TechAfterDark
The after-work you actually want to go to.
A tech happy hour for professionals in the DMV. No pitch. No slide deck. You walk in after work and leave with a peer you'd take a call from.
Laurel, MD · After work
The after-work you actually want to go to.
A tech happy hour for professionals in the DMV. No pitch. No slide deck. You walk in after work and leave with a peer you'd take a call from.
Laurel, MD · After work
This month
Laurel, MD
After workMiss Toya's
The Recruiter Trap — you go expecting builders, you leave dodging pitches
The Lukewarm Room — business cards in a drawer, LinkedIn requests never answered
The Wasted Drive — 45 minutes each way for a room that wasn't worth it
The Mixer Energy — a room that never gets sharp and nobody you'd follow up with
We built the opposite of that.
You spend all week in Slack with people you'll never meet. This is the opposite. Engineers, PMs, designers, founders, operators — if you're a tech professional, you're in.
After work. Not a Saturday conference. Not a 7am breakfast. You were going to get a drink anyway. Now the room is full of people in tech.
No lanyard. No slide deck. The room is the point.
Most nights like this, you walk out with nothing you can use on Monday. You leave this one with a peer — someone in the work you'd take a call from.
A tech conference charges you $200-500 to sit in a chair and watch panels. A lukewarm mixer costs you time and gas and you leave knowing nobody. A recruiter charges 20% of your salary for one warm intro. Tech After Dark gives you the room — after work, at happy hour, open to anyone in tech.
If any of these is you, come. If it isn't, this isn't your night.
Writing code, shipping product, or still figuring out the stack. Come anyway.
PM, design, data, ops, sales, recruiting, support. If the job is tech, this is for you.
Student, career switcher, first year in. You don't need a title to show up.
A decade in tech overall, six of those years in the DMV — founder, engineer, community builder. But before tech, I worked in theater and hospitality. I learned there that a great experience is built — produced, felt, remembered. A few months ago I was sitting at a restaurant thinking about all of it, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make.
Tech After Dark is the after-work I always wanted — a happy hour full of people in tech, not a badge and a business card.
— Khalif
Founder, Tech After Dark
You were going to get a drink after work anyway. This is the version where the room is worth it.
What you walk into
Spending another Friday talking to nobody is the real waste.
Laurel, MD · After work
The Promise
Show up. Work the room. If you're standing alone and can't break in — find me. I'll get you into a conversation before you leave. That's not a marketing line. That's the job.
An after-work happy hour for tech professionals. You show up, the room is full of people in the work, and you leave with a peer you'd take a call from. That's the whole night.
It's a happy hour. Nobody's running a slide deck. If someone starts pitching, that's not the night.
Find me. I'll walk you into a conversation. That's the job. You're not supposed to work the room by yourself.
Tech professionals. Engineers, PMs, designers, founders, operators, students, people switching in. If you work in tech — or you're getting in — come.
Somewhere in the DMV. We rotate so the same side of the region isn't stuck driving every time. Neighborhood 14 days out. Exact address 48 hours before.
Doors around 7. You walk in, grab a drink if you want one, meet people. Some nights there's a 10-minute talk from someone shipping real work — no panels, no slides. Wraps by 10ish.
Skip it. It comes back. RSVP if you can so we have a sense of the room.
Don't find out about it after.
You already know what you do after work. This is the version with a room of tech professionals.
RSVP — opens Luma in a new tabLaurel, MD · After work