Last week I wrote about the power of one word, and how even in its brevity, just one singular word has the power to be extraordinarily impactful. When I used to write a personal blog, I would often reach out to friends and colleagues and ask them to share one word with me - with no context as to why they shared it. I would riff on that word and my interpretation of it and then circle back with the individual who shared it.  Not only did it offer me a fantastic creative challenge, but also allowed me the opportunity to connect with my friends by sharing our own perspectives on what the word meant to each of us.

Last week, after reading that post, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with responded by reminding me of a word he had shared years ago during one of those exercises. And then he selected a new word as his mantra for the year: sustainability. While I will be sure to connect with him after this post to gain a better understanding of his thoughts on sustainability, here is what struck me when I read that.

First, my mind went to the conventional definition. These days, sustainability often refers to the focus of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of our future generations.  It often encompasses economic, environmental and/or social aspects. Sustainability is also a key factor in today’s business ethics, as much of the public has responded with intolerance about long term damage caused by short term profits. And while those may be elements most associated with this word, it’s not what I tend to think of. Rather, my mind went to my own personal sustainability and replacing it the two words, ‘’never done.”

To me, “never done” is about our ability to never stop learning and growing. It’s about that part of ourselves that is insatiably curious and always in search of a better solution.  When you say those two words with a passionate, sustainable lens of personal development, it can be downright energizing.  I have built a career based on the notion of “never done.” Given that I’ve been playing this role since I was in my 20s, my measure of personal growth and success has largely come by challenging myself to hold the bar (very) high on what can be accomplished each year to make the companies I work for amazing places to work. I don’t want to follow the best practice.  I want to BE the best practice.  To live this way, I embrace there will be points in time of accomplishment; but I will never, ever be done attempting to learn, grow, and develop the work I love. And to keep pace like this for years on end, one needs to find a way to make it personally sustainable.

However, if you change the tone of the phrase the other direction (as in, “Ugh!!! I’m never done!”) it takes on a negative, exhausting and just downright unsustainable connotation.

I care about our world and leaving it in a better place for my kids. I am doing what I can to take care of the planet and live sustainably in the more current, traditional sense of the word. However, I care deeply about pacing myself and holding the bar high without completely burning out. When I was at the start of my career and falling in love with the rather addictive chaos that comes with hypergrowth, I literally went to the extent of sometimes sleeping under my desk and giving up all semblance of a life outside of work in pursuit of learning and attempting to add impact. Outsiders warned me my lifestyle wasn’t sustainable. Insiders, however, fueled this behavior because we shared a similar passion and ethos.  Now zoom ahead nearly thirty years. I still feel remarkably energetic and inspired by my work. I have also evolved my understanding and embracing of the importance of having a life outside the office; I still work my butt off, but my days of sleeping in my office are long gone. I’ve found to ways to evolve making the hypergrowth needs of my company, my passion for what I do, and my need to do it in a way that is sustainable for me. Fortunately, Rapid7 provides me with an environment where I can achieve all of it.

I am looking forward to what my old friend meant when he offered up the word sustainability. I am even more interested, however, on how each of us balances the need to meet achieve our audacious goals while not completely running ourselves into the ground in the process.  My work and personal life have always had an incredibly blurry line dividing them, and I’ve never subscribed to anyone else’s definition of work|life balance.  What has worked and motivated me all these years might not work for anyone else. For me, it’s sustainable.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

As we’ve previously shown, coworking is on the rise in Boston and there is an abundance of spaces across the city. However, in the suburbs surrounding the city, there is a growing need for coworking spaces.

Out of Office is a new coworking space based in Hudson, MA founded by Fresh Tiled Soil CEO Richard Banfield. The goal of the space is to give those living outside of the city not only a place to work, but as a way to give those who don’t have access to one of the major coworking offices a chance to experience one.

We spoke with Banfield about the founding of the coworking company, what the space is all about, and what impact a coworking space can have the outlying towns of the Hub.

Colin Barry [CB]: Before we start talking about Out of Office, let’s talk about your career. Tell me a little more about your career in the Boston tech space.

Richard Banfield [RB]: During the last two decades, I have been working in the digital product space, either as a founder or a service provider to founders. My passion is for designing memorable experiences for emerging technologies. For the majority of that time I’ve been running Fresh Tilled Soil, a digital product design firm. I’m still CEO of that business. More recently my curiosity for what makes digital products successful lead me to start writing books on the subject. I’ve just completed my fourth book.

