Cents Check
Founders. First principles. First checks. A Startup Boston production.
Building a startup is a series of hard decisions made with incomplete information. Cents Check goes inside Boston's early-stage ecosystem to unpack how those decisions actually get made — from the first product bet to the first term sheet.
Each episode, host Shriya Jonnalagadda sits down with founders, operators, investors, and researchers to get past the polished narrative and into the real mechanics of company building: how capital gets raised, how risk gets priced, and how ideas become institutions.
From university labs and accelerator cohorts to venture-backed startups, Cents Check covers the full arc of Boston's builder community — because the next great company is already being built somewhere in this city.
Episodes
4 episodes
The Hidden Science Gap Leaving Most of the World Behind with Melissa Wu and Kala Subramanian
What if the biggest barrier to scientific breakthroughs is not talent or ideas, but basic lab equipment? Melissa Wu and Kala Subramanian of Seeding Labs reveal how a Boston nonprofit is redistributing scientific infrastructure to researchers in...
Building Agent Infrastructure in Boston: Jack O’Brien on Subconscious, Startups, and Strategy
Most startups give up after a few tries—Jack O’Brien? He’s built not one, not two, but 6 companies from scratch, and he’s far from done. His latest venture, Subconscious, is redefining AI infrastructure for agents, and spoiler: it’s not your ty...
Marketing Your Mission (Without Losing Your Mind) with Cara Hogan
Most early-stage climate startups overlook the one thing that could unlock inbound leads on day one of fundraising -- without spending a dime. Cara Hogan, a storyteller turned climate tech marketing maestro, reveals how a simple customer video ...
The Messy Reality of Biotech Innovation with Ratnam Srivastava
From Lab Bench to Founding Table: Ratnam Srivastava on Building LabOpsWhat does it actually take to go from medical researcher to founder in one of the most relationship-driven ecosystems in the world?Ratnam Srivastava spen...