5 ms·

Kendall Square: Still the place to be for start-ups

56 points by jchernan 14y ago

rikacomet 14y ago
I want a Kendall Square in Delhi, India as well. Entrepreneurs are scattered all over, India is such a big country, yet here we are. In Delhi, we have the IIT, but the Community Center just across it, is a place to get high on wrong skies. If only the VCs living in Delhi, would rather come out of the swanky embassies and foreign centers :/
- pm90 14y ago
  If you could convince the large number of 'newly rich' industrialists to start investing in startups, you could make much more progress. As I see it, most of their money currently goes into Real estate: which is driving up property prices like crazy, but the money is not really doing any 'work'. Also, many of these gentlemen are located in small towns (Rajkot, Pune, Nagpur) rather than in the megapolis'
mrgordon 14y ago
Still the place to be in Boston/Cambridge for start-ups, certainly, but it is hardly "the" place compared to San Francisco and the valley. The lack of funding, even compared to New York, has been a real problem for the ecosystem. Why did Facebook, Dropbox, and many others start in Cambridge and leave?
- jchernan 14y ago
  I got the feeling the article discusses the topic in the context of Boston/Cambridge startup scenery, not necessarily nation wide. As Boston is trying to define its own ecosystem, it needs to find a place where startups can grow. That place might be Kendall Square.
  - mrgordon 14y ago
    Yeah, Kendall Square has definitely filled that nitch for a while. There have been enough successful exits, particularly in biotech, that I don't think it's really any contest as far as the local area goes. It seemed like the startup scene was going to expand to more of Boston and Cambridge for a while with YC doing one batch of startups there each year but they gave up on that. I was running a startup in Boston for a while and talked with the mayor about his vision to make the old port area a revitalized live-work space for startups but it seems to be happening very slowly if at all. Meanwhile, tons of promising startups keep pouring out of the area and NYC is becoming the #2 US startup hub.
    - eob 14y ago
      I don't think the port is a viable location for a thriving community, unless Boston is willing to dedicate more than tax credits to stimulate growth. You have to take a bus! (silver line) And then walk past warehouse after warehouse!
- eob 14y ago
  I'm convinced part of Cambridge's challenge ahead lies in zoning. As someone who has lived in Cambridge the past five years, I've watched sections of Kendall Square (and even parts of Central, really) go from post military/industrial ghost towns to places where you'd want to go out to dinner and drinks afterwards. But we've still got a long way to go. Pockets of warehouse owners are holding on tight to their empty, broken-windowed buildings knowing that they're sitting on a gold mine whose value only goes up with each new biomedical company or silicon valley branch office that moves in next door. So the result is this odd landscape of new buildings next to run-down two story structures. We need to rezone for mixed use and people with an interest in Boston should rally together and buy out the warehouse hold-outs to build the kind of living/working spaces conducive to early-stage companies.
  - lvs 13y ago
    Another serious problem is the parasitic real estate developers and agents that are driving up the costs of space in the area. Yes, there's a lot of demand, but square footage is now competitive with SF, and it's not ... ahem .. SF.
- sebasc 14y ago
  Couldn't agree with you more. Cambridge/Boston is experiencing something of a renaissance in tech that started a couple of years ago. It didn't really exist when the first social media tech built in Cambridge was born, but then quickly left to the west coast. Now that tech is building steam again here, we have to make sure that the parts of the ecosystem that haven't worked well (and funding is a big part of it), start to coalesce around that momentum that startups in the area are building. Another big problem is that recent infrastructure development has focused quite literally, on the 4 square block area that is Kendall Square proper, when really there should be plans to extend the great things that Kendall Square has built to a broader Cambridge
- JayNeely 14y ago