CB: Now onto your newest business venture. What was the “A-ha!” moment to start a coworking space?

RB: I was scratching an itch that we stumbled on when my UX firm, Fresh Tilled Soil, decided to give up the office and be a distributed team. As working from home became the new norm I became increasingly frustrated. The distractions at home added to the lack of human interaction prompted me to look for a coworking space near my home in the Boston suburbs. The “A-ha!” moment was when I searched for coworking spaces on Google Maps and there was this gaping void in the MetroWest area. All the coworking spaces were concentrated in the city but almost 5-million people live in the Boston suburbs. It didn’t add up. It occurred to me that there’s a huge opportunity to have a positive impact on working conditions by providing sophisticated coworking spaces close to where people actually live. This has the added benefit of getting more people out of the traffic and even reducing the daily carbon footprint of those commuters.

Things got even better when we started talking to the town leaders and organizations. They immediately saw this as a way to achieve their goals of having residents stay local and buy local. Every time a commuter leaves the ‘burbs and heads to the city, they take their coffee and lunch dollars with them. It also costs towns more when commuters drive instead of walk or ride to work.

CB: Out of Office is in Hudson, which is a relatively far drive from Boston. Why set up shop out there? Were there always plans to be in Hudson?

RB: Hudson is smack in the middle of the MetroWest corridor and situated on I-495, which makes it a short drive for almost 500,000 people. We’re also on the Assabet River Rail Trail, a major bike path connecting Marlborough to Hudson and Stow. The location is ideal for folks who don’t want to or can’t, drive to Boston, but what closed the deal for us was the town of Hudson itself. If you were walking down Main St you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Davis Square or Somerville. Trendy spots like Medusa Brewing, Ground Effect Brewing, Rail Trail Flatbread, the Greater Than Less Than speakeasy, and the New City Microcreamery attract the kind of patron that are also our customers. Every day I meet young entrepreneurs that moved out here because Cambridge or Boston became too expensive to own a home and raise a family.

Towns like Hudson, Stow, Acton, Sudbury, Maynard, Bolton, Berlin, and the northern part of Framingham have no commuter rail. If you live in those towns, but your office is in Boston, your best hope is to be in traffic for an hour or more each way. I did that for 15 years. It’s a nightmare. Things are changing. People work remotely more often now, we have a massive sharing economy and big corporates out here need options to right-size. Within 20 mins of Hudson, we have GE Healthcare, TJX, DCU Boston Scientific, Raytheon, Vertex Biomedical, and Intel. We’re seeing a confluence of things that could be exciting.

CB: What impact can coworking bring to the suburban areas around the Boston tech scene?

RB: Our goal is to build a network of beautifully designed coworking exurban locations that are sophisticated as the downtown spaces, but each within a 15-20 minute drive of the MetroWest commuter. The entrepreneurial and tech scenes need a center of gravity out here. With 14,000 sq ft of space, dozens of offices and meeting rooms, and tons of parking we can be that place. We’ve only been open a few days and we’ve already signed up two dozen members and several events booked so I’m guessing we’re tapping into the pent-up demand.

CB: What sets Out of Office apart from the other coworking spaces out in Hudson, if there is any?

RB: Ha! There’s nothing “out there”. It’s an underserved part of the work landscape. Apart from a few sublets, there is no coworking community of any substance in the suburbs. Certainly none with the gorgeous space and amenities we have. Out Of Office is also not interested in competing with the downtown spaces either. They have their place and it’s valuable. Our biggest competitor is the commute into the city. If you’d had enough of sitting in traffic, you’re probably our customer.

CB: What are some plans going forward for Out of Office? Any events/networking opportunities?

RB: We’re currently looking at a handful of locations to expand our footprint. Ideal towns will have to be about 40 mins to an hour commute out of Boston, have a vibrant downtown and poor access to the commuter rail. We have an official launch on Feb 1st and several tech-related events in the works. One of our member organizations is Revolution Factory, an incubator with a focus on smart cities. They will be running demos and workshops starting in January 2019. All through the lens of intelligent exurb design as a tool for an improved standard of living across all these dimensions.

CB: Any other additional comments you’d like to make?

RB: We think Out Of Office has a huge advantage in this space because we’re not just seeing as a cost-plus equation. We see this as an opportunity to work with towns and exurban communities to accelerate a more sustainable work-life balance for their residents. We’re not just making good business, we’re pushing for a fundamentally different and more humanistic structure to the live/work experience.

