“We’re not just advocates for the startups in the space,” Knight says. “We’re advocates for tough tech as a whole. We think it’s important for the State of Massachusetts to create a tough tech hub here, and we think it’s important for national competitiveness.”
Tough tech gets a home
Speaking of tough, construction crews began the extensive building renovations for the Accelerator at the end of 2019, a few months before the Covid-19 pandemic. The team managed to avoid the worst of the supply chain disruptions, but quickly learned the building has its quirks. Each floor is a different ceiling height, and massive pillars known as mushroom columns punctuate each floor.
“At one point, one of our team members came to me with her tail between her legs and sheepishly said, ‘I gave our office space to a startup,’” Knight says. “I said, ‘Yes! That means you get it! We don’t need an office—we can sit anywhere.’”
From the moment The Engine opened its doors to startups in its original headquarters on Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, the services team got a firsthand look at the unique challenges faced by tough tech startups. After speaking with founders, they realized their converted office space would need more power, stronger floors, and full lab accommodations.
The goal is to give young companies that merge science and engineering all the resources they need to move ideas from the lab bench to their own mass manufacturing lines.
A week after the Accelerator opened its doors in August 2022, on a single sweltering day, 35 companies moved in. By 2023, the Accelerator was home to 55 companies. Since then, the Accelerator’s team has done everything it could to continue to grow.
“We needed to have all these robust services for everyone in tough tech, not just the portfolio companies,” Rae says. “We’ll always work together and produce the Tough Tech Summit together because of our overarching missions. It’s very much like a rising tide that lifts all boats. All of these companies are working to change the world in their own verticals, so we’re just focusing on the impact they’re trying to have and making that the story.”
Engine Ventures CEO Katie Rae sees it as a symbiotic partnership.
The Engine was spun out of MIT in 2016 as a public benefit corporation with the mission of bridging the gap between discovery and commercialization. Since its inception, it has featured an investment component, now known as Engine Ventures, and a shared services component.
Rae says MIT has helped both of The Engine’s teams think through the best way to support tough tech startups.
But supporting ambitious founders in their quest to build world-changing companies was always going to require a bigger boat. As early as 2017, MIT’s leaders were considering turning the old Polaroid building, which sat empty next to MIT’s campus for nearly 20 years, into the new home for tough tech.
“The infrastructure has always been a really important accelerant for getting these kinds of companies off and running,” Engine Accelerator president Emily Knight says. “Now you can start a company and, on Day One, start building. Real estate is such a big factor. Our thought was, let’s make this investment in the infrastructure for the founders. It’s an agile lease that enables them to be very flexible as they grow.”
Only about one-fifth of the companies in the Accelerator space are portfolio companies of Engine Ventures. The two entities operate separately, but they pool their shared learning about supporting tough tech, and Engine Ventures has an office in the Accelerator’s space.
“I think of the Accelerator as a really great Airbnb host rather than a landlord, where maybe you rented a bedroom in a large house but you feel like you rented the whole thing because you have access to all kinds of amazing equipment,” says Bernardo Cervantes, co-founder of Concerto Biosciences, which is developing microbes for a variety of uses in human health and agriculture.
It doesn’t take long during a tour of The Engine Accelerator to realize this isn’t your typical co-working space. Companies here are working at the extremes to develop new technologies with world-changing impact—what The Engine Accelerator’s leaders call “tough tech.”
Based on conversations with founders, The Engine’s Accelerator team outfitted the renovated building with office and co-working space, a full machine shop, labs for biology and chemistry, an array of 3D printers, bike storage, and, perhaps most important, cold brew on tap.