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W. Marc Bernsau
Friday, November 20, 2009
Young entrepreneurs lead charge to build Mass. tech growth
By Jackie Noblett
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Leland Cheung has been an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and a D.C. technocrat, striving to grow the tech community from the inside.
Now, at age 31, he’s taking those efforts to City Hall.
After spending the summer sifting through young cleantech ventures applying for U.S. Department of Energy grants, Cheung was elected to Cambridge City Council this month on a platform to keep young startups from leaving the city for the suburbs or the West Coast. His planned method of constituent service: hanging out at the techie hangouts, including “squatting” at Betahouse — a co-working space for tech entrepreneurs in Central Square — until his inauguration.
“Community does matter to a lot of people when they’re making their decision about where to grow their companies,” he said. “I think I’m the only person on the council that knows about a lot of these events.”
Cheung is one of a growing number of young entrepreneurs taking on the mission of growing the next crop of tech ventures in Massachusetts by advocating for and to their own generation. Part of a hyper-connected and collaborative generation, they are passionate about building up their own personal networks but also helping out their friends’ ventures in a no-pressure, “chill” environment. Members of the old-line tech community are seeing the value of these 20- and 30-something rainmakers as seeds for industry-wide and public initiatives, even looking at how they can leverage their youth internally.
The efforts are in many ways an attempt to stem the perceived tide of smart, young workers out of Massachusetts. A survey of 800 residents between 25 and 39 sponsored by MassINC in July 2008 showed one in five expected to leave the state in the next five years. Inside the tech community, Facebook and Twitter are examples of new ventures passed up by the Boston establishment.
While the financial crisis was in many ways the catalyst of the community-building efforts among VCs and serial entrepreneurs, their younger counterparts say they fell into the role of evangelist for their peers.
Corlandt Johnson started DartBoston, a group for twenty-something entrepreneurs to talk about their projects and meet other like-minded people, with partners Jake Cacciapaglia and Alexa Scordato earlier this year as a formal offshoot of casual gatherings of people at his apartment.
The result is Pokin’ Holes, a weekly meetup at bars and colleges around the Boston area. While Pokin’ Holes does not deny admission to the over-30 set, the forum is distinctly Gen-Y. Going sans-name badges, Johnson, 25, and his co-founders play matchmaker to new members, asking “What are you working on?” and linking them up with other people with similar interests or complementary needs.
“The reason why it’s so great to have a space for young people is that nobody asks them about their opinion,” he said. “We’re into relationship building and breaking down barriers between communities.”
Groups like DartBoston have become an invaluable tool for other initiatives to encourage entrepreneurship locally.
“We initially targeted the more established, obvious gateways and what we’ve found is the much more helpful organizations are in places we didn’t expect,” said John Harthorne, founder and CEO of MassChallenge, a nonprofit charged with organizing a global business plan and venture funds competition for companies that want to locate in Massachusetts. “This is a more networked population that seeks choice and is not yet tied to particular organizations. It’s far more open and collaborative.”
Other young entrepreneurs are being tapped by government officials as success stories that inspire others to follow their lead. After Brendan Ciecko was profiled in Inc. magazine as an up-and-coming under-30 entrepreneur last year, he received a phone call from Gov. Deval Patrick’s office inviting him to sit in on a summit with a few dozen of the state’s top IT minds.
“It’s surprising. Anyone on the younger side of things must think I’m the token entrepreneur, the token young person — that’s just not the state of affairs,” the 21-year-old CEO of Ten Minute Media and Holyoke native said. “I was like ‘Wow, these people listen and these people really do care.’”
Ciecko is now a member of the governing board of the “Massachusetts, It’s All Here” branding campaign sponsored by the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and private partners and participated in economic development chief Greg Bialecki’s listening tour for young people in Springfield.
“I have a real interest in economic revitalization and whenever an opportunity comes about to speak on behalf of my generation as an entrepreneur in Holyoke, I’m there,” he said.
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