Massachusetts and New York are bitter sports rivals, but when it comes to business, the exchanges often end in handshakes, not heckling. Here are some of the latest examples of partnerships happening along the Northeast corridor:
—GreatHorn, a Belmont, MA-based provider of security software for cloud communications (think Google apps and Microsoft Office 365), snagged $2.25 million in a funding round led by New York-based ff Venture Capital and SoftTech VC. Other participants in the round included RRE Ventures and Zelkova Ventures (both in New York), Boston-area investor Walter Winshall, Techstars Ventures, and V1.VC.
GreatHorn took part in the Techstars accelerator program in New York last year.
—Tinkergarten, which has offices in Brooklyn, NY, and Northampton, MA, raised $1.6 million in seed funding for its early childhood education business focused on outdoor activities and supported with a software platform. The round was led by Omidyar Network—an investment group led by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar—along with Brooklyn-based Blue Seed Collective, New York-based City Light Capital, 500 Startups, and New York-based Outbound Ventures.
—Greentown Labs, a cleantech incubator in Somerville, MA, has formed a partnership with NYC ACRE, a cleantech incubator run by New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. The agreement aims to help startups from Massachusetts get a foothold in New York, and vice versa, by giving them free access to temporary desk space when they visit the reciprocal location, helping them connect with local investors and other resources, giving them access to events in the other market, and sharing best practices.
This is the latest in a string of similar agreements struck by Greentown Labs, which also has reciprocal partnerships with cleantech organizations based in Los Angeles and Portland, OR. Greentown has also collaborated with the Mid-West Energy Research Consortium, a Milwaukee-based group focused on strengthening that region’s energy, power, and control industry cluster.
