We Have Moved to the University of Massachusetts–Boston Venture Development Center
By Michael L. Stephens, CFA, Co-founder and CIO | August 18th, 2009
We are happy to announce that we have moved to the Venture Development Center (VDC) at The University of Massachusetts–Boston. The VDC is a managed-incubator for early stage businesses. The move represents a big leap forward for us and will go a long way in helping us to achieve our mission of making unbiased world-class investment advice available to everyone.
The VDC is cool. It offers 18,000 square-feet of state-of-the-art, plug-and-play office, lab and meeting space, shared business services, and equipment. It’s located just a few minutes away from downtown Boston and overlooks Boston Harbor.
More importantly, our partnership with the VDC will propel our business forward and help us improve our service in ways that will be meaningful to our customers. The benefits of our relationship with the VDC are many, but a few include:
Business mentoring
We are eager to tap into the tremendous amount of business experience offered by a few members of the VDC. Bill Brah, the VDC’s Executive Director, has over 25 years of experience building and leading a variety of business, government and private organizations. Dan Phillips is the VDC’s Entrepreneur in Residence. During Dan’s 25+ years as an entrepreneur, he was a leader in four successful companies. Two of them went public and the other two were acquired by Fortune 200 companies. The great thing about the VDC is the proximity we have to resources such as Dan and Bill. In addition to formal meetings we have with them, we run into them at the water cooler, pass them in the hallways and have lunch with them in the cafeteria.
Connections to valuable industry, university and government resources
Running a business provides us with a unique set of unforeseen challenges every day. When those challenges arise for us, someone from the VDC invariably says, “I know someone who can provide insight on that.” It is very exciting for us to be able to tap the resources of the UMass–Boston ecosystem. From product and marketing questions to access to the latest industry research, the VDC has us covered.
Access to qualified interns
Agility in the product development process is crucial for us because we want to be able to quickly respond to our customers’ desires for features and enhancements. Often, that means doing a lot of work and doing it quickly. Interns can be a great help in this regard. Candidates are screened and selected for us by the VDC, so we are ensured of getting qualified individuals with a high level of enthusiasm for what we are doing. Interns provide us with value and agility that we would not be able to otherwise achieve on our own.
We think our move to the U. Mass–Boston VDC represents a new stage in our continuing evolution. We have already begun to reap the benefits and our customers will begin to see them soon.
