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Ask why New England hasn’t produced a Google, and any number of people will give you the same answer: We don’t have a Buck’s. The Woodside, Calif., flapjack house is to Silicon Valley what the Ivy is to Hollywood, or the San Pietro is to Wall Street. For some reason, the Naked Fish in Waltham just doesn’t have the same spark.
Aside from a few suburban hotels chosen more for convenience than their luster, technology in the Hub of the Universe doesn’t so much have a hub. Instead, our watering holes are scattered. In technology strongholds like Cambridge’s Kendall Square, or up-and-coming hotbeds like Providence, every corner hides a restaurant, pub or hangout where deals are done on bar napkins and where the crowd of former colleagues and connections makes a quick bite to eat impossible for any technology entrepreneur.
Unlike the Valley, New Englanders don’t make these places obvious. You have to know where to find them. To that end, we’ve worked with entrepreneurs, investors and matchmakers to put together — in no particular order — our top 10 favorite places to see and be seen. Here’s a hint: the Newton Marriott barely made the cut.
Vibe — Sporting
State Street Pavilion
Fenway Park, 4 Yawkey Way, Boston
Crowd: Next April
Wi-Fi? Are you kidding? Just watch the game.
Egan-Managed Capital’s Mike Shanahan has made the rounds of Route 128 breakfast spots, but he rarely sees more VCs, tech executives, lawyers and bankers in one place than he does at Red Sox games.
High above the hoi polloi, in the plush State Street Pavilion, Kodiak, Summit, General Catalyst and Flybridge also have seats. Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) executives have been seen on dates with tech startups at the company’s box. Need a term-sheet lawyer who can catch a foul ball? Look no further than Goodwin Procter; Morse Barnes-Brown and Pendleton, WilmerHale or Proskauer Rose LLP — all are regulars here. And when it’s time to IPO (or to save up until one), bankers SquareOne, Jeffries and Co., and America’s Growth Capital aren’t far away.
“It’s not necessarily the best place to have a secret rendezvous,” Shanahan quipped.
Vibe — Bohemian
Andala Coffee House
286 Franklin St., Central Square
Crowd: Morning coffee
Wi-Fi? Free
If VC isn’t your cup of tea, drink coffee at Andala Coffee House in Central Square. Around the corner from tech incubator Betahouse, the roomy coffee shop with a Middle Eastern flavor has become the caffeine fuel stop of choice for entrepreneurs in a neighborhood packed with lean, low-flying early-stage startups. That’s due in part to the unlimited, free wi-fi (scarce in Central) and in part to Nabeel Hyatt. The Conduit Labs co-founder is the informal co-host, along with Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet, of weekly drop-in coffee sessions Wednesday mornings.
Hyatt doesn’t always attend, but on any weekday, it’s a good bet you’ll find him there — or you might run into Shawn Broderick from Techstars, Florian Hunziker from Harmonix, or GameLogic founder Steven Kane.
“It’s a good place to meet other entrepreneurs and, less often, VCs,” says Hyatt. “Bijan will come by, but there aren’t a lot of VCs that go there.”
Vibe — Short order
Paramount Café
44 Charles St., Beacon Hill
Crowd: Breakfast
Wi-Fi? Nope
Feel as if there’s a generation gap when talking to venture capital partners? Try your next pitch over pancakes at the Paramount Café in Beacon Hill. The long-lived greasy spoon has become a favorite among new generation of up-and-coming VC associates and principals.
“We go to breakfast in this place so often, we can actually order for each other,” said Windspeed Ventures principal David Safaii, sitting at a big table by the window with four of his fellow New England Venture Network board members.
For those who live in Boston, a city meeting spot makes more sense than, say, the Newton Marriott, according to Fidelity Ventures principal Geraldine Alias, who has a single chocolate-chip pancake at the Paramount about three times a week. “People think it’s all in Waltham, but it’s not so much that way anymore.”
Vibe — Hearty
Mezcal Tequila Cantina
166 Shrewsbury St., Worcester
Crowd: Dinnertime
Wi-Fi? Nope
In Worcester, it’s not uncommon to see entrepreneurs, city officials and university administrators out in groups. ECI Biotech Inc.’s Mitch Sanders meets about once a month at Mezcal, a Mexican restaurant in the middle of Shrewsbury Street’s Italian joints, with WPI president Dennis Berkey, MBI president Kevin O’Sullivan and Worcester city manager Michael O’Brien.
Sometimes, the best connections happen unplanned, in unexpected venues, Sanders said. He and Dale Macy happened to get adjacent seats at a high school musical Sanders’ daughter acted in. Macy is now ECI’s U.S. operations manager.
Vibe — Laid Over
Legal Seafoods Café / ‘Legal C’ Bar
Terminal B, Logan International Airport
Crowd: Pre-flight snack
Wi-Fi? $8 a day
When you’re an eager startup trying to get on a CIO’s calendar, sometimes 30 minutes for a bite to eat before departure is the best you can do, says Castile Ventures’ Carl Stjernfeld. Recognition and locations inside and outside security make the Legal Seafoods in Logan’s Terminal B a default spot for business-travel meetings, he said.