  Massachusetts is consistently the second-highest ranked state in the nation for VC investment, and has been for the past 28 years (source: NVCA Yearbook). Assuming I haven't F-ed up these calculations, MA has invested an average of 146% more than NY over the past 10 years. The challenge for startups here has been in finding: a) seed funding, and b) funding for consumer web businesses Both areas have seen significant improvements since five or even three years ago. Since YCombinator left Boston in 2009, Spark Capital (one of the main consumer web & seed-stage VCs here) has raised two additional funds of over $800 million. NextView Ventures raised its first fund in 2012 to invest in seed stage deals, and both New Atlantic Ventures & .406 Ventures raised new funds in 2008 to do the same. Boston/Cambridge is certainly still far from the amounts of funding in Silicon Valley, but we're far ahead of anyone else, particularly when you factor in population.
  - rc4algorithm 14y ago
    I would assume that most of this is biotech investment, however, which is sort of outside the purview of the HN community.
  - mrgordon 13y ago
    Boston has been the second biggest VC market (counting the Bay Area as one) but every report I've seen shows New York has tied or surpassed Boston over the past few years. http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/top-cities-startups/ http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/top-cities-startups/ http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/stats-and-the-city/2011/technology/ny-overtaking-boston-in-vc-deals http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/stats-and-the-city/2011/te... http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/tech-venture-capital-new-york-boston http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/tech-venture-... http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2011/10/13/mass-drops-to-no-3-for-vc-behind.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2011/10/13/mass-drops... From the last link, dated October 2011: "Still, for Massachusetts to fall behind New York in VC financings is noteworthy, said Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights. New York had already been leading Massachusetts in VC for tech — including Internet, mobile, software, hardware and electronics — since the second quarter of 2010. But due in large part to health care VC activity in Massachusetts, the state had remained ahead of New York in overall VC until the third quarter."
aaroncray 14y ago
You misspelled Silicon Valley.
jchung 14y ago
Also published today in the Boston Globe: "Time to leave the Kendall Square nest" by P. Shah, CEO at Mobee http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendall-square-nest/1YPAE991bK40HMvKwFfX0K/story.html http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendal...
ef4 14y ago
The article hit the key word: density. The unique thing about Kendall Square is the sheer density of geeks in general and startups in particular. Other places have higher absolute numbers, but not in such a concentrated space. Plus, from a tech worker's perspective it's fantastic to have so many potential employers all in one place. You don't have to disrupt your lifestyle to change jobs, which gives you some extra clout as an employee.
- hga 14y ago
  Errrm, but how many of these employers require their workers to sign non-competes? I have no idea, I left the Boston area in 1991 after Route 128 died, but they were not uncommon back then. I'm convinced their non-enforceablity in California is one reason for the Bay Area's wild and sustained success.
  - ef4 14y ago
    I know many, many people who have successfully job-hopped around Kendall Square with no adverse impact from noncompetes. I suspect the reason is that the noncompetes are sufficiently narrow, and the software industry is a big, wide place. I don't know as much about the impact on biotech.
virtualwhys 14y ago
Yeah, Kendall Square. What sold me on the Cambridge Innovation Center was the unlimited supply of FREE organic coffee, tea, peanut butter, butter butter, soy milk, milk milk, cereal, jams, etc. ;-) Couple of guys were actually living there, crashing on couches in one of the upper floors, and then later, given das boot -- not sure if they were start-up co-founders or what, they certainly leaned on CiC 24/7 for around $250/month, cheapest rent in town.
em70 14y ago
As someone who lives in Kendall Square and studies at MIT, I would say that, in spite of the amount of brains, Cambridge and the whole Boston area are a terrible place to live, with few opportunities for recreation and a horrible weather...
- techiferous 14y ago
