John Harthorne

As the Founder and decade-long CEO of MassChallenge, John is obsessed with entrepreneurship and has worked with thousands of startups since 2010. MassChallenge is the most-startup-friendly and largest startup accelerator on the planet, and has graduated nearly 3,000 startups which have cumulatively generated billions of dollars of revenue and have created over 160,000 jobs.

While launching and running MassChallenge, John generated a vast network of new and established founders, corporate partners, investors, and innovation talent. Furthermore, John gained unrivaled experience working to support startups as an advisor and connector, learning which teams, models, and partners create sustainable success most consistently. John left MassChallenge in 2019 to launch Two Lanterns in 2020.

John holds a BA from Bowdoin College, an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an Honorary Doctorate from Suffolk University, and certificates for Leadership and Innovation from Harvard, Yale and Princeton.