MGMT Boston - W12, Q2 25 - Coworking Chronicles, Downtown Pt 2 / Lily Lyman, Underscore & Steve Travaglini, winrate
Summer Coworking Chronicles, Downtown Pt 2 / Lily Lyman, Underscore & Steve Travaglini, winrate on The Lantern
Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help thousands of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups, founders, and local operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
The Coworking Chronicles: Summer Highlight Series with Rho - come share what you’re building this summer! On Episode 2 (Downtown Boston Pt 2) we heard about EnFi, TruLeague, and Answerr.ai on this trip to the neighborhood!
Thank you to Justin Wolz & the Rho team for the partnership
On The Lantern..
Lily Lyman, General Parter at Underscore VC - with 5 new investments YTD and a recent CloudZero mark up, there’s a lot happening at Underscore. Plus Lily shares some timeless lessons from her career!
Steve Travaglini, Co-Founder & CEO at winrate - from BDR to CRO, Steve has seen it all scaling sales teams. Now he’s building a startup to make it easier for the next generations of revenue teams!
Thanks to Caroline McCarthy for the intro
Around the Hub on MGMT Boston’s News Feed:
ZeroRISC closes $10M Seed round for open-source silicon devices
Robotics Tech Week brings hundreds of robotics experts & builders from around the world to Boston
Cybernetix Fund II is now open for the next wave of robotics innovation
Other Resources:
MGMT Boston Operators Club - a community and opportunity engine for 100+ Boston based up & coming venture backed operators
2025 Boston Tech Big Board - 2025 Startup Directory + Startups to Watch
Powered by RevenueBase
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q2 Highlighted Startups: Tines, Civic Roundtable, AceUp, Pentera, TruLeague, Glimpse, Datalign Advisory, H2Ok Innovations
Q2 Highlighted Operators: Subash Rajaseelan / Thinkverse, Nathan Teplow / Salsify
2023 1H Recap / 2023 2H Recap / 2024 1H Recap / 2024 2H Recap
The Summer Coworking Chronicles: Downtown Boston, Part 2
Episode 2 of the Summer Coworking Chronicles: Financial District, Part 2..
EnFi, Inc, TruLeague, and Answerr.AI were some of the startups we heard about on this trip to the neighborhood.
😇 Steve Walsh, Founder at Hands On Angel LLC shares..
Boston is an incubator for a lot of things. From some of the best universities to startups to VC firms, what gets incubated here gets exported to other ecosystems and the rest of the world!
Steve helped create "The Pitch Lift" startup event here in Boston and then brought it to Austin & New York (soon LA), pushing what works to other ecosystems.
What does he love about building in Boston?
It’s the community. We might have a little bit of an edge to us, but we generally care and those relationships go deep! When you need the ecosystem, it’s there for you.
Steve thinks we should watch out for all Techstars companies (as a Techstars mentor)! And he shouts out Lakshya Daga at TruLeague and Mohd Qaiser Malik at Answerr as a couple rising startups to watch!
There’s a lot happening in AI, EdTech, MedTech, and HealthTech Steve is leaning into!
🐦 Nash Gadre, Founder at PollyStack shares…
PollyStack is a form builder app. When you’re talking to a chatbot, and put personal information in, you don’t want that information captured in log files.
PollyStack can help create that form and keep the information secure using agent to agent architecture for data collection. Voice will come later too!
What does he love about building in Boston?
Boston is an amazing ecosystem. Nash has been going to MIT’s Sundai Club where he gets to meet a lot of innovative people who have helped influence PollyStack’s infrastructure.
Boston’s hard weather creates a character in you. You’ve got to stay strong and push through! Which helps build startups!
Startups to watch?
Nash is advising EnFi, Inc in the private lending space and thinks that’s a great rising fintech startup to be on the lookout for!
🧔♂️ 🔢 Rob Hughes, Co-Founder at Koo Capital shares…
Funding your startup is not always easy! The blue collar nature of how startups get started in Boston, proving you have something worth funding before getting capital, leads to better fundamentals and foundations of a business.
A lot of companies prove it before fundraising here and founders have to get creative about how to finance the beginning of their company.
What trends is Rob watching in the years ahead?
