Wearable health tech often gets marketed as sleek hardware, smart sensors, and futuristic dashboards. But according to founders, product leaders, designers, and medical device experts at Startup Boston Week, successful products in this space are built on something less flashy: trust, usability, and relentless customer feedback. During Startup Boston Week, Jeremy Chow (Co-founder & CEO, Tactus), Meghan Gagne (Director of Product, Perkins School for the Blind), Rich Le (Design

42% of SaaS startups fail because there's no market need. Another 14% fail from weak positioning. Everyone treats these as separate problems. They're not. The root cause is the same: a broken answer to one question. Who is this for, and why does it matter? That's positioning. When positioning is unclear, everything breaks downstream. Sales pursues deals that were never a fit. Messaging bounces off because it doesn't reshape what buyers already believe. Pricing feels arbitrary

At Startup Boston Week, founders packed into a session with one big question hanging in the air: How do you know if your startup is truly healthy or just good at looking impressive online? Anthony Franklin , Managing Principal at Spearhead Revenue Consulting and former startup revenue leader, offered a blunt warning: too many founders are chasing metrics that look exciting in pitch decks, LinkedIn posts, or casual investor conversations, but don’t actually reflect whether th

Everyone is busy; prospects decide fast. You see the traffic hitting your site, but the calendar stays empty. It is a frustrating reality for founders. You deal with missed demos, stalled trials, and those agonizing "we are interested but..." emails that go nowhere. Usually, the instinct is to blame the product or pivot the marketing strategy. But the actual problem hides in plain sight. Your pipeline is not breaking because of missing features. It breaks during tiny, invisib

At Startup Boston Week, Michael Goldenberg (VP Sales and Customer Success, SquareWorks) delivered a practical session on one of the most misunderstood parts of building a startup: pricing. Founders often obsess over product, hiring, fundraising, and go-to-market strategy. Pricing gets pushed to the bottom of the list. But according to Goldenberg, that’s a mistake. “Pricing shouldn’t be an afterthought,” he told the room. “It should be part of your overall strategy.” Drawing

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 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

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

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 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

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

Building a startup isn’t just about product, funding, or growth metrics: it’s about people. As companies move from scrappy early teams to scaling organizations, the real challenges shift. Foundership becomes leadership. Culture must be intentional, not accidental. Hiring, performance, and team health become strategic priorities rather than operational afterthoughts. This evolution is where many startups struggle and where the strongest companies differentiate themselves. The

Boston doesn’t have a startup “season,” it has an ecosystem calendar. From student-led venture summits in the spring to climate, robotics, AI, fintech, and deep-tech gatherings throughout the year, New England hosts a steady rhythm of events that bring builders, investors, researchers, operators, and ecosystem leaders into the same rooms and onto the same ideas. These moments matter. They spark partnerships, unlock funding pathways, surface new talent, and help founders find

When people hear “tech,” they often think of AI, software, or robotics. Food rarely makes the list. But at Startup Boston Week, a panel of founders, scientists, and sustainability experts made it clear: the future of food may be one of the most important technological frontiers of our time. From cultivated meat and regenerative agriculture to pest monitoring and sustainable supply chains, the conversation with Oliver Sanchez (Extrasense), Nicky Roberts (Sustainability Consu

Performance management rarely makes the “top reasons I started a company” list. Yet at Startup Boston Week, a packed room of founders, operators, and people leaders stayed late for a candid conversation about one of the most overlooked levers of startup success: how teams give feedback, set expectations, and help people grow. Moderated by former Chief People Officer Christina Luconi (People Innovations), the panel featured talent and HR leaders Tania Philipp (Vor Bio), Laur

Last week, Startup Boston teamed up with the City of Boston to host Meet Boston’s Startup Networking Groups , bringing together founders, operators, students and ecosystem builders for one simple purpose: helping people find their place in the startup community. The room filled quickly with over 200 attendees connecting directly with communities that make Boston’s startup ecosystem feel accessible, welcoming and collaborative. Because here’s the truth: Boston’s startup scene

Midway through Startup Boston Week, a room full of founders, operators, and go-to-market leaders gathered at Suffolk University for a timely reality check: AI may be changing how startups sell, but it isn’t changing why sales works. The session “AI in Sales: The New Playbook for Startups” was moderated by Vanessa Ferranto , CEO and co-founder of Dalbero. She was joined by Jason Ingargiola , Partner at And1 Advisors, and Joss Poulton , CEO and co-founder of ClearSync. Rather