Entrepreneurship News

Friday, March 19, 2010

MHT honors tech's Women to Watch
Mass High Tech this morning honored 11 outstanding women for their achievements in high-tech, at the publication’s annual Women to Watch event, which drew 250 people to the Fairmont Copley Plaza to celebrate.
Online gaming startup StarStreet ‘betting’ on loophole
First-time entrepreneur Jeremy Levine thinks he’s found a loophole that allows online betting on sporting events, and he’s using this year’s March Madness NCAA basketball tournament to roll the dice and see if his hunch pans out.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

IBM launches business plan competition in Boston
IBM Corp. today announced the launch in Boston of a startup business-plan competition, in which the company will look to partner with five Boston-area technology companies with less than $1 million in revenue.
Patent Watch: Government funding drives inventions to the Patent Office
Inventions are often made with the help of government funds, in which case the government may have the right to use a patented invention for government purposes but the contractor retains certain commercial rights. Here are a few patents naming New England inventors supported by U.S. agencies.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Editorial: Tough times call for the ingenuity of entrepreneurs
Mass High Tech asked entrepreneurs, architects, brokers, and landlords to offer up their advice on stretching the dollar in a down economy. For entrepreneurs, options abound for high-energy, low-cost centers of innovation and business incubators. For others, options range from vacant suburban buildings to business condos.
Thought Leaders: Mass. Tech Transfer Center's Barrow talks of recession impact on innovation
As director of the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center, Abigail Barrow reaches out to universities and research centers to identify technologies that could form the basis for new companies, and then helps to guide the team through product development and funding. She shared her thoughts on the impact of the recession on tech innovation.
How I See It: New England talent, infrastructure will help social media find niche
Entrepreneur and angel investor Matt Pierson writes: There are a few not-so-subtle shifts that lead me to believe New England will develop a modest-sized, but sustainable, social media industry.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

MIT's clean energy competition partners with West Coast contest
The MIT Enterprise Forum reports its Ignite Clean Energy Competition is partnering with the Cleantech Open, a San Francisco-based business plan competition, opening doors for regional winners to move on to the national competition on the West Coast.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

State officials kick off entrepreneurship initiative
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and local tech industry groups unveiled several initiatives, including a pair of new websites and “open office hours” meetings at a dedication ceremony for the expansion of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square this afternoon.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Pitch: The Rentables.com targets apartment rentals with Google tools
The creators of TheRentables.com want the website to do for apartment listings what Google Inc. has done for search, e-mail and other services: simplify it.

Monday, February 15, 2010

CombinatoRx founder Borisy heads new launch
CombinatoRx Inc. founder and former CEO Alexis Borisy, who joined Third Rock Ventures as entrepreneur-in-residence in October, is heading up a new personalized medicine company known as Foundation Medicine.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Sirtris' Westphal, Aldrich and Dipp launch VC firm
The serial biotech entrepreneurs who co-founded the biotech Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, now part of GlaxSmithKline PLC have launched a venture capital firm, raising $50.7 million in a first close.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Babson tops entrepreneurship programs nationally
Babson College’s entrepreneurship programs have placed first in three of the most prestigious national rankings, higher than MIT and Harvard University. At a time when the Obama administration seeks to bolster entrepreneurs as a way to stimulate the floundering economy, Babson’s gold-star rankings could not be timelier.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Serial entrepreneurs launch Zetics as SciDB spinout
Cognex Corp. co-founder Marilyn Matz is starting a new company called Zetics Inc., working with serial tech entrepreneurs Michael Stonebraker and Andy Palmer to spin a commercial enterprise out of SciDB, an open-source academic research database project.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

2010 investment opportunities for entrepreneurs
Merrill Lynch's Gary McGuirk and Paul McCauley: Entrepreneurs have good reason to be optimistic as we head into 2010. By answering these two questions — are we close to a recovery and how should we move forward? — it’s clear that there may be great opportunities ahead for entrepreneurs, especially overseas.
Policy Tracker: Mass. rep. complains of IT systems; Entrepreneurs don't plan to hire
Massachusetts Rep. Paul Donato, house chair of the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government, is pushing for regionalization of local services in cities and towns, particularly in the area of information technology systems; More than 70 percent of entrepreneurs don’t plan to hire additional employees this year, according to a survey conducted this month for the Kauffman Foundation.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Serial entrepreneur Huang to launch Sayabit document-sharing service
Ken Huang, co-founder of WebNotes Inc. and founder of Sayagle Inc., is helping to launch his third software venture in two years. Today, he plans to announce the launch of Sayabit, a document-sharing service that combines Google Docs-like storage with the web analytics of a URL-shortening service like bit.ly.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Boston-based Lose It! tops Apple iPhone health app charts
Serial entrepreneurs and co-founders J.J. Allaire and Charles Teague are behind Lose It!, which is the long-reigning, top free weight-loss application on Apple Inc.’s iPhone App Store. Teague recently talked with Mass High Tech in the company’s first media interview since it launched in 2008.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Moms’ startup uses virtual-world game, Robottega, to further STEM goals
An MIT robotics researcher has teamed up with a video game entrepreneur and a Hollywood film executive to launch a startup to tackle the task of creating virtual-world games for youngsters that educate them in science and technology and help them aspire to become technologists themselves.
Top 20 patent holders in New England
Leading the list of Mass High Tech’s ranking of top patent holders in New England tech companies, Xerox Corp. won just shy of triple the number of patents as the No. 2 company, EMC Corp.