For the 66th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Andy Cook, Co-Founder and CEO of Tettra, a knowledge management system for high-performance teams.

This could be my most transparent interview ever. When you ask most startup founders how things are going, the majority are likely going to say, “We are crushing it.” However, building a company is really hard, and growing a successful startup is rarely, if ever, a straight line.

Andy recently published a series of blog posts where he shares the intimate details on the ups and downs of building a startup, so I was really excited to chat with him about the really deep and gritty details that go into building a startup, including the depths of nearly failing, to plowing through and coming out the other end to a profitable path for Tettra.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

• Andy’s background, and how he started a rental marketplace called Rentabilities with his brother, and how they were able to convince Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot to write the first angel check.
• The aha moment behind Tettra and the current state & scale of the company.
• A ton of details on the ups and downs he’s experienced building a company from the ground up, including lots of info on fundraising, finding the right sales model, & how they got to profitability.
• The importance of staying transparent when running your business especially with employees.
• Tips for communicating with investors.
• Plus, a lot more.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

Founded in 2003, LogMeIn is a leading provider of SaaS and cloud-based remote connectivity services and platforms for meetings, management, and engagement. 

The company went public in 2009, right in the midst of an economic downturn and has remained as an anchor company in the Boston tech scene.

It may come as no surprise that several of their alumni have gone on to start other companies or are part of the leadership team at other Boston tech companies. Below is a slideshow which highlights 20+ of these alumni of LogMeIn.

For this slideshow, we used the following criteria:

• Must be based in the Boston area
• Tenure at LogMeIn for at least two years
• Currently a founder, board member, or executive (VP or higher)

Take a look at the slideshow below!

Several years ago, I began writing. I had never written outside of school or work, but at the prompting of a writer friend over the course of dinner, I decided to keep an online journal - fully exposing myself in the process - as a way of shaking up my life. So as not to chicken out, I started writing and posting that very night. As with any habit, the first few days were tough to get motivated and actually drive myself to get it done. My writing lacked sophistication and skill, leaving me feeling seriously vulnerable and lame. And yet I kept reminding myself I shouldn’t be concerned about that piece. I didn’t take on that challenge for other people, I did it for me. I embraced that learning and growing can be messy. I chose to work through that mess publicly because I knew myself well enough that even if no one ever read what I was writing, the very act of putting it out there held me accountable to get it done every day.

As you can imagine, dreaming up 365 things to write primarily about one’s self can be rather daunting (and let’s be honest, boring). I had developed the habit of writing and posting every single night before I went to sleep. Some days I would brainstorm a topic during the course of the day, and sit down at my keyboard ready to go.  Other nights, I just started at a blank page and flashing cursor, with no clue how to start. And then I came up with the idea of asking friends to “Give me one word.”

The rules were super simple. I’d reach out to a friend and I’d ask them to provide me with one word - any word - and share with me. I also asked them not to share any context about why they selected that word. Ultimately, I’d take the word provided and riff on it, creating my own story about however I related to that word.  It was an incredible thing; that one word proved to be a fantastic creative outlet for me but more importantly was the opportunity it gave me to connect with the person who shared it. After I posted, I always went back to them to share how I had interpreted it, and then asked what they had been thinking about when they shared it. BOOM! Deeper connection, all based on one word.

This weekend, the notion of the power of one word came up twice.  I was cruising Netflix and stumbled onto Ellen Degeneres’s new stand up special, Relatable. When she told a friend she was thinking of doing stand-up again after fifteen years, she was hoping for a reaction of “REALLY?!!!!!!”  Instead, she received a “REALLY???”  Rather than being met with enthusiasm and support, her friend countered her about her potential change in relatability since her early stand-up days, given the enormous success she’s had. That one word, “relatable” provided fodder not just for a really funny comedic special, but also for her own inward exploration of how her relatability might have morphed over the years of building success. That one word had a tremendous impact.

The second time it came up was during my preparation for the kickoff meetings we are in hosting over the next several weeks at work. Long ago, Rapid7 elected to use a moose as a symbol of teamwork, and it’s become a significant rallying point in our company. I had been telling the story of why a moose along with branding many of our internal programs with this word for years. It wasn’t until I recently sat down with one of the former employees who actually came up with the use of this word in our company vernacular that I realized the impact that one word had actually had.