“I’ve probably had 10 meetings or 15 meetings there over the past year,” Stjernfeld said. “You say ‘Great, I’ll show up an hour early at the airport and then you go your way and I’ll go mine.’ ”
Vibe — Geek chic
Stata Center Cafeteria
32 Vassar St., D Tower, MIT
Crowd: Lunch
Wi-Fi? Uh, yeah.
For true geektastic startup foment, it’s hard to beat the MIT area’s assortment of college bars and greasy spoons. When you don’t have time for lunch at the Miracle of Science, and it’s too early for beers at the Muddy Charles, the Stata Center cafeteria is a sure bet.
The computer science and artificial intelligence lab is upstairs, as are the offices of Heartland Robotics’ Rodney Brooks and World Wide Web creator and W3C director Tim Berners-Lee. The startup-happy Media Lab is around the corner. A cafeteria-line setup and long, open tables make many opportunities for run-ins.
Parallel entrepreneur Andy Palmer is an admitted regular. So is Polaris Venture Partners’ Bob Metcalfe, who has a parking space in the garage below the building and calls the Stata Center “the coffee’ing hole at the center of the technological universe.”
Vibe — Hopping
Cambridge Brewing Company
1 Kendall Square, Cambridge
Crowd: After-party
Wi-Fi? Free
Boston’s game-industry entrepreneurs are a farflung lot — from Turbine in Westwood to 38 Studios in Maynard, to Rockstar Studios in Andover. For some reason, they end up talking gameplay and graphics over local brews at the Cambridge Brewing Company.
“It’s sort of weird. It’s not even people who necessarily live around there,” said Orbus Gameworks president Darius Kazemi, a coordinator of the industry’s monthly Postmortem meetings in Cambridge. Postmortem formally gathers at the Skellig in Waltham, but, “whenever I’m out with game developers and they’re sort of like where are we going to go, CBC is almost the default answer,” Kazemi said.
Vibe — Cantabridgian
Henrietta’s Table
1 Bennett St. (Charles Hotel), Harvard Square
Crowd: Breakfast or lunch
Wi-Fi? Free
On any given weekday, chances are good that a deal has been done over farm-fresh eggs at Henrietta’s Table. It’s hard to find a VC who doesn’t mention Henrietta’s as a top spot for meetings. But that’s also why you won’t find Don Bulens anywhere near the place. Heads-down with his new company, Unidesk, the former EqualLogic CEO is keeping to a hand-picked list of “breakfast places no one knows about,” he said.
“If I go to breakfast at the Doubletree, or if I go for drinks at the Charles Hotel, I end up with 10 to-do’s,” he said.
Vibe — Old school
Boston Marriott Newton Hotel
2345 Commonwealth Ave., Route 128
Crowd: Breakfast
Wi-Fi? $15 per hour
The Newton Marriott’s reputation for tech meetings is almost as venerable as Route 128 itself — and it remains on the list of top deal-hashing spots in the region. For those wishing to see or be seen, there’s not a bad seat in the house. Low booths and bright lighting ensure nearly every face in the place is visible from the door.
“Certainly people aren’t there because of the food,” quipped .406 Ventures’ Maria Cirino, whose office is downtown Boston.
While the Marriott is a great place to bump into a VC, she prefers entrepreneurs who pick up the phone. Cold-calling is an important skill, she said. “You’re not going to meet all your customers in a Starbucks.”
Vibe — Ingenious
AS220
115 Empire St., Providence, R.I.
Crowd: After-work drinks
Wi-Fi? Free
You wouldn’t expect Providence’s eclectic tech scene to coagulate around something as pedestrian as a bar. Nonprofit AS220 offers a bar alongside an art gallery and fabrication lab for hackers. Betaspring’s Jack Templin and Allan Tear are regulars, as are Charlie Kroll of Andera and serial entrepreneur Bill O’Farrell of Public Display.
“I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t know where it is — who hasn’t walked by and said, I’ll stop in and see what’s going on,” said Business Innovation Factory’s Melissa Withers. “It’s like rolling the wheel — you never know what you’re going to find down there.”
Venture Cafe Takes Shape
Details are emerging on the so-called ‘Venture Café’ – a planned hub for entrepreneurs in Kendall Square. Cambridge Innovation Center owner Tim Rowe and a handful of collaborators, including Google Ventures’ Rich Miner and Avid Technology founder Bill Warner, are plotting ways to automatically encourage tech scenemakers to show up. Their ideas include:
• Encourage broadcasting: faster Wi-Fi service for those who broadcast their arrival at the café via a FourSquare-like service;
• Tech luminaries, like Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, who invest in the concept, will have ‘office hours,’ and a use-it-or-lose-it monthly tab.
Rowe said he’s hoping the café will be able to serve beer and wine, and stay open 24/7. An outside company will manage day-to-day restaurant operations. The exact location isn’t pinned down yet.
“We are hot and heavy with one landlord, and we’re just sort of spinning up two new spaces that are possibilities,” Rowe said.
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