Posts filed under 'Boston Tech Legacy'
Whats next in Tech for Boston?
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As a precusor to an event on June 25th called “What’s Next in Tech: Exploring the Growth Opportunities of 2009 and Beyond.” that he organized and will be moderating, Scott Kirsner challenged a few of the local tech bloggers to come up with some ideas on what will be the next trends for the coming wave of new technology companies.
I’m sure that Boston will make significant future contributions in both Bio Tech and Clean Tech, however I will let the knowledgeable experts provide further details for those domains.
In Communications, Computing, Software and the Web, the obvious current trends in new tech companies cluster around cloud computing and storage, green data centers , mobile applications, social networking, search engine marketing, gaming and virtual goods.
I suspect that Boston will continue with one of it’s tried and true approaches to building successful business within the next wave of technology. The same method was used by Levi Strauss during the California gold rush, sell the picks and shovels. I think this fits in well with the more conservative New England ways, less risky than going for the gold, but you can still build very successful businesses.
Translated to the world of technology, the strategy is to build the tools, infrastructure and marketplaces that create an even larger swell in whatever current wave of innovation is building momentum.
Without going back too far into the early days of the internet and the rise of distributed computing and client server applications, we only need to look at some of the successful companies spawned here during the web 1.0 period to see the pattern.
Booklink the 3rd Browser
Vermeer html editor
Open Market first commercially available Web (HTTP) servers
ViaWeb online store builder
Akamai web content servers
you get the idea
So lets see what some local companies are doing within the previously identified trends.
cloud computing and storage: see Cloud Crowd
green data centers: Viridity infrastructure to balance power, cooling and utilization.
mobile applications: Skyhook Wireless infrastructure for mobile positioning
social networking: Mzinga enterprise infrastructure for social media. Tipjoy social commerce infrastructure
search engine marketing: Wordstream, Hubspot tools to optimize SEM and Inbound Marketing
gaming and virtual goods: GamerDNA virtual bazaar for gamers , Viximo marketplace and tools for virtual goods commerce.
As the list clearly shows, the course of providing the tools, infrastructure and markets for the emerging technologies is still a mainstay of Boston’s approach to building businesses.
Scott’s question to us is “Whats next in Tech for Boston?” If we apply the picks and shovels template to the trends, we can determine where there may still be opportunities. One category, marketplace plays, may be promising.
One obvious vacuum is in the mobile space.
So you heard it here first, one of the next local companies will be building an “App Store“ for the Android Platform. Rich Miner, if you are listening, I can pull a team together in a month, and with the imprimatur of Google Ventures, we should have a pretty good shot.
What do you think? We should all be going through this exercise so that we can position Boston and our companies as the economy returns to health.
Come hear what some of the brightest minds in Boston innovation think will be the next tech opportunities. Early registration ends today.
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1 comment May 15, 2009
Who Do You Think Should be on this List? Best of Boston Web 2008
We are really just putting this out there as a starting point in hope that readers will add to the list. Of course it is nowhere comprehensive and totally subjective. Let us know your choices. Oh, and don’t nominate yourself, spread the kudos around.
Networking Event:
WebInno was founded and is currently led by David Beisel of Venrock. It is the stalwart networking event for mobile and web technology startups in the Boston area.
Started informally in the fall of 2005 it has grown to the present day where up to 800 people gather to schmooze and review the latest crop of services from bootstrapped or seed funded companies.
Open Coffee Wednesdays, 8:30 am – 10:30 am: Andala Coffee House
286 Franklin Street
This is the Cambridge version of the concept that originated in London by Saul Klein of Index Ventures. The idea was to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. The Cambridge group was started by Nabeel Hyatt of Conduit Labs and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, and meets every wednesday morning. It is well worth attending to meet the next generation of entrepreneurs and have lively discussions about what everyone is doing.
CoWorking:
BetaHouse Jon and Brian have created a workplace that caters to pre funded startups as well as individuals looking for office space. If you are looking for a great environment to crank some code, go check it out. They host a good party too.
VC Funded 2008:
If you want to watch a startup and learn how to market in the online world, you could have no better example that Hubspot. They are building a business teaching companies how to attract potential customers without using the less effective traditional means of interruption and expensive advertising. Follow along as they ride the wave of marketing based upon permission, organic search traffic and the use of social media, that is inbound marketing.
