Boston City Hall became a stage for the next generation of builders this week. Startup Boston teamed up with the City of Boston to host the Built in Boston: Student Founder Pitch Showcase, bringing together student entrepreneurs from across the region who aren’t just exploring ideas, they’re actively building companies while still in school. Each team had five minutes to pitch, followed by live Q&A with judges, competing for a growing prize pool designed to help them move fas

Healthcare is one of the hardest industries to build in, not because there’s a lack of opportunity, but because everything that should  be simple rarely is. At Startup Boston Week, Amber Nigam  (Co-Founder & CEO, basys.ai ), Ali Hyatt  (Chief Customer & Growth Officer, Henry Schein One), Kristen Nuckols  (Co-Founder & Chief Clinical Officer, Imago Rehab) and Yu-Jen Chang  (Investment Associate, Taiwan Global Angels) didn’t just scratch the surface. It got into the messy middl

At Startup Boston Week, a group of product leaders took the stage to unpack one of the biggest shifts happening inside product teams right now: how AI is fundamentally changing the way we prototype, test, and build. Moderated by  Jake Levirne  (Founder, SpecStory), the conversation featured Anne Griffin  (Founder & Principal AI Product Consultant, Griffin Product & Growth), Eileen Ani  (Director of Product Design, Docker) and Mimi Liu  (Co-CEO, DoroMind). Together, they explo

Let’s be honest: most founders don’t have a go-to-market strategy. They have a mix of LinkedIn posts, a half-built website, maybe a few ads running somewhere, and a vague hope that “people will find us.” At Startup Boston Week, that reality got a much-needed reset. Pardees Safizadeh  (revenue operations leader at ArxEd, with experience across IBM, CloudHealth, and Evergage) broke down what it actually takes to get a product in front of the right people - and more importantly,

At Startup Boston Week, Nathan Johnson  (CEO, Verne Bio), Piyali Chakraborty  (CEO & Cofounder, Ashmi Health), Pradeep Bokinala  (CTO, Simbex), Jane Allard  (Director of Governance Engineering, GSK) and Ashley Mae Conard  (Senior Researcher, Microsoft) tackled one of the most complex challenges in modern innovation: how to build and scale software in life sciences - where messy data, strict regulations, and real human impact collide. If there was one theme that emerged again

At a recent Startup Boston Week panel, Joyce Sidopoulos  (COO & Cofounder, MassRobotics), Cvic Innocent  (General Partner, Frankenbuild Ventures), Jennifer Jordan  (Operating Partner, iGlobe Partners), Peter Haas  (Former Director of Robotics, MassTech) and Roxana Grunenwald (Founder, H*QUOTIENT) unpacked a reality that’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore: robotics and automation are no longer niche technologies, they are rapidly becoming foundational infrastructure across

Your sales team is crushing the outreach, but your enterprise deals keep dying in the final mile. They aren't stalling because your product is bad; they are stalling because the procurement officer thinks you're a liability waiting to happen. In 2026, "trust" isn't a warm fuzzy feeling; it is cold, hard documentation. If you force a buyer to chase you for security answers, they will simply move on to a safer vendor. The fix isn't a better pitch. It's a Trust Pack. What is a T

April is kicking off strong in Boston’s startup ecosystem, with a packed calendar of events bringing together founders, operators, investors, students, and ecosystem builders. From AI summits and robotics showcases to founder-focused panels, demo days, and cross-university mixers, this month is all about momentum, collaboration, and building what’s next. Startup Boston is helping anchor the month with a series of community-powered experiences. Here are four to have on your ra

At 4:00 p.m. on a Friday - arguably the hardest slot of any conference and, yet, still a packed room - Gabrielle Dalvet  (Marketing Consultant & Community, Coterie Mktg and Co-Founder, MKTG WMN) took the stage at Startup Boston Week with a promise: no hacks, no shortcuts, and no pretending. What followed wasn’t a traditional “how to grow on LinkedIn” talk. It was a candid breakdown of why most people struggle on the platform and why artificial intelligence won’t fix that prob

If you've been building a company in Boston for any amount of time, you've had the meeting. Things are going fine, the investor seems interested, and then somewhere in the middle of it they ask if you've thought about relocating. Not because anything is wrong with the business. Just because you're in Boston and not somewhere else. And now instead of talking about your company you're spending ten minutes explaining why Boston is actually a legitimate place to build things, whi

