When startup founders think about scaling, their attention often goes straight to product, fundraising, or sales. People Ops is frequently treated as something to build "later." During Startup Boston Week's panel, Making the Business Case for People Ops: How HR Leaders Can Secure Resources and Support, Abbey Newmark, Mark Duffy, Jon Beck and Ann Walsh challenged that mindset. Their message was clear: companies don't outgrow People Ops, they outgrow the absence of it. From hir

Every week, I meet researchers who have spent years, sometimes decades, solving incredibly difficult scientific problems. Many have published in the world's leading journals. Some have developed technologies that could fundamentally change how healthcare is delivered. Yet despite their groundbreaking discoveries, very few of these innovations ever become products that improve patients' lives. After working on the commercialization of more than 350 healthcare technologies and

When startups think about building AI, it's easy to become obsessed with the model. The latest large language model. The newest framework. The latest benchmark. But during the Startup Boston Week session Data Gold Rush: Mastering Acquisition and Annotation for AI Success" Jiten Kumar, Nirav Shah, Shan Xiao and Mireia Tortello made the case that the biggest competitive advantage isn't the algorithm—it's the quality of the data behind it. Whether you're building in healthcare,

Gastrointestinal issues are incredibly prevalent in the United States, with some surveys suggesting that up to two-thirds of Americans experience some sort of digestive symptoms. Moreover, millions suffer from chronic issues that stem from Celiac Disease, IBS, etc. The road to diagnosis is often long and complex, and most diagnostic sampling of the digestive tract relies on the end of the colon. This limitation leaves other parts of the GI tract unexplored for answers, such a

A founder’s story about the problem hiding in plain sight - and why AI finally makes it solvable. Last summer, my son graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and landed a finance rotation program at a major bank. We were thrilled. What we weren’t prepared for was the apartment hunt. For three weeks, my kitchen table became mission control for the most disorganized operation of my career - and I’ve been a software engineer for over two decades. We had 40 browser tabs ope

Everyone is talking about AI applications. Fewer people are talking about the infrastructure making the next generation of AI possible. On this episode of Cents Check, Startup Boston's podcast, host Shriya Jonnalagadda sat down with Jack O'Brien, founder and CEO of Subconscious, to discuss why agentic AI requires an entirely different approach to infrastructure, what makes infrastructure more defensible than applications, and why Boston remains one of the best places in the w

At some point, every founder reaches the same realization: your startup will only grow as fast as the team you build. But hiring in an early-stage startup isn't just about filling open roles - every new employee changes your culture, your speed, your burn rate, and ultimately your company's future. During Startup Boston Week, moderator Disleve Kanku (Co-Founder & CTO, Echo Labs) sat down with Pascal Kriesche (Co-Founder & CEO, smoodi), Cait Brumme (CEO, MassChallenge), Bridge

Some startup advice never gets old: Build relationships. Find the right people. Put yourself out there. But at Startup Boston Week, one panel took those ideas a step further. In You Belong in the Room: How One Question Changed Everything, moderator Derek Fieldhouse (Fidelity Private Shares) sat down with Unicorn co-founders and co-CEOs Denielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan to share the moments that transformed their company - not because they had all the answers, but becaus

Let me describe a scene that every CS student or self-taught developer knows too well. It's 11pm. You're staring at a LeetCode problem. You read the solution three times. You understand it. You close the tab. Two days later, you can't recall a single thing about it. That was me. I came into software engineering from a mechanical engineering background, having taught myself Python from scratch to break into the field. I loved building things. But technical interview prep felt

Summer is in full swing, but Boston's startup ecosystem isn't slowing down. July is packed with opportunities for founders, investors, operators, researchers, and ecosystem builders to connect, learn, and collaborate before the busy fall conference season begins. This month's calendar features everything from AI workshops and founder networking mixers to life sciences showcases, workforce discussions, and community celebrations. Whether you're looking to meet potential co-fou