  Cambridge is a wonderful place to live: extremely walkable, pretty architecture, good food, plenty to do, tolerant social atmosphere, very tech-friendly. Not sure if it's fair to call Cambridge/Boston a "terrible" place to live. I would say that the weather and recreation opportunities aren't as good as in some other locations of the country, so you have a point there.
- JayNeely 14y ago
  Kendall Square itself isn't the most residential area, but you're a subway stop away from a ton of nightlife & live music in Central Square. One stop further and Harvard Square has an active city events scene (Mayfair, Book Festival, Bastille Day) + a ton of shops & restaurants. Just over the river you have the Esplanade, with regular concerts, movie nights, and festivals. And that's all within a mile or so. What kind of recreation are you looking for?
- ricw 13y ago
  Horrible weather? You should check out the uk.. It's beautiful, yet windy, in Boston in comparison.
dgallagher 14y ago
I'd frequent the Kendall area when I lived in Boston 3.5 years ago. The thing that bugged me most about it was the lack of street-level places to sit down and work. There was one Starbucks and nothing else, besides semi-fast food restaurants which aren't good laptop environments. Beautiful new high-rises were going up everywhere. There's a neat "secret" park on top of one of the buildings (Cambridge Center Roof Garden). Extremely easy to cycle around, and by far the best pedestrian-friendly traffic controls in the entire state. However, unless you worked in one of the office buildings, or could enter MIT legally, there were few places for "outsiders" to wonder in, hang out, and hack. Is this still the case, or has it since become more welcoming to laptop nomads?
- jchernan 14y ago
  It is becoming more welcoming. I like these two places on 3rd Street: Voltage Cafe http://voltagecoffee.com http://voltagecoffee.com Tatte Bakery and Cafe http://www.tattecookies.com http://www.tattecookies.com
- grinich 14y ago
  Yeah, it's way better now. Voltage and Tatte are very friendly for hackers, and Starbucks, Cosi, or ABP aren't bad either. The entire ground floor of the MIT Stata Center is open to the public (literally 24/7) with ultra fast WiFi. If you need dedicated desks, Dogpatch or the Cambridge Innovation Center have you covered. Unfortunately Google has invaded much of the roof garden with a recent renovation. My favorite is Dwelltime on Broadway. Close enough to Central to get to quickly, yet away from much of the hustle+bustle and suits. They shut off the internet from 11-3p, which is great for a productive boost in the middle of the day. :)
  - dantheman 13y ago
    I loved to work at the Atomic Bean & 1369 in Central & when by MIT I love the Rotch Library - that is one nicest spaces to hack.
- argonaut 14y ago
  One thing I liked about MIT (over Harvard, whose closed-ness I did not like) when I was visiting Cambridge is that large swathes of MIT are open to the public. The Stata center (the CS center) is open with free WiFi. Many MIT libraries are also open to the public (varies). The MIT food court is also open. Heck, I wandered around several dorms without being carded/checked, though that probably only worked because I look (and am) young and was wearing a hoodie + backpack (and most of the dorms require carding in, I believe).
bernardom 14y ago
I work in Kendall. I'm consistently impressed with the number of interesting companies doing interesting things. It is getting really developed (nice office buildings, nice luxury apartments, bars, restaurants) really fast- though it's still weirdly sterile. Nowhere to buy beer or even groceries outside of 7-eleven. Just today I was at my gym (Bosse on third street) and overheard a guy complaining that he could rent a better apartment in Manhattan than in Kendall right now. The rent for the Watermark tower (corner of Third and Broadway) is around $3200 for a two-bedroom!!
lvs 13y ago
>"Kendall Square institutions like Aceituna Cafe and Voltage Coffee" These aren't really institutions so much as they are a restaurant and an overcutesy coffee shop that are only a couple years old each. Voltage opened in 2010, and it's some of the most overhyped espresso I've ever had. I think Acetuna might be a couple of years older, and it's a decent Lebanese lunch, priced for the pharma clientele ($20/plate).
- radd9er 13y ago
  Anyone know what the deal is with Aceituna Cafe? Parked outside there are always Mazaradis, Porches and other expensiveness cars, and they are differenct almost every day.
  - lvs 13y ago
    There are a bunch of apparently wealthy Middle Eastern kids who live in University Park. They and their friends drive your typical Maserati, Porsche, GT-R, Ferrari, etc.

