From Berkeley to Boston to Anywhere

As Activate Boston hit the one-year mark, we took stock of what we’ve learned and gained from scaling the fellowship and landed on a bold next move: Activate Anywhere.

Activate is still a young organization, especially compared to some of the esteemed research institutions, government agencies, and philanthropic foundations we partner with, but we have learned a few really important things so far. Standing up Activate Boston validated our hypothesis that we can successfully replicate our model outside Activate’s original anchor point in Berkeley. And what we’ve since learned—from scaling to Boston, from supporting fellows through the COVID-19 pandemic, and from our growing network of partners eager to help us meet our mission—is that we have a clear opportunity, and the needed resources, to expand our fellowship nationwide.

That’s why we’re extremely pleased to announce Activate Anywhere.

Launching with Cohort 2022, Activate Anywhere will be a community of fellows who are connected but not colocated. In addition to meeting the basic criteria for the fellowship, successful Activate Anywhere applicants will also explain why and how the physical resources and research facilities in their home region—anywhere in the United States—provide a valuable launchpad for their commercialization efforts.

As with our communities in Berkeley and Boston, Activate Anywhere fellows will receive intensive support from a dedicated managing director and services staff. They will participate in the same national programming—entrepreneurial education, networking, professional development services, and other benefits—but they will be delivered remotely. All fellows will continue to receive the same level of financial support, including research funding, yearly stipends, and insurance benefits.

Last year we announced that by 2026 we plan to support 100 new fellows each year. That remains our goal, but rather than doing so exclusively within specific cities or regions, we’ll support a mix of geographically-defined communities along with the distributed community that Activate Anywhere fellows will form.

If you know someone who is advancing a powerful hard-tech innovation that could find fertile ground in one of the industries we target—whether they would thrive within our Berkeley or Boston communities, or as part of Activate Anywhere—please nominate them here. If you are interested in learning more about the fellowship, go to our application page, where you’ll learn more and can register for an upcoming informational webinar or live fellow Q&A panel.

Activate Boston and Beyond: What We’ve Learned
This summer, as the inaugural cohort of fellows in Boston reached the half-way point of their fellowship and we onboarded our newest Boston-based fellows, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of Activate Boston and took stock of our progress.

“We put the pieces in place to foster the same spirit of community and collaborative learning that made our first cohorts in Berkeley so powerful, and it worked,” says CEO Ilan Gur.

As we emerged from lock-down, we found a home base at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), which managing director Aimee Rose calls an ideal place to establish Activate’s Boston HQ.

“It’s purpose-built for supporting startups and innovation and offers fellows a place to come together. Plus, being at the CIC expands Activate’s reach into Boston’s innovation ecosystem and increases fellows’ networks as they build their teams and market strategies,” she says.

After a year, our Boston-based fellows are already showing signs of tremendous progress. They’ve raised more than $21M in follow-on funding, including funding from regional seed stage investors and through SBIR awards with the National Science Foundation and the Departments of Energy and Defense, among other agencies. They’ve engaged with regional corporate venture groups and defense primes. They’ve made key hires and landed pilot partners.

And they’ve garnered accolades: Cohort 2020’s Leah Ellis landed on the MIT Technology Review’s TR35 list and Osomses (Cohort 2021’s Francesco M. Benedetti and Holden Lai) won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, to name two. And they’ve pivoted: Matthew Alpert brought on a seasoned CEO as co-founder, transitioned to CTO, and the pair repositioned and rebranded his innovation.

The five Cohort 2020 fellows who embedded at MIT Lincoln Laboratory to advance their microelectronics-based innovations made significant progress building their companies and connecting to industry partners, and they’re now joined by four Cohort 2021 fellows at the lab. Outside of Lincoln Lab, Boston fellows established at UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center, Greentown Labs, The Engine, Harvard Innovation Labs, and other facilities around the city.

Karen (KK) Krause-Bencal

Growing the Activate team in Boston has also paid dividends across the organization, providing fellows in Boston and Berkeley alike with new resources, mentors, and connections. The addition of Karen (KK) Krause-Bencal to lead all defense industry and microelectronics partnerships has super-charged the support for fellows working on dual-use technologies—that is, those addressing needs in both defense and commercial applications. Learn more about her in this deep-dive Q&A.

“KK has been a key thought partner in building Activate Boston and integrating Activate into the local ecosystem, and into national microelectronics and defense initiatives,” says Activate Boston’s managing director Aimee Rose. “She also helps fellows connect the dots between climate and defense, demonstrating where clean energy technologies have national security applications and how innovations in microelectronics advance the nation’s clean energy goals.”

Ranulfo (Randy) Allen

Our new executive-in-residence Ranulfo (Randy) Allen is the most recent addition to the Boston roster. He brings a wealth of experience and drive. “I want my career to center around helping science entrepreneurs at the forefront of confronting climate change,” he told us. Learn more here.

We’ve also been encouraged by the warm reception from stalwarts of Boston’s innovation ecosystem, including Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, who told the investment advisory Different: “Our future looks brighter because of [Activate] and [the] community they’ve created.”

From Remote by Necessity to Remote by Choice
Looking beyond Boston, we considered the stresses that the pandemic put on the way in which we have been able to work together over the last ~18 months—but it also showed us how working that way afforded our community genuine opportunities. We realized that some of the ways in which we have worked together from afar could lend themselves to operating an intentional but distributed community of fellows. Our intent is for Activate Anywhere to be additive without requiring a fellow to relocate, provided they can access the physical resources they need where they are.

We know every U.S. region is home to scientists and engineers with a vision for solving big problems—talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. Activate Anywhere will allow us to find, foster, and fund that latent talent so we can empower scientists to bring their groundbreaking research to market as new products and businesses—faster and with more impact.

“As we’ve been assessing different innovation ecosystems around the country, we’ve consistently heard people confirm that, indeed, there is a gap in the systemic support for science entrepreneurs who want to make an impact,” says Lion. “It’s why we’re so passionate about replicating our model and filling that gap. Activate Boston showed us that’s possible, and now Activate Anywhere will help us fill the gap in more parts of the country.”