Episode 327: Reed Sturtevant - General Partner, Engine Ventures

Episode #327 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures. This is exciting! Why? Because this episode is longer than my normal interviews, as Reed and I cover his career that spans multiple decades across major technological platform shifts. This means that based on his career, he has so many great stories to share. It is like a historical walkthrough of the Boston tech scene. We even had to do two sessions, so if you are watching this video from our YouTube channel then you’ll notice the different sweaters that Reed is wearing. Today, Reed is a General Partner at Engine Ventures, a “tough tech” venture capital firm launched by MIT and trust me on this one, as you’ll want to stay tuned throughout the whole episode! Here is an outline of what we cover: * Reed’s background story, including graduating from high school at 15 years old, his experience as a factory worker and his studies at MIT. * Developing a program called Freelance Graphics at a startup that was acquired by Lotus and his experience there, which was twice the size of Microsoft at the time. * Co-Founding Radnet, which raised the largest venture round of its time in Boston. * Running company development in Boston for IdeaLab, Bill Gross’ internet incubator which spun out companies like Compete, Picasa and others. * Meeting Katie Rae at EONS, a startup founded by Jeff Taylor, and then running Microsoft Startup Labs. * Launching Project 11 Ventures with Katie and then running Techstar Boston together which included many successful companies like GrabCAD, PillPack, and others. * Founder conflict and how it can destroy a startup. * The details of Engine Ventures and what Reed is targeting for investments, plus portfolio company examples. * What it was like leading a course at MIT with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. * And so much more.