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MHT's Galen Moore: Nerds and geeks flock to Boston conventions
UMass Boston launches Entrepreneurship Center
MHT's Galen Moore: Tech sector lags in promoting women execs
In a month, Nantucket will be the playground of the self-satisfied. Today, it’s a haven for the hungry.
About 150 technology dreamers have gathered here with hopes of finding or funding the next big thing. The invitation-only Nantucket Conference, now in its 11th year, draws participants from the worlds of entrepreneurship, venture capital and associated ancillary industries to spend two days on Nantucket at a time of year when the weather is anything but predictable. With 20 mile-per-hour winds blowing steadily yesterday, most braved the three-foot chop on the fast ferry over Nantucket Sound to get here. The few who flew from Logan Airport to Nantucket Airport suffered a journey no less intense, if shorter in duration.
For Brough Turner it’s been worth it. He’s here on behalf of the tentatively named Ashtonbrooke Corp., a startup he founded last fall that aims to upend the “duopoly of Verizon and Comcast” in Boston’s Internet service provider market. Brough, a founder of network equipment maker NMS Communications, plans to start this summer with a pilot wireless Internet service in the Back Bay, beaming from any of about 100 buildings that enjoy absurdly low Internet rates, he said – due to their connection to several competing fiber-optic services.
Meanwhile, Flybridge Capital Partners general partner Michael Greeley announced 12x12, an initiative he said will put together 12 VCs and 12 serial startup founders and executives to form 12 new companies in the next 12 months. The plan is to pull ideas from successful company founders and find entrepreneurs to start a company based on the idea – with the co-founder who generated the idea on the board.
“They all have in their mind this next company,” Greeley said, “but they’ve got day jobs (running their own companies).”
The first 12x12 company launched as a pilot of the idea last fall, Greeley said; Flybridge-backed Lighter Living began with an idea from Shoebuy.com Inc. CEO and founder Scott Savitz. The company now has $3 million from Flybridge and has evolved into a social consumer website selling health products for women, Greeley said. Greeley, who invests primarily in healthcare, said he believes with the 12 VCs and executives he’s brought in, he’s covered all the region’s industry bases.
Vinit Nijhawan is looking to seed far more than 12 companies this year. He’s shopping outlets for a “firehose” of startup intellectual property coming out of Boston University, where he is taking over direction of the university’s technology transfer center. He’s got his own pipe dream, too – a method, including software-based workflow, that he says will bring order to how universities pull IP out of their research. “I’m trying to create a model at BU, which if we do it right it can be a model for universities everywhere,” he said.
CEO Kwin Kramer launched Oblong Industries from technology developed at MIT’s Media Lab. The Los Angeles-based company makes gestural user interfaces so users can manipulate information by waving their arms like Tom Cruise’s character in the movie ‘Minority Report.’ He flew to the conference at the request of Techstars founder Brad Feld to join a panel with WiTricity’s Eric Giler on wireless power and new user interfaces. The move to L.A., made about five years ago, was necessary because of the city’s unique blend of design and technology expertise.
“For us the problem is as much about design as about technology,” he said. “We have to build a whole new...technology experience.”
GamerDNA co-founders Jon Radoff and Angela Bull are at Nantucket for the second year. GamerDNA sold last year in an asset acquisition by the video game media site Crispy Gamer. Now Radoff and Bull are working on a new startup, Disruptor Beam, making Facebook games.
Radoff said he thought the Warner Bros. acquisition of local game development flagship Turbine Inc. will be a good thing for Boston’s growing video game industry, especially in the online games space in which Boston has already become strong. “One of the things we’ve been lacking is a big company ready to make an investment in video games,” he said.
Stuart Nixdorff made an acquisition of his own recently, buying out Newton Peripherals LLC, the company he led as CEO, from its investors in a recap he announced last week. He’s now out raising new financing for the company, which makes low-profile accessories like bluetooth headsets for mobile phones. “We are raising a mezzanine round to profitability or an acquisition,” he said. That’s proving easier now that the company has a product on the market – an iPhone headset that launched last fall. “We’ve got revenue,” he said. “We’re shipping.”
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