Startup Week Worcester is upon us, an inaugural event designed to cast light on the Central Massachusetts entrepreneurial ecosystem. The event is the brainchild of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and Auxilium Worcester, the innovation hub launched earlier this year by Beverly businessman Cliff Rucker, who owns the Worcester Railers Hockey Club, among other local ventures.
The multi-day event highlighting Worcester incubators and successful companies is a logical outgrowth of the effort to turn the region into a viable startup hub. The Auxilium may be the latest high-profile effort to attract and support entrepreneurs in Central Massachusetts, but momentum has been building for some time. Life sciences incubator Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives was founded in the city 41 years ago and has spun out nearly 200 startup companies, creating more than 1,800 jobs. The Venture Forum has been serving the entrepreneur community for decades; originally embedded within Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the organization continues to produce its strong programming and services. Other incubators and coworking spaces like WorcLab, Venture X Marlborough, Venture X Worcester, EforAll, the Wachusett Business Incubator, and Technocopia have been founded over the past decade to offer would-be entrepreneurs advice, as well as a place to build their network and grow.
This all comes as startup activity is growing in the region at a faster pace than the state as a whole. Last year, 2,904 new businesses incorporated in Central Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth. That’s actually down 1.5% since 2023, but it’s still the second highest number of new business starts since 2017 when WBJ started tracking incorporation data. And the slight slowdown in new businesses is still better than the statewide total, which saw a 2% drop last year.
Despite a few ups and downs, new business growth has been on a steady climb since 2000. Of course, those new businesses run the gamut from tech startups to restaurants to real estate holding companies and nonprofits, but the overall rise in incorporations is a sign of overall increased economic activity here.
One of the encouraging signs of late is the growth of local financing. While Greater Boston’s innovation economy is burgeoning with investors, it’s been a difficult sell to get those same firms engaged in Central Mass. The Auxilium will be a full-package accelerator where applicants can receive up to $250,000 to help grow their new enterprise. Over at MBI, Conifer Life Sciences, led by wife-and-husband team Jean Qiu and Peter Li, have opened an office to invest in area startups. Qiu is the founder of Nexcelom Bioscience, a Lawrence-based company developing products to count and analyze cells in scientific research. After selling her company for $260 million in 2021, Qiu and Li are reinvesting with their fellow life science entrepreneurs and have already funded three MBI startups.
Greater Worcester won’t ever be mentioned in the same breath as global innovation hubs like Silicon Valley or Boston-Cambridge, but the entrepreneurial ecosystem being built here holds great promise. With the startup environment becoming more organized with better resources, Central Massachusetts is looking like a very good place to start a business.
This editorial is the opinion of the WBJ Editorial Board.
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