56 points by jchernan 14y ago

I want a Kendall Square in Delhi, India as well. Entrepreneurs are scattered all over, India is such a big country, yet here we are. In Delhi, we have the IIT, but the Community Center just across it, is a place to get high on wrong skies. If only the VCs living in Delhi, would rather come out of the swanky embassies and foreign centers :/

pm90 14y ago
If you could convince the large number of 'newly rich' industrialists to start investing in startups, you could make much more progress. As I see it, most of their money currently goes into Real estate: which is driving up property prices like crazy, but the money is not really doing any 'work'. Also, many of these gentlemen are located in small towns (Rajkot, Pune, Nagpur) rather than in the megapolis'

mrgordon 14y ago

Still the place to be in Boston/Cambridge for start-ups, certainly, but it is hardly "the" place compared to San Francisco and the valley. The lack of funding, even compared to New York, has been a real problem for the ecosystem. Why did Facebook, Dropbox, and many others start in Cambridge and leave?

jchernan 14y ago
I got the feeling the article discusses the topic in the context of Boston/Cambridge startup scenery, not necessarily nation wide. As Boston is trying to define its own ecosystem, it needs to find a place where startups can grow. That place might be Kendall Square.
- mrgordon 14y ago
  Yeah, Kendall Square has definitely filled that nitch for a while. There have been enough successful exits, particularly in biotech, that I don't think it's really any contest as far as the local area goes. It seemed like the startup scene was going to expand to more of Boston and Cambridge for a while with YC doing one batch of startups there each year but they gave up on that. I was running a startup in Boston for a while and talked with the mayor about his vision to make the old port area a revitalized live-work space for startups but it seems to be happening very slowly if at all. Meanwhile, tons of promising startups keep pouring out of the area and NYC is becoming the #2 US startup hub.
  - eob 14y ago
    I don't think the port is a viable location for a thriving community, unless Boston is willing to dedicate more than tax credits to stimulate growth. You have to take a bus! (silver line) And then walk past warehouse after warehouse!
eob 14y ago
I'm convinced part of Cambridge's challenge ahead lies in zoning. As someone who has lived in Cambridge the past five years, I've watched sections of Kendall Square (and even parts of Central, really) go from post military/industrial ghost towns to places where you'd want to go out to dinner and drinks afterwards. But we've still got a long way to go. Pockets of warehouse owners are holding on tight to their empty, broken-windowed buildings knowing that they're sitting on a gold mine whose value only goes up with each new biomedical company or silicon valley branch office that moves in next door. So the result is this odd landscape of new buildings next to run-down two story structures. We need to rezone for mixed use and people with an interest in Boston should rally together and buy out the warehouse hold-outs to build the kind of living/working spaces conducive to early-stage companies.
- lvs 13y ago
  Another serious problem is the parasitic real estate developers and agents that are driving up the costs of space in the area. Yes, there's a lot of demand, but square footage is now competitive with SF, and it's not ... ahem .. SF.
sebasc 14y ago
Couldn't agree with you more. Cambridge/Boston is experiencing something of a renaissance in tech that started a couple of years ago. It didn't really exist when the first social media tech built in Cambridge was born, but then quickly left to the west coast. Now that tech is building steam again here, we have to make sure that the parts of the ecosystem that haven't worked well (and funding is a big part of it), start to coalesce around that momentum that startups in the area are building. Another big problem is that recent infrastructure development has focused quite literally, on the 4 square block area that is Kendall Square proper, when really there should be plans to extend the great things that Kendall Square has built to a broader Cambridge
JayNeely 14y ago
Massachusetts is consistently the second-highest ranked state in the nation for VC investment, and has been for the past 28 years (source: NVCA Yearbook). Assuming I haven't F-ed up these calculations, MA has invested an average of 146% more than NY over the past 10 years. The challenge for startups here has been in finding: a) seed funding, and b) funding for consumer web businesses Both areas have seen significant improvements since five or even three years ago. Since YCombinator left Boston in 2009, Spark Capital (one of the main consumer web & seed-stage VCs here) has raised two additional funds of over $800 million. NextView Ventures raised its first fund in 2012 to invest in seed stage deals, and both New Atlantic Ventures & .406 Ventures raised new funds in 2008 to do the same. Boston/Cambridge is certainly still far from the amounts of funding in Silicon Valley, but we're far ahead of anyone else, particularly when you factor in population.
- rc4algorithm 14y ago
  I would assume that most of this is biotech investment, however, which is sort of outside the purview of the HN community.
- mrgordon 13y ago
  Boston has been the second biggest VC market (counting the Bay Area as one) but every report I've seen shows New York has tied or surpassed Boston over the past few years. http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/top-cities-startups/ http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/top-cities-startups/ http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/stats-and-the-city/2011/technology/ny-overtaking-boston-in-vc-deals http://mycrains.crainsnewyork.com/stats-and-the-city/2011/te... http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/tech-venture-capital-new-york-boston http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/tech-venture-... http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2011/10/13/mass-drops-to-no-3-for-vc-behind.html?page=all http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2011/10/13/mass-drops... From the last link, dated October 2011: "Still, for Massachusetts to fall behind New York in VC financings is noteworthy, said Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights. New York had already been leading Massachusetts in VC for tech — including Internet, mobile, software, hardware and electronics — since the second quarter of 2010. But due in large part to health care VC activity in Massachusetts, the state had remained ahead of New York in overall VC until the third quarter."

