In San Francisco, there’s a nice big space right on the water where startups can go to enjoy a place to work, Dog Patch Labs. Polaris Venture Partners refers to it as their “frat house for geeks,” as it’s a place for entrepreneurs to come and work/hang out while enjoying free space, connectivity, coffee and food. Now Polaris is taking that idea east, closer to their homebase, with Dog Patch Labs Cambridge.
The new lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts will be located at 222 3rd Street in Kendall Square. And it won’t be meant solely for technology startups, Polaris is welcoming startups from all sectors. The idea is the same as the San Francisco wing that was opened in 2008, to help out really early stage startups, that may not be quite ready to look for investments to help out their projects just yet.
And just as with Dog Patch SF, the entrepreneurs using the Cambridge space will be under no obligation to Polaris if and when they decide they’re big enough to move on from the lab and perhaps take some funding. Of course, Polaris has people at the labs helps these companies along, and that gives them some good insights into what they’re working on, letting them know early on if there’s a good investment opportunity there. In San Francisco, the recently hired Ryan Spoon is working closely with startups at the Dog Patch Labs.
One recent success story to launch from Dog Patch SF is Thing Labs, the makers of Brizzly, the hot, new web-based Twitter client. After starting out in the Dog Patch Labs, they got some seed backing from Polaris to strike out on their own.