Rob used to run the FAM (Founders in AI & Machine Learning) meet up for many years. He is watching the future of AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and CPG & hardware in Boston in the coming years.
Thanks to our guests and the ones to come for sharing their perspectives & insights!
Coworking Chronicles Startup Summer…
MGMT Boston is partnering with Rho, the business banking and spend management platform built for founders and finance teams, to find out what startups are being built around Boston neighborhoods this summer.
Lily Lyman, General Partner at Underscore VC
Welcome Lily Lyman, General Partner at Underscore VC on this episode of 🔥The Lantern 🔥
Underscore is an early stage venture firm based here in Boston, investing at the Pre-Seed & Seed stages (and sometimes even before), in the world of B2B software across a variety of different verticals.
Their coverage includes healthcare, insurance, life sciences, commerce, supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, etc.
The Underscore team are big believers in the Boston ecosystem. Over half of their capital is here and over 1/3 of their capital goes into companies coming out of places like Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, BU, and the academic ecosystem here.
As early stage B2B specialists, Underscore believes in doing the work of company building. They are a community-driven venture firm who believe that getting the right people around the business at the right time makes all the difference.
🔍 What’s going on inside Underscore in 2025? 🔎
The Underscore team has been very active! They’ve done 5 new investments YTD and have had several companies with markups. Portfolio company CloudZero announced their Series C fundraise on the very day Lily & I sat down!
This is the time of the year where folks come out of the academic ecosystems, so They’re launching the Pearce Fellows Program this summer named after Underscore co-founder John Pearce. Select teams from undergrad, grad schools, and research labs across Boston will be spending the summer with the Underscore team.
Underscore is also spending a lot of time looking at the intersection of AI in different verticals (like life sciences) with the continued market disruptions and opportunities this platform shift presents.
🤔 What has Lily learned from her startup career at Facebook & building Underscore? 🤔
👯 Surround Yourself With Exceptional People - It sounds obvious but it makes a huge difference. People make or break companies. Be very thoughtful about who you bring around the table!
🙇 📈 Aptitude and Pace of Learning - How quickly are founders or a team learning and how quickly are they applying what they're learning? Pace of execution, because of what you can achieve with AI, is changing so fast.
In the early stage, we're investing in people and teams. Markets and technology will change. So can you drive the change yourself? Are you building at the cutting age? Being an obsessive learner is so important
🤝 How can we help? 🤝
The Underscore team is always looking to meet exceptional people!
It could be exceptional current founders, future founders, or operators looking to join a new startup. They are always looking to build and support the community here in Boston. No specific agenda needed! The Underscore team wants to continue to be a central hub for talent coming through Boston.
Steve Travaglini, Co-Founder & CEO at winrate
Welcome Steve Travaglini, Co-Founder & CEO at winrate on this episode of 🔥The Lantern 🔥
Winrate is an agentic tool for sellers. Their team is focused on the segmented variety of tools that live on many different tabs and rethinking the seller workflow from top of the funnel (prospecting) all the way through the close and Customer Success handoff.
What would we do if we knew about AI 5 years ago? How would we rethink the sales experience if AI was front & center?
That’s what Steve & his team are building with winrate!
🔍 What’s going on inside winrate in 2025? 🔎
They started 2025 with a 100 user beta for "meeting prep" and built a proof of concept. Steve learned a ton about what sellers really wanted, like how they build prospecting lists, score accounts, think about outreach & sequencing, and the modern approach to cold calls.
In the months since they’ve signed on several additional paying customers, following their direction as they prepare for an end of July / August re-launch of their product where they’ll share more specifics (well beyond meeting prep)!
🤔 What has Steve learned from his startup career building LinkSquares and now winrate? 🤔
Care much more about what works here and now versus what you thought was the right way to do things.
Follow the money, listen to feedback carefully, and be agile & quick to change / adopt new things across GTM and Product.
It’s not just a playbook but a mindset of discovery when you’re in the early stages. Focus on solving your current problems today!
🤝 How can we help? 🤝
Steve would love to hear from other GTM teams that are excited about consolidating many tools, thinking more thoughtfully about an AI empowered workflow that isn’t super complex.
There’s a better way to use AI with your sales team. Take it from a Sales leader that has been an SDR. AE, Manager, Director, VP, and CRO! Reach out!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups, founders, or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt