Attention East Coast entrepreneurs—another incubator is on its way. Polaris Venture Partners is announcing today that it is opening a Dogpatch Labs branch—this time in New York City. This will be the third Dogpatch incubator, and the second on the East Coast. The Waltham, MA-based venture firm opened its first Dogpatch on San Francisco’s Pier 38. This September, it opened Dogpatch Labs Cambridge, near Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA.
The New York space is at 36 East 12th Street. “The NY metro area is bubbling with activity and we heard from many founders that they love the concept of Dogpatch Labs and would welcome it in NY,” said Polaris general partner Peter Flint in an e-mail. “There are a number of places to rent desks in the city but nothing that has the ‘open source’ environment that the labs encourage.”
Polaris, which manages more than $3 billion in five funds, understands that there are many places in New York where entrepreneurs can rent cheap office space but the real value of Dogpatch—besides the fact that most members get to operate there for free—is that they can collaborate with each other in an “open source” environment, Flint said. Next week Polaris expects to announce a list of initial inhabitants at its latest facility, and Flint said to expect the list to include startups with several focuses, including cloud computing and consumer Internet businesses.
We’ll get you more on this as we learn more.
Author: Robert Buderi
Bob is Xconomy's founder and chairman. He is one of the country's foremost journalists covering business and technology. As a noted author and magazine editor, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and global competitiveness. Before taking his most recent position as a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies, Bob served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, then a 10-times-a-year publication with a circulation of 315,000. Bob led the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and oversaw its expansion into three foreign editions, electronic newsletters, and highly successful conferences. As BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for The Quality Imperative.
Bob is the author of four books about technology and innovation. Naval Innovation for the 21st Century (2013) is a post-Cold War account of the Office of Naval Research. Guanxi (2006) focuses on Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) covered a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and is an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation at many venues, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
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