Kendall Square: Still the place to be for start-ups

I'd frequent the Kendall area when I lived in Boston 3.5 years ago. The thing that bugged me most about it was the lack of street-level places to sit down and work. There was one Starbucks and nothing else, besides semi-fast food restaurants which aren't good laptop environments.<p>Beautiful new high-rises were going up everywhere. There's a neat "secret" park on top of one of the buildings (Cambridge Center Roof Garden). Extremely easy to cycle around, and by far the best pedestrian-friendly traffic controls in the entire state.<p>However, unless you worked in one of the office buildings, or could enter MIT legally, there were few places for "outsiders" to wonder in, hang out, and hack. Is this still the case, or has it since become more welcoming to laptop nomads?

Still the place to be in Boston/Cambridge for start-ups, certainly, but it is hardly "the" place compared to San Francisco and the valley. The lack of funding, even compared to New York, has been a real problem for the ecosystem. Why did Facebook, Dropbox, and many others start in Cambridge and leave?

Also published today in the Boston Globe: "Time to leave the Kendall Square nest" by P. Shah, CEO at Mobee <a href="http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendall-square-nest/1YPAE991bK40HMvKwFfX0K/story.html" rel="nofollow">http://bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/time-leave-kendal...</a>

I work in Kendall. I'm consistently impressed with the number of interesting companies doing interesting things. It is getting really developed (nice office buildings, nice luxury apartments, bars, restaurants) really fast- though it's still weirdly sterile. Nowhere to buy beer or even groceries outside of 7-eleven.<p>Just today I was at my gym (Bosse on third street) and overheard a guy complaining that he could rent a better apartment in Manhattan than in Kendall right now. The rent for the Watermark tower (corner of Third and Broadway) is around $3200 for a two-bedroom!!

Yeah, Kendall Square.<p>What sold me on the Cambridge Innovation Center was the unlimited supply of FREE organic coffee, tea, peanut butter, butter butter, soy milk, milk milk, cereal, jams, etc. ;-)<p>Couple of guys were actually living there, crashing on couches in one of the upper floors, and then later, given das boot -- not sure if they were start-up co-founders or what, they certainly leaned on CiC 24/7 for around $250/month, cheapest rent in town.

The article hit the key word: density.<p>The unique thing about Kendall Square is the sheer density of geeks in general and startups in particular. Other places have higher absolute numbers, but not in such a concentrated space.<p>Plus, from a tech worker's perspective it's fantastic to have so many potential employers all in one place. You don't have to disrupt your lifestyle to change jobs, which gives you some extra clout as an employee.

&#62;"Kendall Square institutions like Aceituna Cafe and Voltage Coffee"<p>These aren't really institutions so much as they are a restaurant and an overcutesy coffee shop that are only a couple years old each. Voltage opened in 2010, and it's some of the most overhyped espresso I've ever had. I think Acetuna might be a couple of years older, and it's a decent Lebanese lunch, priced for the pharma clientele ($20/plate).

As someone who lives in Kendall Square and studies at MIT, I would say that, in spite of the amount of brains, Cambridge and the whole Boston area are a terrible place to live, with few opportunities for recreation and a horrible weather...

I want a Kendall Square in Delhi, India as well. Entrepreneurs are scattered all over, India is such a big country, yet here we are.<p>In Delhi, we have the IIT, but the Community Center just across it, is a place to get high on wrong skies. If only the VCs living in Delhi, would rather come out of the swanky embassies and foreign centers :/