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

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

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

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

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

It’s easy to picture a company buying raw materials and distributing products into stores, but getting a product into a customer’s hands is much more complex. Procurement is a given company’s process of specifying needs, evaluating suppliers, negotiating contracts and more, before anything is purchased. On top of that, companies have to manage their supply chains, which includes manufacturing, assembly, warehousing, and delivery. All of this creates and involves huge amounts

One of the most fun parts of building in startups is getting to see companies before they fully become companies. Before the polished decks, PR announcements and the “we should grab coffee sometime” LinkedIn posts after a Series A. That was the energy inside Startup Boston’s “Test Early-Stage Startups IRL” during Boston Tech Week. Instead of founders pitching on stage, attendees spent the night walking around testing products, clicking through MVPs, giving feedback, breaking

Alicia Tulsee didn’t walk into her Startup Boston Week workshop promising founders an easy path to success. Instead, the founder and CEO of Moxie Scrubs arrived with a challenge: learn how to “tame the beast” of ambitious startup goals by breaking them into measurable, manageable steps. Speaking to a room filled with founders, operators, and students, Alicia Tulsee framed the session around a central idea many early-stage builders struggle with: big goals are meaningless unle

June is keeping the momentum going across Boston’s startup ecosystem, with founders, operators, investors, researchers, and ecosystem builders gathering for a packed month of networking, innovation, and high-signal conversations. From climatetech and robotics to life sciences, AI, quantum computing, and founder-focused community events, this month is all about deepening connections and exploring the technologies and ideas shaping what’s next. As summer kicks off, the ecosyst

At Startup Boston Week 2025, one of the most candid conversations of the week didn’t focus on fundraising tactics or growth hacks. Instead, it tackled something founders often discuss far less publicly: burnout, bias, resilience, and the support systems required to keep building. The session Real Talk from the Trenches: Female Founders on Tradeoffs, Grit and Support Systems brought together moderator Sheri Palazzo (Founder, Saplings Consulting) alongside Erin Dewicki (CEO, Ly