Boston has all of these elements, starting with a long history of innovation and 44 colleges and universities located in the metro Boston area.
In order to build a startup culture, a city or region needs key elements such as an innovation engine, successful exits, angel investing, accelerators and incubators, coworking spaces, and VC firms investing across stages. It requires a few profitable exits, which in turn fuels angel investing as increasingly wealthy entrepreneurs seek to assist new startup founders establishing businesses in achieving their own objectives.
Boston has all of these elements, starting with a long history of innovation and 44 colleges and universities located in the metro Boston area.
Route 128 was once known as “America’s Technology Highway,” rivaling Silicon Valley for influential tech companies. However, minicomputer companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang, and Data General were born and thrived in metro Boston before falling by the wayside.
It was more common for engineering students to go to big companies like IBM, Texas Instruments, and Motorola instead of starting their own companies, making Silicon Valley the tech standard bearer.
In the 1990s, a new generation of Bay State startups focused on areas like chips, storage, and memory. Over time, the area saw the development of a robust technology startup ecosystem across industries like cybersecurity, robotics, and biotech, with companies like HubSpot, Wayfair, Rapid7, Boston Dynamics, and Moderna. Additionally, there is a green tech startup scene with companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Form Energy, and Boston Metal.
These industries require a lot of raw engineering smarts, and Boston has an abundance of that. What is Boston like today, and why should startup founders think about launching their companies here? We spoke to several people who have been investing in this region for years and discussed what kinds of companies and industries have thrived here and why.
Boston experienced steady investment growth until 2022, when it began to decline (along with everyone else) as investment slowed due to the unstable economic climate. It peaked at $34 billion in total investment in 2021, doubling its output from 2020, but fell to $21 billion last year, trailing only San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.
One of startup founders, Cait Brumme, CEO at early-stage tech accelerator MassChallenge, noted that Boston was not immune to the vagaries of investment cycles in 2022.
PitchBook numbers showed that area investment growth was down by close to 40% last year, indicating that the funding environment has slowed. Despite this, Brumme believes that great companies will get funded if they have a good process and are solving a problem with clear customer traction or demand.
It is obvious that Boston’s universities set the city apart from other leading startup hubs like NYC and SF. Both private and public schools like these serve as creative catalysts and breeding grounds for business and engineering talent. Boston’s schools are a huge asset, according to Greg Dracon, a partner at 406 Ventures, a venture capital firm that specialises in Series A investments.
“I think Boston has always been a great technology city, and it’s difficult to match all the colleges and universities that have produced more STEM graduates than any other state in the country. Consequently, it has always excelled at technology ” he said.
According to data from PitchBook, the city is particularly strong in cybersecurity, and almost 100 startups have their headquarters there. Examples of security businesses with headquarters in the city include the late-stage startup Snyk, the 2015 IPO of Rapid7, and the 2019 acquisition of Carbon Black by VMware for $2.1 billion.
“I contend that even when we founded our company in 2007, we deliberately concentrated on areas where we believe Boston excels. I oversee our cybersecurity investing, and I could discuss cybersecurity for days. Boston would be the only city in the world where I would launch a cybersecurity business, “said he. Fortune 500 companies can easily access New York, but Dracon, one of the startup founders claims that Boston is close enough that the distance isn’t appreciable.
Ajay Agarwal, a partner at Bain Venture Partners, has been investing in startups since 2007 and says Boston’s biggest strengths are in the sciences. He as a startup founders noted that Boston has many big companies that have gone public or were acquired, acting as a startup feeder system.
Moderna, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, pharmaceutical company, emerged from relative obscurity in 2021 when it developed an early COVID vaccine.
“I believe that the Boston scene has always been especially strong in the area of hard science. Given the MIT roots of the city, I believe the hard sciences have continued to be a real strength. Think about the work Katie Rae is doing at The Engine, the entire field of life sciences, and how Bain Capital has a dedicated life sciences fund he said.
Brumme’s firm takes advantage of Boston’s strengths in terms of startups, particularly in fintech and digital health. She also mentioned robotics, green technologies, and bio-convergence, a cross pollination between robotics and biotech. Boston has a chance to be a global leader in this area, with MIT’s AI unit coming together with the Broad Institute’s biotech focus.
Boston has a lot going for it, but it is not a great place to start a consumer company. There are exceptions, such as Wayfair selling furniture online and Tripadvisor running a travel site, but overall it is not as well suited to consumer technologies. This could be due to the deep tech knowledge and risk-averse nature of the city.
Agarwal concurs, claiming that for some reason, the city lacks a consumer focus. The city, he claimed, “tends to focus on companies that are real, they’re adding real values, and they fundamentally have a defensible value proposition.
Consumer technology relies more on the application or user interface (UI) design and is less complex technologically. “There isn’t a lot of consumer DNA in the city. The city has never really been its stronghold, “said Agarwal.
However, Boston has enjoyed some success over the years, as evidenced by the high-profile IPOs of businesses like Rapid7, HubSpot, and Wayfair. In addition, there have been several acquisitions worth billions of dollars, including one by Dell in 2015 for $67 billion of EMC, which was based outside the city and was one of the biggest tech acquisitions ever.
In 1995, IBM paid $3.5 billion for Lotus 1-2-3, a pioneering spreadsheet company for the PC. In 2019, VMware paid $2.1 billion for Carbon Black, a cybersecurity firm, and Vista Equity Partners paid $1 billion for Acquia, a for-profit entity based on the open-source Drupal project.
Boston lacks the glitz and glamor of other cities and has a reputation of being risk-averse when it comes to investing in consumer-facing companies. However, it has built an ecosystem to rival Silicon Valley and NYC, making it a place where startups can launch, grow, and thrive with a deep pool of talent in their own backyard.