AI has quickly become one of the most defining forces shaping how companies are built. But while headlines focus on breakthroughs and models, the real work is happening inside startups, where founders and teams are figuring out how to turn AI from a capability into a competitive advantage. That means rethinking everything: how data is structured, how infrastructure is chosen, how products are designed, how teams are built, and how businesses scale. In this Road To series, we

AI has become the defining technology race of the decade (if not the century), with governments, universities, and investors around the world competing to build ecosystems that will produce the next generation of leaders. Massachusetts has a plausible claim to that mantle: a well-known network of research universities, deep talent in fields such as biotech and robotics, and a long history of turning scientific discovery into commercial platforms. Sabrina Mansur  is helping tu

Boston doesn’t just show up in biotech rankings, it rewrites what biotech even looks like. This is a city where AI is designing drugs, biology is becoming programmable, and labs are starting to look a lot more like software companies. And while the usual names get the spotlight, there’s a new wave of startups building just as aggressively - faster experiments, smarter platforms, and entirely new ways to bring medicine to life. Below are the Boston biotech startups to watch ri

Building a startup takes more than a great idea. Founders are constantly navigating decisions across finance, hiring, legal, marketing, product development, banking, and infrastructure, often all at once. And while Boston and New England are home to an incredible network of resources, knowing where to start (and who to trust) can be half the battle. That’s exactly why we created The Startup Directory : a curated list of organizations that actively support founders building an

AI may be the loudest conversation in tech right now — but building a lasting AI company requires more than adopting the latest model. At Startup Boston Week, Doug Williams  (MIT Orbit Software for Entrepreneurship), Kara Peterson  (Descrybe), Scott Weller  (EnFI, Inc) and Joseph Adu  (SpectrumAi) shared how they cut through the noise. The discussion moved beyond hype and into the realities of trust, customer understanding, pricing, and building products that solve real probl

Venture capital is often viewed from the outside. Founders pitch. Investors decide. Deals close. But behind every fund is a process that is far less visible and far more complex than most people realize. At Startup Boston Week, Alex Benik  (Encoded Ventures), Rumika Sharma  (BankTech Ventures), William Lehman  (Step Function) and Lily Lyman  (Underscore VC) pulled back the curtain on what it actually takes to launch and operate a venture capital fund. The conversation moved b

Breaking into the startup world isn’t always straightforward. Should you start your own company? Join an early-stage team as a startup operator? Or build experience inside a larger company before jumping into startups? At a recent Startup Boston event, we brought together founders and startup operators to talk through the real differences between these paths and help attendees understand how to decide which direction might be right for them. Joining the conversation were: Mar

Boston doesn't shout about its startup studio success. While Silicon Valley celebrates every new accelerator with splashy launch events, Boston's startup studios have been quietly building companies from scratch, launching venture after venture that draw on the city's deepest strengths. Boston startups raised nearly $4 billion in 2024 , cementing the city's position as the #5 startup ecosystem globally . But what's particularly interesting is how startup studios have found th

On a snowy Boston morning, founders, legal experts, and ecosystem leaders gathered for a conversation that tackled a reality many entrepreneurs face but few openly discuss: building a startup while navigating immigration status. Hosted by Startup Boston in partnership with the City of Boston, the session we learned from Deepanshi Bansal  (Founder, ShineQuo), Jashin Lin  (Founder, Growbie), Allison Ahern Fillo  (Immigrant Counsel, Davis Malm) and Anushka Singh  (Founder, Katha

If you spend enough time in Boston’s startup ecosystem, you start to notice something: the magic doesn’t just happen inside startups. It happens in the rooms where founders meet mentors for the first time, it happens when an investor makes an introduction that changes a company’s trajectory and it happens in coworking spaces, university labs, accelerator cohorts, and community gatherings where people decide to build something bigger than themselves. And more often than not, t

March brings a calendar full of opportunities to bring founders, operators, investors, students, and ecosystem builders together in Boston’s startup ecosystem. From intimate founder dinners and mentorship moments to high-energy networking mixers, resource expos, and campus-wide innovation meetups, this month is all about connection, learning, and momentum. Startup Boston is helping anchor the month with a series of community-powered experiences. Here are four to have on your