For the 195th episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Siobhan Dullea, CEO at MassChallenge.
Siobhan was part of the early team at Communispace, now known as C Space, which was a big win for the Boston tech scene. The company scaled aggressively and was acquired by Omnicom in 2011. Siobhan joined MassChallenge in 2016 as its Chief Operating Officer and was promoted to CEO last year.
MassChallenge is a global, zero-equity accelerator that was established in 2009, shortly after the financial meltdown. Needless to say, the economy was in a very tough spot and the outlook was bleak for startups. It took two visionaries - John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam - with a bold belief that they could create an accelerator that would award $1M to startups. There were definitely skeptics out there, including myself, but they pulled it off and the impact has been extraordinary.
MassChallenge has over 2,400 alumni startups that have raised over $6.2B in funding and have gone on to generate over $3B in revenue and create over 157,000 jobs!
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- Siobhan's background and how she got involved with Communispace.
- The full lifecycle story behind the growth of Communispace to its acquisition and beyond.
- A deep dive into the history of MassChallenge and how the program operates.
- Advice for founders when applying to MassChallenge and how they decide which companies to accept.
- And so much more.
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.