Breaking in to Boston
Those who know me know I am a consummate networker. I believe in the pay-it-forward mentality that if you do good things for others with no expectation for recompense, good things will happen to you over time. Being new to Boston, I asked my friends for introductions to the people they thought I should meet here. You can see the breakdown of about 100 introductions that I’ve received, with founders and VCs being the lion’s share. After tomorrow, I will have met with over half of those people, at least one time, and in some cases, more than once. The Boston startup community has been overwhelmingly welcoming and is incredibly active. I’ve only been here a month, but I wanted to share with my friends in other markets some of the things that I think make Boston special.
1) Entrepreneur Population Density. Brad Feld recently wrote a blog post about the EPD around Kendall Square. The things that make Kendall Square unique are the Cambridge Innovation Center which boasts 450 startups, Dogpatch Labs which has ~20 startups, and Techstars* which just ushered in a new class of 13. Between the CIC and the 6th floor of One Cambridge Center, there are over 500 startups. MIT is also located in Kendall, which leads me to #2 Universities.
2) Universities. MIT and Harvard get most of the spotlight deservedly, but other Boston area universities are also churning out innovation. This article lists 37 student startups funded in Boston last year. Harvard’s new iLab and NEA’s Experiment Fund will raise their profile even higher (if that’s possible), and new initiatives at MIT and U Mass will keep them top of mind as well.
3) Money. Boston is second only to the Bay Area when it comes to capital. There has been some talk about NY pulling ahead, but I’ll point people to this Atlantic infographic which has New England as the clear #2, with over $3 BILLION in invested dollars in 2011.
4) Big Businesses. This list of 100 Boston area public companies sorted by revenue, has Raytheon on top with $25 BILLION in 2011 sales, with the median being ~$400 million and the mean being significantly higher.
These are just a few of the factors that make this market great, and I will share more as I get better situated. I miss Austin and the Bay Area, but I absolutely love it in Boston.
*Special thanks to Katie Rae and Aaron O’Hearn at Techstars for being generous enough to let me co-work at the office!
