I’m a regular on the Boston startup scene; I'm also a native Bostonian.
We have tons of smart people; everybody knows that. And there’s a kind of a startup culture here. But, like a lot of
things about Boston, it is its own thing. Once you leave the Kendall/MIT area of Cambridge or the Innovation District in Boston, you'd never know we had lots of startups in the area. I've been to San Francisco many times; the startup culture is everywhere there.
There’s the lingering feeling of losing Facebook and, more recently, Dropbox and Stripe—one Collision brother attended
MIT; the other went to Harvard.
There’s a constant brain drain to other places, particuarly the west coast. I know of people who left Boston for weeks at a time to get funding and engineering talent in San Francisco. There’s quite a bit of that New England financial conservatism compared to the West Coast.
People often underestimate the little things: it’s hard to make friends outside of a startup or academic setting. I
hear this constantly from people who are here for school or work, including startups. Even in Cambridge with MIT and
Harvard, it’s hard getting real food after 10pm.
Need to stay late on a project? Sorry, public transportation stops at around 12:30 am; the MBTA is threatening to stop
commuter rail service at 10pm during the week for those going to the suburbs.
Want to blow off some steam after a long day of pitches, meetings and coding? Massachusetts outlawed happy hour years ago. Most bars and clubs close at 1am in Cambridge and 2am in Boston. How about a six pack at the 7-Eleven? Sorry, we don't do that here. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Boston is my home; I’ll be right here when I do a startup. But it’s going to take a lot of work to get things to where they need to be. We might have to lose another household name before there’s a real sense of urgency about it.