aaroncray 14y ago

You misspelled Silicon Valley.

jchung 14y ago

Also published today in the Boston Globe: "Time to leave the Kendall Square nest" by P. Shah, CEO at Mobee http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendall-square-nest/1YPAE991bK40HMvKwFfX0K/story.html http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendal...

ef4 14y ago

The article hit the key word: density. The unique thing about Kendall Square is the sheer density of geeks in general and startups in particular. Other places have higher absolute numbers, but not in such a concentrated space. Plus, from a tech worker's perspective it's fantastic to have so many potential employers all in one place. You don't have to disrupt your lifestyle to change jobs, which gives you some extra clout as an employee.

hga 14y ago
Errrm, but how many of these employers require their workers to sign non-competes? I have no idea, I left the Boston area in 1991 after Route 128 died, but they were not uncommon back then. I'm convinced their non-enforceablity in California is one reason for the Bay Area's wild and sustained success.
- ef4 14y ago
  I know many, many people who have successfully job-hopped around Kendall Square with no adverse impact from noncompetes. I suspect the reason is that the noncompetes are sufficiently narrow, and the software industry is a big, wide place. I don't know as much about the impact on biotech.

virtualwhys 14y ago

Yeah, Kendall Square. What sold me on the Cambridge Innovation Center was the unlimited supply of FREE organic coffee, tea, peanut butter, butter butter, soy milk, milk milk, cereal, jams, etc. ;-) Couple of guys were actually living there, crashing on couches in one of the upper floors, and then later, given das boot -- not sure if they were start-up co-founders or what, they certainly leaned on CiC 24/7 for around $250/month, cheapest rent in town.

em70 14y ago

As someone who lives in Kendall Square and studies at MIT, I would say that, in spite of the amount of brains, Cambridge and the whole Boston area are a terrible place to live, with few opportunities for recreation and a horrible weather...

techiferous 14y ago
Cambridge is a wonderful place to live: extremely walkable, pretty architecture, good food, plenty to do, tolerant social atmosphere, very tech-friendly. Not sure if it's fair to call Cambridge/Boston a "terrible" place to live. I would say that the weather and recreation opportunities aren't as good as in some other locations of the country, so you have a point there.
JayNeely 14y ago
Kendall Square itself isn't the most residential area, but you're a subway stop away from a ton of nightlife & live music in Central Square. One stop further and Harvard Square has an active city events scene (Mayfair, Book Festival, Bastille Day) + a ton of shops & restaurants. Just over the river you have the Esplanade, with regular concerts, movie nights, and festivals. And that's all within a mile or so. What kind of recreation are you looking for?
ricw 13y ago
Horrible weather? You should check out the uk.. It's beautiful, yet windy, in Boston in comparison.

