."

Source: Brian Ambrozy, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Icrontic
Writer: Jon Zemke