
Founders Network‘s Boston Chapter was launched in September of 2020 to support select tech founders across New England with a personalized and authentic peer mentorship community. Member benefits include local Boston mentorship programs, a global mentoring platform and a proactive member success team that facilitates support from over 600+ tech startup founders, investors and partners.

Sepehr Kiani has spent more than 25 years building and scaling companies across life sciences, biotech, and advanced technologies, generating valuations exceeding 250 million dollars. He founded Fluent BioSciences in 2018 and led it through development and commercialization of a breakthrough single-cell genomics platform before its acquisition by Illumina in 2024. Earlier in his career, he held key roles at Teradyne, Helicos BioSciences, and GnuBIO, where he was part of the founding team and later VP and General Manager after acquisition by Bio-Rad. He is now the CEO of Vivid BioInnovations, founded in 2025, and serves as a Venture Partner at VC23 Partners and a Strategic Advisor to emerging companies in Boston and San Francisco. Sepehr holds more than 50 patents across genomics, microfluidics, fiber optics, molecular biology, and semiconductor automation. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his B.S. from Cal Poly.

Boston is the #5 startup ecosystem in the world, per Startup Genome, with an ecosystem value of $273 billion for H2 2023 to 2025, up 83% on the prior period.
In 2025, startups across Massachusetts raised $16.7 billion in venture capital, a 12% increase year on year. Startup Genome points to life sciences backed by Harvard, MIT and Tufts research, AI and big data, and fintech as the region's core sectors.
Founders Network is a peer mentorship community for tech startup founders. Membership is selective and by invitation, and founders can request an invitation.
Members get mentorship from other founders, chapter events, and introductions to investors and founders across a global network. The Boston chapter is run by volunteer member leaders, who are listed on this page.



Membership is by nomination and approval. Request an invitation and we'll review your background. If it's a fit, we arrange a nomination and invite you to the Nominee Preview Q&A, a 30-minute Zoom where current members walk through how Founders Network works and take questions. The next one is Thursday, November 19 at 9:30 AM PT.
Request an invitationAlready nominated? RSVP to the Nominee Preview.
Guests welcome. Your first event is on us with a one-time guest pass.
Chapter events are open to guests by invitation. The Boston chapter has met in person once in the last year, so most of what members here do happens in the weekly online program, and local events pick up as the chapter grows. Request an invitation and we'll send you the next local date. Your first event is on us with a one-time guest pass. Upcoming dates in every city are on the events page.
Listen to our podcast. It features the network's most successful members telling the story of how they built and sold their companies. Most members are somewhere along that journey, from first-time founder to serial founder, and the episodes show the kind of founder they are learning from.
Global. Founders Network started in San Francisco in 2011 and now has city chapters and sector groups around the world, with the largest concentration of members in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Most of the program is online and runs every week: facilitated peer roundtables, live expert sessions, moderated founder forums, and 1-1 introductions to members in any city. Members meet in person at the annual conferences, fnIRL and fnSummit. The Boston chapter adds local meetings on top of that, and they are a small part of the whole. The full program is on the mentoring tracks page.
Founders of tech startups at every point on the journey, from a first company getting to market to serial founders who have exited. Each is nominated and approved, and what we select for is alignment with the network's values and vision rather than stage or sector. Members join to find customers, raise their first rounds, hire co-founders and early teams, and work through the hard parts of running a company with peers who have done it.
Founders Network can make you a more competent and better-connected fundraiser. It can't guarantee funding. The Scale plan is built for founders getting to market and raising seed: 1-on-1 pitch mentoring from VCs, a curated investor directory with warm opt-in introductions, and a pass to fnIRL, the annual San Francisco conference. On every plan you can ask the forums and get introduced to members who have raised at your stage. Plan details are on the membership page. Pricing is shared on approval.
Membership is by nomination and approval. Request an invitation and we'll review your background. If it's a fit, we arrange a nomination and invite you to an info call with current members. All memberships are annual, and we never take equity.
Founders Network is an invite-only peer mentorship community for tech startup founders. Drop your email — we'll take it from there.
No spam. We review every request individually.