At BostInno, we're debuting a monthly editorial series called Startup Updates. In the second half of every month, look for a call for updates in our daily newsletter, The Beat (subscribe here). We will ask you to let us know what's going on at the company, recent appointments or accomplishments, or a simple snapshot of the business. The top updates will be included in a monthly post — like this one.
As many other media jobs, the life of a startup reporter is never boring. Any day brings a new story to cover, from local ventures getting ready to pitch in national startup competitions to under-the-radar startups emerging from stealth with million-worth funding rounds. In a city like Boston, where everybody is working on something new, innovation never sleeps.
In this fast-paced environment, it's sometimes hard to stop and think about what just happened, because the focus is always on what will happen next. Even so, looking back to almost two years of startup reporting in Boston inevitably brings questions: What happened to those two founders I interviewed one year ago? Are they still in business?
Sometimes, early-stage startups shut down. Every now and then, they take off and gain recognition outside Massachusetts. In-between these extreme cases, there's a variety of silent happenings that sometimes get overlooked.
With the spirit to keep readers in the loop, I reached out to a group of startups I haven't heard from in a while. A few of them shared their updates; overall, they're in good shape, although a couple are not based in Boston anymore.
Here's what I found out:
Darkroom.Tech
Born out of Boston College, Darkroom.Tech - one of BostInno's student startups to watch in 2018 - is an online marketplace where photographers can upload and showcase their work through galleries, set the price for each printed piece, and get in touch with potential customers. The company is still up and running, but not in Boston. "We unfortunately moved out of Boston last June to Los Angeles to be closer to our creators and have an office in Santa Monica now," co-founder and CEO Theo Chapman, a graduate of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, wrote in an email. Darkroom, which now has around 6,000 creators on its platform, also launched a paid membership called Darkroom+, and recently partnered with portfolio-site builder Format to bring printing solutions to the personal website of their photographers.
Noken
The HBS-born travel startup co-founded by Emily Brockway and Marc Escapa in January 2017 is traveling at full speed. Noken, an online booking platform for planned vacations outside the U.S., moved to a new online address (www.hellonoken.com) and raised more than $3 million, including the latest $2.5 million round led by Bessemer Venture Partners that closed last fall. "We have three countries now: Iceland, Portugal and Japan," Brockway wrote in an email. "We will release new countries in the next two weeks, including Italy and Australia, with Peru and Ireland coming shortly thereafter." After its first year in Boston, the company is now based in Manhattan.
Joro
Joro, a Harvard-born mobile app that helps users track their carbon emissions linked to travel, purchases and daily lifestyle, recently launched #OurAccord, a pledge that allows people to align themselves with the Paris Goals for 2019 with just a few clicks. The site gives people an option to lower their own footprint by committing to specific actions or to create carbon credits by participating in a group purchase of offsets, for themselves or as a gift for a friend. Guess which Oscar-winning director took the pledge launched by the Cambridge-based startup? Damien Chazelle, best known for Whiplash, La La Land and First Man. "He’s a friend of a friend so he heard about it and took it," Sanchali Pal, CEO and co-founder of Joro, wrote in an email. As Joro pointed out, if every American were to reduce their carbon emissions by just 12 percent, we would reach the U.S. goals set forward the Paris Climate Accord. Here’s how to take the pledge, plus the leaderboard (Chazelle is doing great!).
