On Wednesday, startup accelerator MassChallenge announced that it has officially landed in its new spot in the Seaport’s Boston Innovation and Design Building. The startup accelerator newest batch of 128 companies will be the first to occupy its modern and airy sixth floor space.
“We want it to be a showcase for the community,” Scott Bailey, the accelerator’s senior director of partnerships, told BostInno on Tuesday afternoon. Other members of the MassChallenge team and an army of interns were jostling to straighten a flipboard showing the number 4,051 – the amount of jobs the accelerator has generated in the past five years – and putting other finishing touches on the new digs in preparation of Wednesday’s reveal.
Compared to its previous location at ONE Marina Park Drive, MassChallenge’s new spot is more open, with added personality and flair reflective of the needs of its startups. With the gracious help of real estate developer Jamestown and architecture and design firm Analogue Studio, the accelerator now has a fully customized build out. What started as a sprawling, window-lined space in an old building has been artfully organized into various rooms and sections, thanks to what the MassChallenge team terms “rocks.”
Geometric in shape and green, pink and blue in color, the rocks serve a dual purpose as both the containers of conference, private call rooms and lockers and team identifiers for MassChallenge companies. Startups will be organized by what color rock section and which row – A, B, C, or D, denoted by pillars – they sit in, building mini-communities within the accelerator. All teams, however, will have access to the additional rooms, which are decorated with paintings from local non-profit Artists for Humanity, and the individual lockers.
Running along either side of the main room are casual work stations, sun-soaked in the natural light. A variety of modern chairs and sofas are arranged in clusters to give companies the chance to mix it up and step away from their desks. Just beyond the large coworking room sits a new kitchen, a pair of ping-pong tables and a collection of fridges and stands that make up a small food store. The MassChallenge team understood that moving the accelerator down deep into the belly of the South Boston meant that hungry entrepreneurs would have less access to food options. So, they decided to add in their own corner shop to give teams more choices. What’s more, the management has also cracked a deal with some of the city’s food trucks, so at least two restaurants-on-wheels will be posted up outside the Innovation and Design Building every day.
Following from the kitchen, a tangerine-colored garage door opens into MassChallenge’s events space. The walls are coated with IdeaPaint, perfect for collaborative planning and hackathon brainstorming, and will soon sport the logos of the accelerator’s in-kind sponsors, including the brand of Harpoon Brewery for quite a different reason. Starting this summer, the local beer company will be donating bottomless brews to MassChallenge at the end of each week for a get together called “Fridge Full Fridays.” The accelerator is also planning to host a contest for the design of a custom-crafted mosaic created by MassChallenge alum Artaic for the room’s entryway.
What’s not ready for the unveiling, however, is perhaps one the most exciting additions to MassChallenge. The accelerator is adding on its own full-fledged workshop, to be dubbed Made by MassChallenge. Whereas accessibility to machinery may have hindered product companies in the past, Made by MassChallenge is designed to obliterate that obstacle.
Take a look at MassChallenge’s new space for yourself in the following slides.