In its condensed version, the story behind “Why a moose?!” came from two sales leaders back when the company was very small, and trying to gain a grounding in the emerging cybersecurity field. These two guys had very different skills and approaches and, ultimately, we're getting in each other’s way to the point of neither being overly successful. One day, one of the guys said to the other, “The singular of the word moose, is moose.  The plural of the word moose is also moose. You are a moose. I am a moose. Together, we are one moose.” Understandably, the other sales leader looked at him like he was insane. However, they went on to reason that when you are operating singularly, you won’t accomplish nearly as much as you will be partnering together. From that day on, the notion of moose within our company represented teamwork and the importance of collaboration. Since that time, it’s become our mascot, and more importantly, it’s set the tone for the basis of our entire culture. One word had a tremendous impact on the direction of how we scaled our company.

Just one word can have the power and ability to help and to heal, or to harm and to hurt. They can inspire someone to achieve their best, or they can have negative ramifications that last a lifetime. It can influence a brilliant comedy routine, or it can create a cultural foundation for a company.  Depending on the word, and the tone with which it is shared, it can demotivate, or worse, completely alienate someone.

Challenge for the new year: Consider the words you use most often, and the impact they are having. Select the most positive word, and elect it as your mantra. Next, consider the most negative word in your vocabulary. Whether it’s creating self-criticism or contributing to a toxic team environment, identify it and erase it. As illustrated above, even just a singular word can have a dramatic impact. Whether you are writing it, speaking it, or just plain wearing it on a t-shirt, consider your words carefully; they may just change the course of history.

FWIW: While I am likely to choose a number of them over the course of this year, my current word of focus is “evolve.” The word I am erasing from my vocabulary this year is “tired.”

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

For the 64th episode of our podcast, I interviewed Chris Jones, the CTO of iRobot.

It’s likely that you are familiar with iRobot and the Roomba, which is the product they are best known for. I actually recently made my first Roomba purchase, that being the i7, and I have to admit I had pretty high expectations for this product. Let’s just say all my expectations have been totally exceeded. From the ease of setup and use, to the functionality of setting up floor maps of my home and cleaning schedules, how it recharges itself, and of course, and the fact that it does an amazing job cleaning our floors incredibly well. The experience has been truly mindblowing… I’m serious, it's awesome.

Needless to say, I was super excited to interview Chris for our podcast and talk about his career which spans over 20 years in terms of working with robotics and the opportunity to learn more about iRobot, their engineering organization, and how they build these amazing consumer robots.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like:

• The details of Chris’ background growing up in Texas, and how he got interested in robotics.
• The story of how he moved from academia to industry, and how he joined iRobot.
• Everything Chris worked on at iRobot, from military robots to the consumer robots we know today.
• The details behind iRobot’s 500-person engineering team, plus some great tips around what to expect during the interview process.
• The company’s mission to support STEM education.
• The future of robotics in the household.
• Plus, a lot more.

Ok - quick side note. Today’s episode is sponsored by Pluralsight.

It is amazing what machine learning can do. With mounds of data being harvested every day, there’s so much we can learn and create.

Pluralsight, the technology learning platform, is using this data for the good of tech professionals everywhere. Their AI helps you see what level your tech skills are at and recommends opportunities to keep learning.

And they’re looking for help to make their algorithms even smarter. If changing the way the world learns technology through the intersection of Design, Product, Data Science and Engineering is right up your alley, apply to work at Pluralsight.

Want to work here? Visit this link to learn more.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. Data suggests that typically only 20 percent of us are actually successful with them...and remarkably that 80% falloff rate occurs by the second week of February. So with a fresh year in front of us all, how do you start anew with something you feel like you can truly achieve?

UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A RESOLUTION AND A GOAL

Technically speaking, a resolution is just a decision to do or not to do something. Kind of vague, right?  A goal, on the other hand, is the object of a one’s ambition or effort. Rather than a decision, it’s focused on a result. Perhaps these are just semantics, but it’s an important distinction.

THE ROLE OF GOALS AT WORK

Goals play an important function at work; they keep an individual and/or team aligned and working together to achieve a common goal. They tend to be more quantitative in nature, whereby you can measure your progress and break them down into manageable steps.  Aside from just accomplishment of whatever it is that you set out to do, the mere act of actually setting a concrete goal has been found to boost performance by motivating people and focusing their prioritization and effort.  

THE ROLE OF RESOLUTIONS AT WORK

Resolutions tend toward the personal side, like “I’m going to get healthy this year” or “I’m going to save more money.” Often, they can be a little more intangible and less structured than an actual goal. It might sound odd to consider the role the more qualitative resolution can play at work, but it has its place in addition to goal setting.  