dgallagher 14y ago

I'd frequent the Kendall area when I lived in Boston 3.5 years ago. The thing that bugged me most about it was the lack of street-level places to sit down and work. There was one Starbucks and nothing else, besides semi-fast food restaurants which aren't good laptop environments. Beautiful new high-rises were going up everywhere. There's a neat "secret" park on top of one of the buildings (Cambridge Center Roof Garden). Extremely easy to cycle around, and by far the best pedestrian-friendly traffic controls in the entire state. However, unless you worked in one of the office buildings, or could enter MIT legally, there were few places for "outsiders" to wonder in, hang out, and hack. Is this still the case, or has it since become more welcoming to laptop nomads?

jchernan 14y ago
It is becoming more welcoming. I like these two places on 3rd Street: Voltage Cafe http://voltagecoffee.com http://voltagecoffee.com Tatte Bakery and Cafe http://www.tattecookies.com http://www.tattecookies.com
grinich 14y ago
Yeah, it's way better now. Voltage and Tatte are very friendly for hackers, and Starbucks, Cosi, or ABP aren't bad either. The entire ground floor of the MIT Stata Center is open to the public (literally 24/7) with ultra fast WiFi. If you need dedicated desks, Dogpatch or the Cambridge Innovation Center have you covered. Unfortunately Google has invaded much of the roof garden with a recent renovation. My favorite is Dwelltime on Broadway. Close enough to Central to get to quickly, yet away from much of the hustle+bustle and suits. They shut off the internet from 11-3p, which is great for a productive boost in the middle of the day. :)
- dantheman 13y ago
  I loved to work at the Atomic Bean & 1369 in Central & when by MIT I love the Rotch Library - that is one nicest spaces to hack.
argonaut 14y ago
One thing I liked about MIT (over Harvard, whose closed-ness I did not like) when I was visiting Cambridge is that large swathes of MIT are open to the public. The Stata center (the CS center) is open with free WiFi. Many MIT libraries are also open to the public (varies). The MIT food court is also open. Heck, I wandered around several dorms without being carded/checked, though that probably only worked because I look (and am) young and was wearing a hoodie + backpack (and most of the dorms require carding in, I believe).

bernardom 14y ago

I work in Kendall. I'm consistently impressed with the number of interesting companies doing interesting things. It is getting really developed (nice office buildings, nice luxury apartments, bars, restaurants) really fast- though it's still weirdly sterile. Nowhere to buy beer or even groceries outside of 7-eleven. Just today I was at my gym (Bosse on third street) and overheard a guy complaining that he could rent a better apartment in Manhattan than in Kendall right now. The rent for the Watermark tower (corner of Third and Broadway) is around $3200 for a two-bedroom!!

lvs 13y ago

>"Kendall Square institutions like Aceituna Cafe and Voltage Coffee" These aren't really institutions so much as they are a restaurant and an overcutesy coffee shop that are only a couple years old each. Voltage opened in 2010, and it's some of the most overhyped espresso I've ever had. I think Acetuna might be a couple of years older, and it's a decent Lebanese lunch, priced for the pharma clientele ($20/plate).

radd9er 13y ago
Anyone know what the deal is with Aceituna Cafe? Parked outside there are always Mazaradis, Porches and other expensiveness cars, and they are differenct almost every day.
- lvs 13y ago
  There are a bunch of apparently wealthy Middle Eastern kids who live in University Park. They and their friends drive your typical Maserati, Porsche, GT-R, Ferrari, etc.