Today we’re excited to launch the newest addition to the Built In network: Built In Boston!
Boston has one of the strongest tech ecosystems in the country, with a robust entrepreneurial support network, top university talent and an amazing city where people want to both live and work. Built In Boston is an online community for Boston's startups. We hope you’ll join us and spend some time exploring, connecting and contributing — this community exists for you.
A Booming Ecosystem
In the 1980s and 1990s, digital tech in Boston began to emerge as companies like EMC Corp., Nuance Communications, Akamai and Raytheon dominated the startup landscape. In 1983, venture capitalists Rick Frisbie, Howard Anderson and Bob Barrett co-founded Battery Ventures, which quickly became one of Boston’s leading venture capital firms. In 1999, MIT grad Tim Rowe founded the Cambridge Innovation Center, an American real estate services company that calls itself a “community of entrepreneurs.” Today, the CIC houses more than 800 companies — most of which are startups. More than $1.8 billion in venture capital has been invested in startups headquartered there.
In the early 2000s Boston began to be known as a startup hub for e-commerce and marketing tech. Companies like TripAdvisor, HubSpot, Wayfair, Care.com and LogMeIn made their home in Boston, while other legacy industries like finance and education were poised for disruption. From 2012 to 2014, Boston experienced 15.7 percent growth in high-tech jobs, and in 2013, companies located in Boston closed 97 deals for venture capital financing, compared with 66 the year before. The amount of money pouring into Boston companies also rose, with some $593 million invested in 2013, compared with $508 million in 2012.
Ability To Attract Funding
Today, Boston startups have raised millions and venture capital investment has skyrocketed in recent years, too — especially in mobile and SaaS-based businesses and companies improving intelligent systems. 2016 also saw a global startup incubator rank Boston as the number one city for startups, beating out the likes of New York City and Silicon Valley.
Boston is still known for its superior software companies and has become a major player in the fintech, fashion tech, healthtech and adtech spaces. Boston is home to billion dollar companies like DraftKings, Actifio, and SimpliVity, in addition to several others.
Strong Entrepreneurial Support Ecosystem
Boston has made immense strides to foster continued growth, with MassChallenge, Techstars, Startup Institute and Cogo Labs among the top accelerators and a growing population of VCs like Battery Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners and Volition Capital bolstering the city’s entrepreneurs.
The proliferation of coworking spaces creates a collaborative environment for entrepreneurs to thrive. Led by great examples like WeWork, Workbar, and Oficio, local coworking hotspots like Cambridge Coworking Center and Koa Labs have tailored their offerings specifically for startups.
Top Talent
Boston is home to several leading universities, including MIT, Harvard, Boston University, and Northeastern, which lead the pack among east coast institutions with impressive entrepreneurship and STEM programs. The city also hosts exceptional programs like General Assembly, which aids young students and entrepreneurs in the area and ensures a tech-savvy workforce for growing startups.
These institutions are strengthened by energizing groups of like-minded people. Boston Innovators Group (formerly known as WebInno), founded in 2004 by Davis Beisel, is an organization that represents entrepreneurs from all parts of Boston’s technology community. BIG has since grown into an organization that holds quarterly events that bring together nearly a thousand people in the web and mobile entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Great Place To Live and Work
Most importantly, Boston is an amazing place to call home. In 2013, Massachusetts’ tech sector became the country’s most concentrated, which means that tech jobs made up a larger proportion of overall jobs in Massachusetts than in any other state, including California. Many of these jobs are in the heart of Boston, where talented students with backgrounds in tech have their pick of incredible jobs. As a recent report by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council highlights, the state’s technology and computer science fields have 17 jobs openings for each recent in-state graduate with a computing and mathematics degree.
These job openings range widely, from positions in security and marketing, to jobs in robotics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.
With that, I’d like to personally invite you to sign up and further discover news, jobs and events in the Boston tech startup community.
Once you're signed up:
- Complete your profile and get connected
- Read news about Boston startups
- Get a job at a Boston tech company
- Discover Boston startups
- Find cool tech events
I look forward to connecting with all of you,
Justine Hofherr
 (1).jpeg)