Angel Funded 2008:
Tipjoy Y Combinator launched and Angel funded, Tipjoy has been generating a lot of interest with it’s new Auto Twitter integration, see an example of how it is being used by @Pistachio for the WellWishes campaign. They also deserve kudos for returning to the Boston area rather than base the company in Silicon Valley.
Flipkey After building a useful initial site and ramping user acquisition, they landed a strong group of angel investors including Nick Beim of Matrix Partners. Then soon afterward, TripAdvisor took a majority ownership position in the company, validating the team and concept.
MyPunchbowl is a prime example of building a business through executing on the fundementals. Incremental and steady improvement of the product and continually acquiring users lead to a recent follow on investment.
Bootstrapped:
One of our readers turned us on to Editme. Nice product and business, no VC and a healthy dose of excellent customer service, makes Editme a winner.
JobVent This simple concept continues to gain momentum and users by providing a platform for users to get off their chest feelings about their work environment.
VC:
North Bridge Venture Partners deserves recognition for diversifying a portfolio that has been very successful in the traditional domains of Boston VC’s, namely communications and enterprise software. Recent investments in a variety of categories of web offerings from a career site, virtual goods market, social media infrastructure, financial communities and mobile photo blogging have set them apart in 2008 as a growing participant in the Boston Web scene.
Angel Investor:
YCombinator the seminal Advisor/Investor firm that has spawned many copycat endeavors. While some may have the advisory chops, fewer still have the connections and none have Paul Graham. Hats off to the idol of hackers around the world and the gadfly to Boston VC’s.
Bantam Group We first heard about this angel investor only a few months ago. After some research, it was clear that Bantam Group may be the best Boston Angel investor you’ve never heard off. One look at their investments will tell you that they are supporting new Web companies more than any other local angel.
Entrepreneur Blogger:
Furquan Nazeeri started blogging about his experience as an EIR at Softbank in 2007. Always insightful and even more interesting now that he has started his own company Virid.us. Bringing perspectives from both sides of the table, Altgate is a must read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and investing in startups.
Most Influential Blogger:
Scott has been promoting two big issues that are important for Boston area starups. The elimination of non-compete agreements and pushing for an organized effort to keep our best graduating students in the Boston area and engaged with the Emerging Technology community.
Social Mediaologist:
Don’t even try to keep up with this guy. There is a lot of fluff in the S M crowd, but Chris puts the hype into action.
8 comments December 22, 2008
Boston Tech Legacy: Booklink, the beginning of the Bubble in Boston
Booklink was a browser company founded by Bill Hawkins. It could be designated as the first internet company to benefit from the internet bubble 1.0 in the Boston area. Nine people from Interleaf formed the company in 1994 and within nine months had sold to AOL for $30 million. The story goes that Microsoft was in the process of putting together an offer to purchase the company when AOL swooped in at the last minute to win the deal.
The company was funded by a little known company CMG, (College Marketing Group) that sold textbooks via direct marketing to students. It turned out to be a very wise investment as AOL stock zoomed up thousands of percentage points and the resulting return for CMG was around $250 million.
This slug of cash became the basis for the firm CMGi an internet holding company at one time valued in the billions. The CMGi story is a case study in Bubble 1.0 but we will leave it for another day.
Another point of interest, Booklink (AOL) executives were key witnesses in the DOJ trial against Microsoft regarding the browser war between Netscape and IE.
Add comment July 17, 2008
Boston’s Tech Legacy: Cullinet, First Software Product Company IPO
Today we are kicking off a new feature; Boston’s Tech Legacy. We will be pointing the spotlight back in time to a company that played a notable role in the history of emerging technology in Boston. Our first company was a pioneer in enterprise software.
The foundation for the software portfolio of the venerable Boston VC firm Greylock was built by an investment in Cullinet. Some of the legacies of Cullinet, the first IPO for a software company, the first software company listed on the NYSE, first software company to be a component of the S&P 500 and the spawning of many successful companies including Platinum, AICorp, Ingres. Many executives from the ranks of the Cullinet management became influential as well.
Follow the link if you are interested in the complete story chronicled on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullinet
1 comment June 12, 2008