A few examples:

Goal: Hire 50 people by the end of the quarter.

Resolution: Ensure the quality of each of our hires balances skill, attitude, aptitude and culture fit.

Goal: Promote 40% of our employees from within the company.

Resolution: Focus on making sure every employee understands what it takes to be considered for continued career growth and development.

Great, so how do you make them both stick?

CREATE HABITS

I write every week, with an entry of approximately one thousand words per post.  The average book is around 50,000 words. Given that, I wrote the equivalent of one book last year.  I don’t really think about it that way though. I view writing a book as an enormous undertaking is both overwhelming and a little daunting. However, rather than focus on the daunting goal of “I will write a book in 2019,” which is incredibly results oriented and something I’m not even sure I want to try and tackle, I think about the behaviors that would support that action. In my world, I carve out time to write at the beginning of every week, and I post every Thursday. It’s simple, it’s measurable, and it has become a habit. Should I chose to dial that up and write every day, I know the behavioral formula I need to follow to accomplish more.

If your team’s goal is to hire 50 people by end of the quarter, you can structure weekly and monthly milestones to track against. You can parse out the work to team members to ensure everyone has an achievable workload to do their part in reaching the milestone. Ultimately, you break that huge goal into measurable, bite-size pieces and accomplish those bits until you achieve the overall goal. However, if your resolution is to focus on quality hiring through a combination of great skills, a great attitude, strong aptitude to learn and grow and ensuring that each person isn’t just a fit, but adds to your culture, you need to build behavior and habits that will support this focus. The more these behaviors become part of your daily hiring routine, the more likely it will just become part of your ethos. Essentially, goals focus on short-term results. Building the behavioral habits to aid in achieving a new process (your resolutions) focuses on long-term change. And while the goals might be amazing achievements, the process changes are the ones that will have payoffs to you and your team for the long haul.

Setting big goals can be intimidating and overwhelming, and yet they are an important factor for achievement at work.  Balancing them with resolutions, however, can lessen the stress. Creating new approaches to edit your behavior can greatly complement what you are trying to achieve. It’s just about living in the moment and making incremental progress. By creating behaviors that lead to habits that support your goals, you are far more likely to achieve them.  And you might just find yourself more motivated in the process.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator

'Tis the season... and there was no shortage of holiday festivities across the Boston tech scene over the month of December.

You'll see some festive holiday parties, fun in-office celebrations, and lots of giving back. 

It's also a good time to own an ugly sweater company, as there is no shortage of creative options there.

Enjoy the slideshow below!

2018 was another triumphant year for Boston tech! With the year coming to close, it's time to reflect at some of the big moments within the Boston tech scene.

Here's a look at some of the top stories on VentureFizz from 2018 in no particular order.

18 of the Most Impressive Engineering Teams in Boston Tech

Engineering Spotlight is a recurring series on VentureFizz. It's a deep dive into a Boston tech company's engineering team and what it's like working there. The pool of engineering talent in the Boston tech scene is impressive! Here is a sampling of the incredible engineering teams working for some of Boston's hottest companies.

How to Stay Productive in 2018 - Tips From Boston's Tech Leaders

The workplace is full of distractions, but there are many ways to stay focused and productive. We asked some of Boston tech's leaders on their tips and tricks on how to stay productive.

How Carbon Black Empowers Its Women

Part of Carbon Black's company culture are events that highlight diversity and inclusion. Ashley Perez writes and details the various functions and panels her company empowers women through them.

The Incredible List of Successful Babson College Alumni (Part 1: Undergraduates)

Check out our slideshow showcasing just a few of the notable undergraduates who have come from Babson College. Going through the pictures, there's bound to be at least one person that will make you go, "I didn't realize they went to Babson?"

The Incredible List of Successful Babson College Alumni (Part 2: MBA Recipients)

Check out our slideshow showcasing just a few of the notable MBA graduates who have come from Babson College. Going through the pictures, there's bound to be at least one person that will make you go, "I didn't realize they went to Babson?" Since the last one featured undergraduates, this slideshow will feature those who graduated with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Babson.

The Story of Greg Mark, and How Markforged Disrupted the 3D Printing Industry

Markforged offers a platform for 3D printing, as well as a range of 3D printers for industrial uses. While many companies work solely in plastic, Markforged printers can print carbon fiber, stainless steel, fiberglass, and titanium, as well as plastics and other materials. Founder and CEO Greg Mark told us the story of how Markforged went from being an idea to a major disruptive force in this highly competitive industry.

