Is Cambridge the new hub of Northeast startups?

It occurred to me the other day that in the mile or so between MIT and Harvard there are now literally hundreds of startups. And unlike the past artificial efforts to create a hub for Boston startups, this one happened quite naturally.

This isn't the first shot at a hub for Boston activity. Back in the dot-com days there was an effort to create a "Sand Hill Road-East" called the "128 corridor." I hated this idea. It took the absolute worst thing about Silicon Valley (how spread out it is) and applied it to a city who has the great benefit of actually being very compact.

128 has largely died as a haven for startups, just some VCs left behind there now. But meanwhile Cambridge seems like it has hit a tipping point. Now Google Boston is here, Ideo moved in from Lexington to Central Square, and there are even rumors some of the VC crew out in Waltham may be eyeing the area.

It seems that the combination of Harvard & MIT, the relatively (for this close to the city) inexpensive rent, and efforts like Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) have really helped spur this growth. And I don't want to underestimate the help CIC has given to this effort. CIC started out as a doomed incubator concept and was reborn after the dot-bomb as a mixture of flexspace & entreprenuer support network.  They now take up something like six floors of a fourteen floor building and host 100+ companies.

Ambient was born in CIC in those dark of 2001, and they are still here now. Who else is here? I pinged Tim and got a quick list of a couple of the guys I could run into in the kitchen:
- iSkoot (CRV-backed VOIP over your cell phone, including Skype)
- Great Point Energy (raised a $30m A round from Kleiner and others to gassify coal)
- Visible Measures (General Catalyst-backed metrics for online video)
- Sconex (MySpace for the high school set)

Hell, there's even an NPR show (currently being recorded in Second Life) that's on the third floor. Walk out of the building and you can hit Tabblo, Vanu, Harmonix, Brightcove, E-Ink and many others in less then a mile radius.

the notice board at CIC where companies in the building show off their clippings

Cambridge overall seems to be developing its own character, and it's great to see. This month Conduit made the leap to becoming a real company (hence my going a bit quiet this month on the blog) and we needed an office. It was an easy choice to come back to CIC. Good to be home.

See the locals at OpenCoffee tomorrow at 10am, in Cambridge of course.

Oh, one more thing. Although I am continuing my "I will not travel this month" pledge, I have been roped into a speaking locally at a conference this weekend. It's called Powering Up: Boston's Digital Gaming Industry, and I'm speaking on a panel with a bunch of VCs about investing in the sector.

Comments

[Brian]

I loved having my start-up in the CIC -- it was fun to meet various people doing fun things, and gave us an opportunity to have the amenities that we likely couldn't afford elsewhere. It is only good for very small start-ups, though -- otherwise it's pretty cost prohibitive.

As for VC's moving into Cambridge (especially Central Sq) -- STAY AWAY! Remain in your bastions of really expensive rent on 128 -- once VC's move into the neighborhood it's all downhill for start-ups to find decent space.

[EH]

How do you write a post like this without mentioning Y Combinator? They've brought 19 startups to Cambridge just this summer.

[Nabeel Hyatt]

I mention YC a fair amount on the blog, but yes you are absolutely right EH - they warrant a mention here as well.

[Dharmesh Shah]

I've been in the Boston area for a while -- I've never seen this type of startup activity.

It's very exciting.

My best wishes to all the entrepreneurs taking the leap and making it happen.