MassChallenge Reviews

Thanks so much for your review: we really appreciate that you took time to share your honest feedback and to highlight some of your concerns about working at MassChallenge. It’s clear from your note that we can do a few things more consistently. This includes communicating to the team why certain staffing, resources and partnerships decisions are made, discussing how those decisions impact individual staffers, and working closely with those individuals to determine the best path forward. We take this feedback to heart and I believe some recent actions we are taking will help. For example, our functional and organizational leaders, including our Executives, are sending bi-weekly emails to share information and promote cross-team and cross-program collaboration. In addition we've instituted regular employee surveys and interactive sessions to actively seek input on the employee experience here. Recently our Boston team had an offsite to discuss their results from an employee survey and our COO attended their last all hands meeting to hear concerns and answer questions. I agree with you that our staff has a ton of freedom to take on new and different projects to grow their skill sets, and many opportunities to connect with stakeholders within our ecosystem who can open up doors beyond MassChallenge. These opportunities for “career acceleration,” in my opinion, are what set us apart as a great place to work. If you’re comfortable with sharing more information about your experience or suggestions for what we can do better, I would love to hear more. Please email me at jocelyn@masschallenge.org so we can connect.

Thank you for your review. It was difficult to read through some of your comments and they certainly don’t paint a picture of MassChallenge at its best. While we may see some things differently, we take your feedback seriously and agree we have some work to do keep MassChallenge a great place to work. I’m not sure we can address all your points in our response but here is what we hope you’ll consider in looking back at your time at MassChallenge. MassChallenge was founded with a singular purpose – to make it as easy as possible for entrepreneurs to launch and grow new ventures. We believe the only way for MassChallenge to continue to attract, inspire, and create growth for entrepreneurs, their startups and the broader community that surrounds us is by being scrappy, operating under a sense of urgency, and constantly striving to improve. We are a team that gives 110% every day and individuals who perform well often take on new projects and responsibilities. Much of this is echoed by your list of pros: lots of autonomy in role, our mission as a primary driver for people to join the organization, our passionate team that works really hard, and having room to grow if you’re willing to work for it and seek it out. In addition, it can be really challenging to work this way. We do have limited resources and there can be some messiness at times. Team members do step into bigger roles with more responsibility, we experience growing pains like many organizations, and as a high achiever-type culture, we are often moving on to the next thing without properly celebrating our accomplishments. Last year we invested heavily in financial and operational discipline, dedicating time and resources and hiring staff to increase our organizational effectiveness. We made a lot of progress in 2017 and that has continued in 2018. This year we are focused heavily on people – which includes strengthening the skills of our people managers, adding new employee benefits like life and disability insurance and a student loan paydown plan, and helping all our employees find opportunities to grow and develop. We are also building a strong foundation of people practices to make sure we are maintaining a supportive and inclusive environment and we are structuring our teams and roles in the best way. We know working for MassChallenge is not for everyone. It takes a deep commitment and willingness to go above and beyond every day. As an organization we are committed to supporting our staff and ensuring they are building the skills they need to be their best at MassChallenge. We haven’t perfected this yet but we’re working hard at it. I’m happy to connect directly with you if you have specific ideas for us. (jocelyn@masschallenge.org)