Why I Had It All Wrong About Boston s High-tech Scene
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A foggy picture for Boston's high-tech community?
Photo courtesy Evelyn Rodriguez-Anton
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- I'm at a crowded tech schmoozefest, and Tim Rowe, the pied piper of local startups, is giving me a serious talking-to about my blase attitude toward the local tech industry.
"I'd like you to think about what you're saying and look at the facts," Rowe says with growing intensity. "I think you're going to see your perception and the facts don't add up."
No startup culture? Look around here in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, ground zero for New England startups, Rowe says. There are about seven floors filled with nearly 450 startups and tour phượng hoàng cổ trấn offices for two major venture capital firms, Charles River Ventures and Highland Partners. And there's more academic research and development spending in Cambridge than any other part of the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area.
It's true. About $4 billion annually just in Cambridge versus $1.3 billion in the Bay Area, according to the National Science Foundation. And that stuff in the college labs, we all know, often leads to game-changing companies like Google.
"I'd like you to think about what you're saying and look at the facts. I think you're going to see your perception and the facts don't add up."
Tim Rowe, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Center, partner at New Atlantic Ventures
Not enough talent? This neighborhood right next to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has more programmers per capita than anywhere in the world. That's true, too. Look it up, Rowe says.
It's a late Thursday afternoon and I'm in the fourth-floor meeting hall of the Innovation Center, which has all the brushed metal and floor-to-ceiling glass that you'd expect of a tech hangout. I'm here for the weekly [ Venture Cafe], a mix of how-to training sessions for entrepreneurs and old-fashioned glad-handing. It's a scene you could find on just about any weeknight in San Francisco: Aspiring startup bosses are shouting to be heard by investors who are trying hard to look interested as the beer flows, wine is served, and a determined group of Southeast Asian techies serve what I think is a sweet Thai tea.
Rowe, who has run the place since 1999, is the emcee of the weekly event. Trim, clean-cut and kynghidongduong.vn in khaki pants, the quick-talking, native New Englander and MIT graduate is mounting a spirited defense of the local tech market.
And I am not making him happy with my Silicon Valley-centric worldview.
So what are the facts about the Boston area's tech community? Everything Rowe says is indeed true, even if few people, even here in the home of the Celtics and Romneycare, seem to realize it. Per capita -- and it's important to look at the number in relation to the overall population -- Boston and Cambridge in particular have more software developers and more R&D investment than anywhere in the world.
Perception, however unfair, is another matter. Depending on who's counting, New York City passed greater Boston in total venture capital deals about five quarters ago. Silicon Valley and neighboring San Francisco dwarf the Boston technology market, as they always have. And Facebook -- oh, Mark Zuckerberg, why did you have to found your company in a Harvard dorm room and then move the whole kit and caboodle to California? You have no idea the tooth-gnashing you've caused here.
[ Q1 2012 Venture Capital Report]
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The VC data is tricky, of course. In the first quarter, the Massachusetts share of venture deals was 10 percent, one percentage point behind New York and 30 percent behind California, according to CB Insights. (See the embedded document above.) But in [/news/vc-funding-slumps-in-q1-but-get-ready-for-instagram-effect/ total funding], California has a 49 percent share, followed by Massachusetts with 11 percent and New York with 6 percent. That relatively strong second ranking has much to do with the Bay State's strong showing in health care. In high-tech areas such as Internet and mobile tech, it's a distant third. And that, fellow Bostonians, is why our area is often considered an also-ran in high tech.
The boomerang
I returned to Boston several years ago after a decade in San Francisco. My view of the Boston high-tech industry has gone something like this: Once upon a time huge companies like Digital Equipment and Wang made minicomputers (think a slightly less lumbering version of a mainframe) and dominated the tech landscape. They were headquartered near Rte. 128 surrounding Boston, and were by the mid-1980s what Google and Apple are today.
But then the PC revolution happened... somewhere else. The minicomputing companies failed to adapt to smaller, easier-to-use devices and eventually disappeared. Insert your dinosaur metaphor here. Then the dot-com boom happened, and while Boston had its fair share of companies like the search engine Lycos, it didn't produce a new giant, a new Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, or Google. The most interesting local companies, mostly focused on the plumbing for networking and mobile tech, were acquired by Silicon Valley heavyweights like Cisco and Intel.
The one Boston-area giant that has emerged over the last two decades is the data storage company EMC and, rightly or wrongly, it has earned a reputation for insularity. Or just being boring. Another exception? The [/news/irobots-ava-have-tablet-will-travel/ Roomba maker iRobot.]
And then social media came along and, far as I could tell, Boston had HubSpot and that's about it. Last fall, Zuckerberg returned and (I will assume) unintentionally rubbed salt in the wound when he said that if he had to do it all over again, he'd have kept Facebook in the Boston area. Nice of him to say that. He also mentioned that Facebook would open a local office somewhere down the line. About six months later, Facebook still doesn't have an office in Boston, though there are rumors of a shadow office -- which usually means there are people telecommuting from home.
