Room for improvement | VC winter | How a foundation kept restaurants afloat

Welcome to the BBJ's LinkedIn Weekly Edition! I'm Digital Editor?Jess Aloe , bringing you the top business stories from this week.

Room for improvement

Massachusetts has reeled in a few big corporate fish lately. the LEGO Group is moving its North American headquarters to Boston. A spinoff of the conglomerate Danaher Corporation , projected to bring in over $4 billion in revenue, decided in February to set up shop in Waltham.

But there have also been a few that got away. The Somerville battery maker Form Energy , for instance, is building its first-ever manufacturing plant in West Virginia, where it expects to employ at least 750 people.

You win some, you lose some? Business leaders believe otherwise.

It is time to sharpen the state’s economic development tools, they say, given the changes brought by Covid-19, especially hybrid work.

Get the details from Greg Ryan here.

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Here's what else you need to know:

Layoffs and more layoffs

The first quarter of 2023 saw a run of tech and biotech companies making layoffs. Lucia Maffei rounded up the tech companies that made job cuts here , while Rowan Walrath rounded up the biotechs here.?

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The weather is warming up, but the VC winter continues.?

Boston venture capitalists who focus on the tech sector say they expect the slowdown of later-stage deals to last through the end of this year — yet they maintain high hopes for the launch and initial fundraises of startups and early-stage companies. Find out what they’re saying here.

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Citizens, other banks grew faster after Dodd-Frank cap lifted

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has brought attention back to the 2018 rollback of some of the most stringent Dodd-Frank regulations. This week, Meera Raman took a look at how banks like Citizens and Santander grew after the cap was lifted.?

How a local foundation kept the restaurant industry afloat

The Greg Hill Foundation stepped in to help restaurants when Covid-19 forced a radical shift in the industry. Backed largely by a donation from Grubhub, the nonprofit's revenue jumped 87.5% from 2019 to 2020, from $1.2 million to $9.6 million, according to federal tax filings. The foundation gave back about 75% of that revenue to restaurants nationwide during the height of pandemic — $2.2 million of that revenue went to more than 300 Boston-area restaurants, and several recipients say it helped keep them afloat. Find out more.?

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Join the Boston Business Journal as we continue the conversation on Race Equity & Business, this time focusing on building diversity in real estate in Boston communities. The event will feature a panel discussion with Symone Crawford from the Massachusetts Affordable Homeownership Alliance , Soni Gupta from Neighborhoods and Housing at The Boston Foundation , Chrystal Kornegay from MassHousing , and Moddie Turay from Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation (MHIC) . Register now.?

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