Collective Future 2025: Driving Massachusetts Forward
Massachusetts is known as an R&D capital, but if we’re honest, we’re much better at R than D. Research thrives in our labs and libraries, but development, the act of turning ideas into reality, requires collaboration that spans grad students and governors.
That’s exactly why we created Collective Future.
Ideas and research papers don’t cure diseases or delight customers. Development does. That’s the work of entrepreneurs, and, more broadly, of a community willing to roll up its sleeves together.
Two weeks ago, we convened 200 of the most interesting builders in Boston: CEOs of century-old companies and founders making their first hire. Reporters, roboticists, and restaurateurs. Philanthropists, physicists, and policy makers. University presidents and unclassifiable free thinkers. Each came with a different language and tools, but a shared belief that Massachusetts can still be a laboratory for revolutionary progress if we build connective tissue and learn to communicate better between our silos.
As a venture capitalist, I know progress rarely looks like a straight line. It’s usually a messy network of people who connect dots that don’t seem related ….. until they change everything.
That’s why we designed Collective Future as an “unconference”, in the footsteps of Tim O’Reilly’s Foo Camp. No keynotes. No panels. Just forty conversations proposed by the attendees themselves, including:
- The Future of Facts in a Fractured World – From the Frontlines
- The $11 Trillion Question: What Happens When AI Eats the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder?
- Who Wins the Future? AI, Security, and the Battle for Democracy
- What Startup Would You Build if Electricity Were Free?
- Charting the Next Era of Healthcare in America
- Community in a Time of Isolation: Building Social Infrastructure for Enduring Bonds
The result feels more like a scaled-up dinner party than a TED Talk, a place where an AI researcher might debate a zoning reformer, or a James Beard chef might swap ideas with a biotech CEO. Conversations happen under FrieNDA, so I can’t share many specifics, but that’s by design. Authentic connection, not social signaling, is the goal.
Collective Future reflects a simple belief: that Boston’s next century of breakthroughs will depend less on any single idea and more on our ability to communicate and develop them together. Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call in Massachusetts. Ray Tomlinson sent the first email from Cambridge. We hope the conversations at Collective Future will accelerate the next technology that changes the world.
We have grand ambitions for 2026. Stay tuned for more.
Many thanks again to our partners on this event: Collective Future wouldn’t be possible without underwriting from Fidelity Investments, HSBC, Gunderson Dettmer, Akamai Technologies, and our team at Founder Collective.