The Colossal Spider Web of Constant Contact Alumni

Constant Contact is one of the Boston tech scene's pillar companies. Various alumni from the company have gone on to start their own companies and hold executive leadership roles in the tech sector. Here's a slideshow of notable alumni.

Boston Emerges as a Hub for Disruptive Food and Beverage Brands and Tech Companies

Over the past few years, Boston has emerged as a player in the food and beverage industry with a variety of innovative startups coming out of the space. Allen Bonde of Repsly writes about some of the companies to come out of this space and what they have been up to.

Blockchain & Cryptocurrency in Boston Tech - Part 1: “Something I Learned Today” - Breaking Down and Defining the Basics

VentureFizz gave our readers an inside look to the blockchain and cryptocurrency scene in Boston; What all the terms mean, who is involved with the technology, what are the investor's points of view, and what the future holds for Boston in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. For the first part of this series, it’s a crash course on what the terms in this new frontier mean.

Summer Reading - Boston Tech Shares What They Are Reading (Part 1: Business/Entrepreneur Books)

Inspired by Bill Gates' list of 5 books worth reading this summer, we asked founders, CEOs, and operating executives across the Boston tech scene for book recommendations. The goal is to give you some great books to check out during those summer vacations or whenever you have a chance to read.

20 Successful Alumni of Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College is a private liberal arts college based in Brunswick, Maine. It is one of the many outstanding academic institutions in New England. As a school specializing in liberal arts, it may come as a surprise how many of its alumni have gone on to incredibly successful careers in business, whether it is as an executive or an entrepreneur. We compiled a list with some of these individuals that are "mostly" in the tech industry. 

The Colossal Spider Web of iRobot Alumni

iRobot is one of the Boston tech scene's pillar companies. Various alumni from the company have gone on to start their own companies and hold executive leadership roles in the tech sector. Here's a slideshow of notable alumni.

Halloween Across The Boston Tech Community - 2018 Edition

When it comes to Halloween, the Boston tech community doesn't mess around. This is our fourth year publishing this slideshow and each year the costumes keep getting better and better. This year, you'll see a lot of Disney-related costumes, famous musicians, The Wizard of Oz... but you'll see some incredibly elaborate costumes like a Transformer, some hysterical groups having fun with their theme, and even the ubiquitous Deadpool hanging around!

Drift's HYPERGROWTH is Back and It's Bigger & Better Than Last Year

Drift's HYPERGROWTH conference returned for 2018 and Keith Cline connected with Dave Gerhardt, Drift's VP of Marketing, to get a preview of the 2018 conference.

The Colossal Spider Web of PTC Alumni

PTC is one of the Boston tech scene's pillar companies. Various alumni from the company have gone on to start their own companies and hold executive leadership roles in the tech sector. Here's a slideshow of notable alumni.

Alice’s Table, A Platform That Empowers Women, is Entering the Shark Tank

Alice's Table fulfills two specific markets: women looking for a “side hustle” and women looking to start a small business. We spoke with Alice Lewis, the Founder and CEO, about how their platform empowers women and she previews her appearance on ABC's Shark Tank.

ZappRx: A Digital Health Platform Grows to New Heights

ZappRx is a platform for specialty drugs that simplifies the intensive process of getting treatment. Founder and CEO Zoë Barry tells us all about the company's recent happenings and offers some lessons she's learned as a first-time founder.

Announcing the Nominees for the 6th Annual NEVY Awards

The NEVCA announced their nominees for the 2018 edition of their awards show, the NEVYs, which includes a number of companies and investors across the complete New England both the life sciences and tech ecosystems.

The Colossal Spider Web of Akamai Alumni

Akamai is one of the Boston tech scene's pillar companies. Various alumni from the company have gone on to start their own companies and hold executive leadership roles in the tech sector. Here's a slideshow of notable alumni.

34 of the Top Leaders in the Boston Tech Scene - 2018 Lead(H)er Recap

As part of our Lead(H)er feature, we’ve had the great privilege of talking to women who are shaking things up not only as founders, but as product managers, C-suite execs, marketing experts, and more in Boston’s vibrant startup scene. Take a look at our list of the talented women we’ve spotlighted this year.

Colin Barry is an Editor & Staff Writer to VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter @ColinKrash