General Catalyst Partners managing director David Fialkow told me that fellow managing director Neil Sequeira was planning a move to the Bay Area, though he said at the time an office was not in the works.
[Editor’s note, May 19: Turns out I did miss one–Third Rock Ventures]
—September: Boston-based Third Rock Ventures opens an office in San Francisco.
—February 2011: General Catalyst officially opens Palo Alto office. Xconomy Boston editor Greg Huang spoke at length with Hemant Taneja the week Taneja was moving west to head GC’s new office on El Camino Real in downtown Palo Alto.
—February 2011: Highland Capital Partners, which already had an office in Menlo Park, says it will open a branch of its reinstated Summer@Highland incubator program in California as well as at its Lexington, MA, headquarters.
—Fall 2011—Boston-based Bain Capital Partners plans to open a Palo Alto office.
Venture Firms Head East (for many, the move is from Route 128 and environs to Cambridge/Boston)
—February 2009: TechStars announces that it will bring its entrepreneurial boot camp/incubator program to Cambridge, MA.
—September 2009: Polaris Venture Partners opens a branch of its Dogpatch Labs incubator in Kendall Square (the inaugural Dogpatch launched in San Francisco in 2007, and a third “kennel” recently opened in New York. Polaris remains headquartered in Waltham, MA).
That same month, Founder Collective, which had announced itself as a new seed stage venture fund the previous June and had listed its local address as co-founder Eric Paley’s house in Somerville, officially moves to an office in Harvard Square.
—January 2010: Atlas Venture says it will consolidate operations in a new Boston headquarters (though the firm will retain a London office). Atlas’s Boston office moves from Waltham to 25 First Street in Cambridge in November 2010.
—August 2010: Bessemer Venture Partners moves from Wellesley, MA, to 196 Broadway in Kendall Square.
—September 2010: Lexington, MA-based CommonAngels opens an office in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square.
—March 2011: Highland Capital Partners, long an odd duck with its offices off Route 2 in Lexington, between Cambridge and Waltham, tells the Boston Globe it plans to move to Cambridge. (No move has officially been announced, but look for Highland to make the move sometime this fall).
—Around the same time, we hear through the grapevine that Matrix Partners is planning to move to Cambridge from Winter Street in Waltham, but nothing has been announced—and Matrix did not respond to our inquiry on the subject.
—May 2011: Charles River Ventures partner Izhar Armony tells Scott Kirsner his firm is also looking to move to Cambridge later in the year, after its current lease in Waltham expires.
[Editor’s note, June 9: Adding Polaris news]
—June 2011: Polaris Venture Partners tells Xconomy it will open a Palo Alto office on or near University Avenue sometime during the summer. The company previous had a small office alongside its Dogpatch Labs space on Pier 38 in Palo Alto.
Did I forget or omit something? Drop me a line directly or at [email protected].
