Monday, January 24, 2011

Dogpatch Labs, TechStars Boston moving to Microsoft NERD

By Galen Moore

Article updated as of 9:15 a.m., Jan. 25, 2011.

Microsoft Corp.'s Cambridge R&D hub, the New England Research & Development Center (NERD) will be home to two area startup incubators –Polaris Ventures' Dogpatch Labs and TechStars – as of Jan. 31, 2011.

The incubators, to be housed on the 6th floor of One Cambridge Center, will have access to NERD events, as well as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) BizSpark, which gives entrepreneurs access to software tools and platforms.

The Dogpatch move follows closely Polaris’ announcement it had hired Gus Weber, Microsoft’s former community manager, who ran events in the N.E.R.D.’s substantial meeting space. Weber, whose title is entrepreneur in residence, is running the Polaris program, which provides co-working space for young startups. The program was formerly located in the American Twine Building, at 222 Third Street, in space leased for former Polaris portfolio company Allurent. Allurent sold to Jenzabar in an asset sale earlier this month.

In a press release, Polaris said the Cambridge branch of its DogPatch incubator hosts 55 companies and expects to expand its roster in its new space. The move is set to take place before the end of the month. Polaris partner Dave Barrett said while Polaris and DogPatch aren’t affiliated with Microsoft, the company has been an “especially important Polaris collaborator and they’ve done a great job of building an innovation culture in Kendall Square.”

In addition to Cambridge, DogPatch programs exist in New York City and San Francisco. In December, Polaris opened a DogPatch incubator in Dublin, Ireland, which news reports tied to a $50 million investment by the Irish National Pensions Reserve Fund into a Polaris venture fund – presumably the firm’s sixth, for which it has targeted a $400 million close.

TechStars Boston hired late last year a new managing director in Katie Rae, co-founder of Project 11 Ventures, who replaced Shawn Broderick in the role. Rae had said in November that one of her priorities in her new role is to find a permanent home for TechStars, which had been between locations, having left its former Central Square location.

In a Mass High Tech report earlier this month, TechStars Boston attracted fewer investor dollars in 2010 than its counterpart in Boulder, Colo. According to TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen, the less-than-ideal investor interest prompted the incubator to hire Rae, who has an investor background in Project 11, rather than a company founder.