Boston is a great place to start and build a company.  There is a wealth of resources that are unique to this town and a vibrant community of hackers, business people, and investors at various stages in their career.

However, Boston is a transient town, especially for the student population that refreshes a large population each year.  It’s also surprisingly difficult for students to get plugged-in to everything that is happening in the local tech ecosystem.  This guide is designed to help you hit the ground running and is a starting point for your entrepreneurial journey in Boston.  It can be found online at www.robgo.org (where the links actually work) and feedback is greatly appreciated!

Large Tech Meetups:

• Web Innovators Group: Quarterly Demo-Style meetup in Cambridge draws over 1000 members of the startup community each time.  The Grand-daddy. Alumni have been funded by Sequoia, First Round Capital, Accel, Trinity Ventures, and others.
• Mobile Mondays: Boston chapter of the world’s largest Mobile professional community.
• Founder Dialogues: Eric Paley plays talk show host on this recurring fireside chat style event with Boston area founders.
• RubyRiot/TechProm/Playtime: Not recurring events, but seems like there is a few big parties every year organized by a small group of folks who are very active in the tech community.  The next one is TechProm, organized by Dave Balter, the founder of BzzAgent.

Online Resources and Newsletters:

• Greenhorn Connect: Excellent hub of BOS tech events and resources. Currently, this seems to be the most popular and most comprehensive event calendar.
• DartBoston: A vibrant community of young entrepreneurs.  Join their online community and attend their excellent events.
• Bostinnovation: Great coverage of local startup happenings with a growing network of local writers.
• OnStartups: One of the largest online startup communities founded by HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah.
• VentureFizz: Good newsletter with funding announcements, best local blog posts, and other local tech happenings.

University Resources

• MIT 100K
• HBS Startup Tribe
• Babson Entrepreneur Resource Center
• Northeastern IDEA Venture Accelerator
• Olin College Foundry Program

Smaller and High Quality Meetups

• PopSignal – My favorite regular tech gathering.  Invite only.
• Capitalize – Regular pitch events where early stage companies get direct feedback from local VC’s.
• Open Coffee – Weekly meetup started by Bijan Sabet and Nabeel Hyatt.  No agenda, just come by and talk tech at Voltage
• http://foundermentors.com– Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay

Coworking Spaces and Accelerators

• TechStars Boston – Boston chapter of TechStars.  Applications due Nov 20^th!
• Dog Patch Labs – Free workspace run by Polaris Ventures.  No cost, not formal strings attached.
• Startup Leadership Program – International mentorship program with over 100 startups participating
• CIC – High quality, flexible office space.  Higher cost, but great facility
• WorkBar Boston – Flexible co-working space near South Station.
• MassChallenge – Startup competition and accelerator.  Beautiful space in the South Boston Innovation District.

Entrepreneurial Development Firms

• Bocoup – JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3.
• Thoughtbot – Web application development and design. Ruby specialists.
• Extension Engine – Software engineering and design
• FreshTilledSoil – User Interface Design

Places to Hang

• Crema Cafe – Great coffee in Harvard Square.  Favorite spot for Eric Paley, Antonio Rodriguez, and Rich Miner
• Andala Cafe  – Central Square hangout.  Free wifi.
• Henrietta’s Table – In the Charles Hotel.  General Catalyst is right upstairs.
• Paramount – Favorite breakfast spot for the Beacon Hill VC crowd.
• VentureCafe – Networking venue within the CIC
• Voltage – New coffee shop in Kendall.  Home of OpenCoffee Cambridge

Journalists and News

• Scott Kirsner – Tech journalist of the Boston Globe.  See his innovation economy blog and follow him on Twitter.
• Dan Primack – Formerly of PE Hub, recently poached by Fortune.  Not Boston focused, but definitely follow his reports of PE and VC financings and the state of the venture market.  @danprimack.
• Gregory Huang – Xconomy
• Galen Moore – Mass High Tech
• Chase Garbarino – BostonInno

Scaling Companies To Watch (ie: probably hiring)

• Gemvara – Online retailer for customized jewelry.  Founded by recent Babson Alum
• Wayfair – $350M + revenue, 300 employees. Recently raised their very first VC round from Battery and Spark earlier this year.  Amazing company, and one of the biggest private online retailers.
• HubSpot – Inbound marketing pioneer.  The current talent magnet of Boston tech companies. Recently raised money from Sequoia Capital
• Dataxu – Demand Side Platform for Real Time Ad Buying.  Led by serial entrepreneur Mike Baker.

20 To Follow (Being edited on the fly, so not exactly 20 anymore)

Investors:

• Antonio Rodriguez – Matrix Partners, HP (blog, @antrod)
• Bijan Sabet – Spark Capital (blog, @bijan)
• David Beisel – NextView Ventures, Venrock (blog, @davidbeisel)
• David Skok – Matrix Partners (blog, @bostonvc)
• Eric Paley – Founder Collective, Brontes (blog, @epaley)
• Jeff Bussgang – Flybridge, UPromise (blog, @bussgang)
• Joe Medved – Softbank Capital (blog, @joevc)
• Lee Hower – NextView Ventures, LinkedIn (blog, @leehower)
• Rich Miner – Google Ventures, Android (@richminer)
• Fred Destin – Atlas (@fdestin)

Entrepreneurs and Thought Leaders:

• Andrew Mcafee – MIT Professor (blog, @amcafee)
• Andy Payne – OpenMarket, Fansnap, angel investor (blog, @payne92)
• Bill Warner – Avid, Techstars, Angel investor (blog, @billwarner)
• Brian Balfour – Co-founder of Boundless Learning, Viximo (blog, @bbalfour)
• Brian Shin -Founder and CEO, Visible Measures (blog, @brianshin)
• David Cancel – Founder of Performable and Compete (blog , @Dcancel)
• David Hauser – Co-founder of Grasshopper (blog, @dh)
• John Gallaugher – BC Professor (blog, @gallaugher)
• Dharmesh Shah – Co-founder and CTO, HubSpot (blog, @dharmesh)
• Jennifer Lum – Apple, Quattro, MCube (@jenniferlum)
• Katie Rae – TechStars, Microsoft, Eons (blog, @ktrae)
• Nabeel Hyatt – Head of Zynga Boston studio (blog, @nabeel)
• Roy Rodenstien – Hacker Angels, Going.com (blog, @royrod)
• Sim Simeonov – FastIgnite, Polaris, Allaire (blog, @simeons)
• Tom Eisenmann – HBS Professor (@teisenmann)
• Wayne Chang – Crashlytics, Dropbox (blog, @wayne)