Another year, another wave of folks blowing Boston away with how impossibly innovative they are. Come December, we’ll see which people are a cut above the rest with the 2015 50 on Fire awards.
No doubt, the competition’s stiff across the board in terms of industries. Our city is universally awesome when it comes to flexing our tech, sports/fitness, dining and retail muscles.
But nothing compares to Boston brainpower. With such a high concentration of world-renowned schools in our area, our Education category is stacked with the best and brightest.
There’s still a ways to go until our 50 on Fire winners are determined, but if you want to start scoping out the competition, start with who we're watching for 2015.
Riley Soward
In his second year at Boston College, Soward is just short of a boy wonder. Normally, it’s a minor miracle for a college student to drag himself out of bed to go to class.
Soward exceeds expectations. He’s the co-founder of Campus Insights, a startup that facilitates on-campus marketing research. Add to that his role as an Investment Team Member for Dorm Room Fund, which finances student-lead startups. That’s pretty much a triple whammy for him in the education space.
Soward is originally from the Bay Area, but we won’t hold that against him, right?
TetraScience
Calling the Harvard iLab home, TetraScience is made up of a tag team of Boston-based colleges. The co-founders – Alok Tayi, Siping Wang and Salvatore Savo – have a list of degrees so long that it’d make your head turn with both Harvard and MIT represented.
To make them even more of a contender in the education category, TetraScience helps people in academia. With their platform, researchers are able to hook up their instruments and automate different processes to make their lives easier and their results more accurate.
Flywire (formerly peerTransfer)
Flywire isn’t new to the Boston startup scene, so why are they on fire? The company, which makes study abroad a breeze with their international student payment solution, has been mixing it up in a major way the past couple of months.
For starters, they changed their name. There’s nothing like a little rebranding to stay fresh and fiery. Flywire also moved into a bigger, swankier office near the Common.
And, most notably, they just acquired UK-based company Uni-Pay yesterday.
Take all of these factors into consideration, and I think Flywire’s still got it.
Rough Draft Ventures
Yes, Rough Draft Ventures has landed on our list before. But, hey, they’re still on fire so I’m still adding them.
This VC firm is run by students for students. They scope out startups happening around schools and give up to $25K to university entrepreneurs trying to get their projects off the ground.
Rough Draft Ventures has been going strong for a few years now and they’re not slowing down. This year, they’ve made about 15 investments so far in student companies like Cymbal, OnboardIQ and TetraScience. That’s only a sign of further fuel for their flames.
Heidi Williams
Now, we’re going to get a little more cerebral. We have to; it’s the Education category.
Williams is an MIT economist and recently secured a MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius grant”). She raked in $625,000 for her study on how patents and technology impact innovation in the medical research realm.
The assistant professor has done a ton of other research in the intersection of economics, public policy, health care and technology. Basically, William’s studies are a mixture of everything Boston is about. What’s not hot about that?
Who do you think is heating up in Boston's education space? Holler, here.
Images provided.