Some of the biggest innovations in healthcare start with a simple question: What if there’s a better way? For CranioSense’s co-founders, Dr. Ryan Myers and Kristian DiMatteo, they wanted to find a different way to diagnose elevated brain pressure following traumatic brain injuries that’s noninvasive and can be used across a variety of care settings. CranioSense’s product, IHdetect, will be able to diagnose elevated intracranial pressure in minutes, without the need to drill a

At Startup Boston Week, the session “The No-Budget Growth Hack: 10X Your Reach with Partnerships” focused on one of the biggest realities founders are facing in 2026: Everyone is trying to grow with fewer resources. Moderated by Danielle Johnson, the panel brought together founders and operators who have used partnerships to grow audiences, build distribution channels, and create leverage without massive marketing budgets. Speakers included Leslie Forde and Julia Wu. And whil

Climate founders are solving some of the world's hardest problems. They're building new battery technologies, reinventing heating and cooling systems, launching satellites, and developing solutions that could fundamentally change how we adapt to a changing climate. But according to climate tech marketing leader Cara Hogan, one of the biggest challenges founders face isn't building the technology, it's explaining it. On a recent episode of Cents Check, Startup Boston's podcast

At Startup Boston Week, the session “Innovations in Life Sciences: From Lab to Market” explored one of the hardest challenges in biotech and health tech: how do you actually turn great science into something that reaches patients? The panel brought together leaders across biotech, healthcare systems, AI drug discovery, and startup operations, including Sheila Phicil, Rachel Salazar, David Cardoso, and Vanita Sood. And while the conversation covered everything from AI platform

After designing 700+ decks for founders, CEOs, and leadership teams, the same board deck issues keep showing up. Not because the business is weak, but because the slides aren't designed for how boards actually read them. These design gaps are easy to miss, but they cost approval. Here's where they happen and what to do instead. Board decks are getting longer. We regularly see board presentations cross 25, 40, even 60 slides. At the Fortune 500 level, the full board pack can

For many founders, startup ideas emerge from market research, brainstorming sessions, or years spent inside an industry. For Ratnam Srivastava, the idea came from paperwork. After spending years conducting medical research at institutions including Harvard Medical School, Mount Sinai, and Northwell Health, Ratnam repeatedly encountered the same challenge: research projects were being delayed not by science, but by administrative processes. Protocol approvals, compliance docum

Rock climbing includes a lot of starts and stops, all the while navigating up, down, and across to the next point. You can say it’s a similar journey for many founders. For Dr. Mengdie Wang, being an avid rock climber (in some ways) prepared her journey to launch RedPoint Oncology. Wang is the co-founder and CEO of RedPoint, which is building a new payload class for targeted oncology. The startup’s goal is to eliminate therapy-resistant solid tumors where current treatments f

At Startup Boston Week, the panel “From Cradle to Grave: Designing Products That Last (and Last)” explored one of the hardest transitions in startups: moving from a scrappy prototype to a real product that can survive customers, manufacturing, scale, and the real world. Moderated by Sheri Palazzo, the conversation brought together leaders across engineering, manufacturing, batteries, and venture capital, including John Unima, Raimund Koerver and Praveen Sahay. And while the t

Every startup begins with a spark. But sometimes that spark is less like a lightning bolt and more like a pattern you cannot stop noticing. For me, that pattern was the gap between what women experience after birth and what digital health tools are actually built to support. Postpartum recovery is often framed as a short, temporary stage. In reality, many women continue navigating fatigue, sleep disruption, mood changes, pain, hormonal shifts, identity changes, and fragmented

On June 8, Startup Boston and City of Boston brought together some of Greater Boston's leading accelerators, incubators, founder education programs, and innovation hubs for an evening designed to answer one simple question: Where should founders go next? For early-stage entrepreneurs, navigating the startup ecosystem can feel overwhelming. Between accelerators, incubators, venture programs, founder communities, mentorship organizations, and industry-specific resources, it's o

AI search is completely rewriting how people discover brands online today. To stay visible, companies have to stop relying on cheap SEO tricks and start focusing on being clear, credible, consistent, and undeniably easy to trust. AI engines don't reward noise; they reward brands that are easy to verify and cite. The Shift in Search Behavior For the better part of two decades, getting found online meant playing a very specific game. Someone typed a phrase into a box, and a sea