The Boston startup community is buzzing this month. Within a few days, you could chill on the white swings and play lawn games at Lawn on D for Boston TechJam; attend a panel at Startup Boston Week; and meet blockchain and Web3 wizzes at Boston Blockchain Week.
For some, it feels like the first time since the pandemic began in 2020 that the Boston startup community has had so many opportunities to gather. Community leaders told BostInno they don’t want the city to miss this opportunity to reconnect.
“What’s really important is just that we do need to keep up this energy,” said Sara Fraim, CEO of the Mass Technology Leadership Council, which organizes Boston TechJam. “We do need to all work together to create the vibrancy to keep the companies here, the people here.”
TechJam's comeback story
Ten years ago, Boston TechJam took place at District Hall in the Seaport for the first time. At the time, Fraim said there was a lot of talk about the duality of Boston and Silicon Valley in the startup scene. Both had the ingredients for success, Fraim said, but Boston wasn’t really showcasing what it had going for it.
“That’s how Boston TechJam was born,” Fraim said.
About 50 exhibitors and 1,000 people showed up that first year to celebrate Boston’s tech community and its companies. Over the next few years, TechJam moved to City Hall and continued to grow, attracting thousands of attendees. In 2019, they had just under 5,000 people registered.
Then the pandemic hit. TechJam took a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic and returned in 2022 at a new location.
“We just decided, coming out of Covid, let’s just reset. Let’s scale it down…in September 2022 there were up and down spikes of Covid and so we were like maybe they don’t want to be with many thousands of people on top of each other,” Fraim said.
The block-party style event was back in 2022, this time at Lawn on D, with 2,700 people registered. People could shoot hoops with recruiterboom, race wind-up cars with Zipcar, play a whack-a-shark arcade game at Constant Contact and answer trivia questions from mabl. Many attendees told BostInno they were glad to finally be back in Boston’s tech scene.
“I think there’s been a trickle (of events) over the past year…and this seems to be the start of something a little bit bigger and hopefully a little bit better and more consistent,” Fraim said.
As in-person events return in full force this September, Fraim said it’s important that people embrace this opportunity to connect with others. Fraim said these events are not just networking opportunities, but a way to give tech employees and companies a reason to care about Massachusetts and to keep their roots here.
“Companies are struggling to retain and build culture because there’s no stickiness, especially on the earlier-career end. If you didn’t have a history with a company and then you go to a company and it’s remote, you may not feel as connected. It becomes much easier to just leave,” Fraim said. “So all of these extra-curricular opportunities do create more stickiness and they do create sparks of innovation and new companies and build relationships.”
A jam-packed September
Seven years ago, shortly after TechJam came onto the scene, Startup Boston Week was born. The five-day event is run by about 40 volunteers, including Rachel McIntosh, head of programming. This year the program includes about 100 events and 300 speakers available in person at Suffolk University and online. Startup Boston Week is free to attend.
“It’s one of those things where you only have something to gain from attending,” McIntosh said. “If you decide to come in person, you’re going to have the opportunity to meet a ton of different people in person and forge a lot of relationships. If someone prefers to tune in virtually, that’s great too.”
McIntosh said they’ve prioritized creating a flexible event with wide-ranging discussion topics, accessible attending and viewing options and a diverse audience from Boston and beyond.
That’s just one of many ways to connect with the Boston startup world this month.
On September 14, young professionals are gathering in the central business district at 1 Federal St. to network and discuss creating a vibrant downtown. That same night, Venture Lane is holding a party to unveil Venture Lane Studio’s fourth cohort. The weekend of September 22 is the Techstars Startup Weekend Boston where aspiring entrepreneurs can experience startup life and pitch their ideas to people like Kerty Levy, managing director of the Techstars Boston accelerator.
However people choose to spend September, Fraim says she hopes they get involved.
“We need everybody to stop saying what we don’t have here. But we need everybody to realize what we do and to participate and to push their teams to participate, especially now where people are either hybrid or fully remote,” Fraim said.
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