Find Out Everything There Is To Know About Your Hood With Boston Startup BlockAvenue

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Whether you’re a local history buff, looking to move somewhere new or just want to know what’s up with your block there’s a startup incubating at DogPatch Labs in Boston for you. That startup is called BlockAvenue and it’s going to be your one stop shop for anything and everything about your neighborhood.

BlockAvenue uses a number of ways to find out everything about your block. The startup utilizes geodata, local trends, local happenings and plain old crowd sourced information from your neighbors. This is valuable information for other neighbors, people thinking about visiting, and people thinking about moving to the neighborhood. Sure all of this information can be found on the net, but there’s not one single site that serves it up all together, and quite in the way BlockAvenue will.

We’re sure that BlockAvenue is going to be epic why? Because DogPatch Labs, a Polaris Ventures backed incubator, is also where great startups like Instagram and Apptopia grew up. In fact, BlockAvenue’s founder, serial entrepreneur Tony Longo wrote a blog post about what it’s like to incubate at the dogpatch check that out here.

Dogpatch just oozes startups. The building the Boston Dogpatch is in is One Cambridge Center which also happens to be the address for TechStars Boston. Not including the 13 startups in the current fall class at TechStars the building itself is home to over 50 startups, and is also the Microsoft office for the Cambridge area.

As for BlockAvenue, this is going to be an amazing resource for anyone that wants information on their neighborhood. More and more people are starting to have more civic pride on a hyperlocal level than ever before. They’re taking to other blogs, and social networks to share the kind of information you’ll find at BlockAvenue. Once there’s one place for all that information it will continue to grow as more people get engaged with the service.

We were able to break the BlockAvenue team away from the whiteboards, conference rooms, coding and ping-pong for a short little interview. Check it out below.



What is BlockAvenue?
BlockAvenue lets you discover neighborhoods like never before. Our company is an online guide that helps people understand neighborhoods, local trends and new happenings by combining geodata and informed opinions from neighbors who know the area best. BlockAvenue is an easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great – in your ‘hood.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
The company was founded by Tony Longo, a 3x entrepreneur, from Boston, MA. Tony is a graduate of Syracuse University’s renowned School of Information Science. He has worked at Sun Microsystems, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase prior to starting his first startup in 2005, CondoDomain, a web-based real estate brokerage operating in 16 cities.  While running CondoDomain, Tony also founded a SaaS based marketing platform called First Page Network and has since sold both businesses. Coming from a computer science background, Tony has spent the last 10 years working in various real estate and banking roles and plans to leverage that experience in rolling out his newest startup: BlockAvenue.
Where are you based?
BlockAvenue is one of the few very fortunate companies to be based out of Dogpatch Labs, just off the MIT campus in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. There’s a great post on Dogpatch here.
What is the startup culture like where you are based?
The startup culture is very “west coast style” here at Dogpatch. Spanning the entire floor, and without a single wall separating anyone, is one massive “think tank” filled with the most talented entrepreneurs and software developers around. From usability labs to ping pong tables, the office is very much work hard play hard, and a great environment for developing new products and bringing ideas to life.
What problem does BlockAvenue solve?
BlockAvenue solves the problem of finding the perfect place to visit or live, so you don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. Think Yelp for streets, but rather than giving reviews on restaurants and what to eat (or better yet not to eat), we tell you where to visit or move to, as well as which areas to stay away from. By aggregating hundreds of millions of data points, including things like transit information, crime data and crowd-sourcing reviews, the user is able to get a crystal clear picture of what it’s really like to visit that part of town BEFORE they go.
What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process? 
Recruiting technology talent. Even though we’re based in this huge city and surrounded by great colleges – our office is about 10 feet from MIT’s campus – it has been incredibly challenging to find the kind of talent we need, especially in the engineering department. Being a Dogpatch resident helps a lot with the process, but to say there’s a massive shortage of available engineers to hire is an understatement.
Who are your mentors and role models?
Good questions. My mentors are by far my foundation for this company and life in general. First and foremost I couldn’t get any of this done without my lovely wife, Courtney, and my Mom, Patti. That’s really where everything starts. We have also been so lucky to land some very strong industry folks to help mentor this business into the market, including: Stephen Kliegerman, President of Halstead Developments, Peter Leahy our finance mentor, Michael Luca, Harvard Business School professor who is assisting us with online behavioral studies on e-commerce review, and 2 early Facebook employees Steve King and Pj Solomon.
For my role model, I’d have to say Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin Corporation.  I competed against  Glenn when I was running CondoDomain and the more homework I did on my biggest competitor the more respect I gained for him as a leader and an individual.  Glenn is a proven go getter and is a very talented businessman.
What’s one thing the world doesn’t know about you or your startup?
Well, because we haven’t launched yet the world doesn’t know too much about us. But to give you some information ahead of time, we are passionate about making cities a better place to live and we believe that by providing this platform we will be able to help communities, and the people who run these communities, by bringing a sort of transparency to help expose both the positives and negatives of each neighborhood.
What’s next for your startup?
Launch and getting into the market, which is what we’ll be working on in the next upcoming weeks.
Linkage:

Sign up for early access to BlockAvenue here

Check out DogPatch Labs here

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