Inside “Test Early-Stage Startups IRL”: The Founders, MVPs, and Startup Chaos That Took Over Boston Tech Week

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 prototypes (respectfully), and talking directly with founders still actively figuring things out in real time.

And honestly? That’s what made the room exciting.

Some startups were tackling highly technical infrastructure problems. Others were building consumer apps, AI tools, climate tech, fintech platforms, hiring software, or entirely new marketplaces. But across all of them, there was one common theme: founders moving fast, testing assumptions, and trying to solve very real problems.

Here are the startups attendees were able to meet during the event:

Adept Scientific

Life Sciences / BioTech / Med Device | Website

Adept Scientific helps life science companies gain visibility into how their instruments and reagent kits actually perform in customer labs. Its platform acts as the “Google Maps for the lab,” using AI to guide scientists through experiments while capturing real-world product usage data and transforming it into structured product intelligence.

Ascala

Developer Software | Website

Ascala helps pre-launch SaaS founders validate whether their product actually works from a real user perspective before launch. Founders can upload prototypes or staging environments, and Ascala generates AI personas that simulate user behavior to identify onboarding friction, confusion points, and usability gaps.

BasiFly

Air Travel | Website

BasiFly helps travelers find smarter ways to fly by connecting people heading in the same direction and making private air travel more accessible, flexible, and efficient.

Betwatch

Sports Betting / Prediction Markets / Alternative Data | Website

Founded by two electrical engineers, Betwatch is building infrastructure that processes massive amounts of unstructured internet data — including social sentiment, press conference language, and online behavior — to identify inefficiencies in prediction markets and sports betting.

Celery

Mobile Apps | Website

Celery is building social infrastructure around reducing screen time and encouraging real-world connection. Its app allows friends to hold each other accountable for staying offline while unlocking rewards from experiential brands.

Doro

Mobile Apps | Website

Doro helps restaurants turn everyday customers into authentic marketers by rewarding them for posting real content about their experiences on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

El Locale

Ecommerce | Website

El Locale is building an e-commerce platform that helps shoppers support local small businesses, artisans, and side hustlers with the convenience and accessibility people expect from larger online marketplaces.

Finide

AI SaaS | Website

Finide helps product and engineering teams estimate the cost, ROI, and feasibility of new features before development begins, helping companies make smarter roadmap decisions before engineering resources are committed.

FinSight Intelligence

Financial Services / FinTech | Website

FinSight Intelligence is an AI-powered financial analytics platform designed to give everyday investors access to institutional-grade financial intelligence tools without the institutional price tag.

Givvy

Mobile Apps | Website

Givvy helps people exchange skills and services through structured, trust-based agreements — making it easier for users to trade help, expertise, and support in a more organized and reliable way.

GraideMind

Education Management / EdTech | Website

GraideMind is an AI-powered grading and feedback platform designed to help educators evaluate assignments faster while delivering consistent, rubric-aligned feedback to students.

Legacy Heirloom

LegalTech | Website

Legacy Heirloom helps families preserve the stories and meaning behind personal belongings, giving loved ones clarity about sentimental objects and inheritance decisions after someone passes away.

LNK Energies

ClimateTech / Sustainability / BlueTech | Website

LNK Energies is an MIT startup tackling the energy crisis by building sustainable heavy-duty power solutions at diesel-level pricing.

OncoSys AI

Life Sciences / BioTech / Med Device | Website

OncoSys AI is building the regulatory-grade trust layer for oncology AI by transforming raw oncology datasets into verifiable “Trust Packets” with FDA fit-for-purpose scoring.

Phoresight

Accounts / FinOps | Website

Phoresight acts like a payment recovery employee for small businesses, automating invoice follow-up across email, text, and phone while helping companies proactively improve payment terms.

SecuriT Locks

Hardware & Manufacturing | Website

SecuriT is modernizing communal laundry services through retrofit smart locks that add real-time machine tracking, security, late-fee automation, and analytics to shared laundry rooms.

Sift Skills

HR Tech | Website

Sift Skills helps recruiters quickly identify the strongest candidates by analyzing applicants requirement-by-requirement while surfacing strengths, transferable skills, and fit within existing ATS workflows.

Tidefield

ClimateTech / Sustainability / BlueTech | Website

Tidefield is focused on improving farmer livelihoods and cattle efficiency through AI and blockchain-powered infrastructure targeting the global livestock methane-reduction market.

What makes events like this exciting is not just the products themselves, but the stage these companies are in right now. These founders are still building, iterating, testing assumptions, and figuring things out in real time, which means attendees are not just observing startups, they are actively helping shape what these companies become.

And realistically? Not every startup here will make it. That is simply part of startup life. But a few of these companies are probably going to become very real, very exciting startups the Boston ecosystem hears a lot more about in the future.

Which means years from now, attendees may very well get to say, “I knew them when they were demoing off a laptop at Startup Boston.”