Drones, Pills, and Gold: Boston Celebrates Startup Winners

cash, folding money,

In a hectic month for deals, product advances, and bogus NFL investigations, New England is taking time out to recognize emerging leaders in its tech and life sciences scene. Let’s get right to the highlights:

—The third annual NEVY awards, organized by the New England Venture Capital Association, was a blast (with a “Solid Gold” theme). What’s particularly cool is bringing together top leaders in both tech and healthcare/biotech—groups that don’t mingle as much as they should in this town.

The “winners” across various categories included PillPack, BookBub, and Navitor in startups; FKA Atlas and Founder Collective in VC funds; and Elias Torres, Zoe Barry, and Nancy Simonian in rising star entrepreneurs. Emerging anchor companies Hubspot, Wayfair, and Moderna were also recognized, and Acquia was picked as “next unicorn.” Congratulations to all the nominees. (You can see the full list of winners here.)

—The MIT $100K competition crowned RaptorMaps as winner of the annual business-plan contest. This is a drone company targeting applications in agriculture. Specifically, the team plans to use unmanned aircraft to provide crop analytics on areas ravaged by disease, insects, or weeds. The goal is to increase crop yields by, say, focusing pesticides on particular spots.

—The 2015 MITX awards are tonight, May 14, in Boston. Among the local startups nominated are Evergage, Fiksu, Lose It, Nanigans, Qstream, Vee24, WordStream, and Yottaa. Good luck to all the contestants, and please keep those innovations coming.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.