Live on Bloomberg TV

00:00Many of us familiar with Route 128 the storied history there of tech companies along that corridor your district tall why what's going on there. So district Hall David is sort of the innovation hub of Boston this is where startups and people in the innovation community congregate. There's free Wi-Fi there's conference rooms in the back. And this is in the Seaport District of Boston where G.E. will be moving its headquarters from Connecticut. That was a huge coup for the city. It came with a big incentive package but going to create hundreds of jobs they're also gonna be looking at startups to potentially acquire. And there are a lot of big tech companies here as well EMC TripAdvisor Biogen in fact there's a super cluster of biotech and pharma companies as well as a number of startups . There are 40 plus accelerators out in the Boston Boston Massachusetts area. Some of them are tied to universities . Others you may have heard of like TechStars they are pouring money into this community. And you know one of the problems is that a lot of companies that started Boston don't stay in Boston . You of course know about Facebook which was started in a Harvard dorm room and then moved to Silicon Valley. But Mark Zuckerberg has actually said if you were starting a company today he would have stayed in Boston. He thinks Silicon Valley may be a little too short term focus but that is a big focus on the community how to support the innovation ecosystem and convince entrepreneurs that when they start a company in Boston they stay in Boston. No shortage of big academic institutions they are Harvard M.I.T. Tufts others. Are they working hard to develop partnerships with these companies to encourage them but also to keep them there. They are indeed. In fact we're going to be here for the next three days at Harvard now has something called the X fund which is a venture capital fund that's linked to Harvard and Harvard startups. Their goal to keep startups and entrepreneurs in the heart Harvard Family of course M.I.T. has a long history of startups and engineering and there's also a lot of tech you know academic research and money spent on R.A. in this area alone. I believe Cambridge alone four billion dollars which is about four times what's spent on academic tech academic research in the Bay Area. And David also a lot of venture capital firms based in Boston smart capital for example early investors in Twitter early investors in Oculus Charles River Ventures battery and Bessemer ventures recently relocated their headquarters to Boston. And when you talk to some of these firms you say why are you in Boston why aren't you in Silicon Valley. And they actually think it gives them a competitive advantage .

No schedule data available.

Boston Transforms Into Tech Hub

Bloomberg's Emily Chang shines a spotlight on Boston's tech startup scene. She speaks with Bloomberg's David Gura on "Bloomberg Markets." (Source: Bloomberg)

More From Bloomberg Markets
All episodes and clips