MC Hammer will tell Harvard why he tweets

Hammertime at Harvard. You run into some pretty powerful thinkers at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, but how many of them have more than a million followers on Twitter?

Multi-platinum-selling rap star MC Hammer will be at the club today for the Gravity Summit on using social media for marketing initiatives. Hammer, star of the A&E reality series “Hammertime,’’ will talk about how he has used technologies like Twitter to “revitalize his brand and his businesses.

Other speakers include Gary Vaynerchuck, the “social media sommelier’’ who runs Wine Library TV, and executives from Dunkin’ Donuts, Southwest Airlines, and EMC Corp.

You can either pay $489 to be there in person, watch it streamed live at www.CNN.com for free, or go to the “Tweetup’’ gathering afterward at the Charles Hotel, starting at 5:30 p.m.

Why Waltham doesn’t matter. We used to think of the placid plateaus of Mount Money in Waltham as the epicenter of our local venture capital industry. The office parks that loom high over the Cambridge Reservoir and Route 128 are home to more than a dozen venture capital firms, including Charles River Ventures, North Bridge, Matrix Partners, and Battery Ventures.

While they have funded many great local companies, I submit that they simply don’t matter anymore, and that the new core of Boston venture capital has moved in closer to the city, toward Copley Square and Harvard Square.

There’s no denying that many Waltham venture capitalists have made a great deal of money for themselves, their limited partners, and local entrepreneurs over the decades. But as a group, they represent the worst of the old-school business culture here:

■If you do not know someone we know, or cannot figure out how to get an introduction to us, we do not want to meet with you.

■We do not want to share with you what investment areas we are interested in.

■If you have not built a successful business before, why should we believe you will succeed your first time out?

By not funding first-time entrepreneurs, by not taking enough risks in new technology areas or with companies focused on consumers, and by not replenishing the entrepreneurial pond here by supporting the development of young entrepreneurs, these Waltham-based dinosaurs are trudging toward extinction.

In contrast, Boston and Cambridge are now full of firms that are helping to support and promote the vibrant new culture of entrepreneurship here.

Flybridge Capital (Back Bay) runs the Stay in MA program, which makes it easy for students to plug into the local innovation economy by attending networking events and conferences.

Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital (Back Bay) blogs and tweets about the technology areas that are most intriguing to him.

David Beisel of Venrock (Cambridge) started Web Innovators Group, now the biggest monthly networking event on the Boston tech scene.

In life sciences, firms like PureTech Ventures and Third Rock Ventures (both in the Back Bay) are taking a fresh, hands-on approach to starting companies, often based on just-proven-in-the-lab research.

The VC firms that feel to me like they will be the most important players are inside Route 128, not outside it.

From the comments:

■Mike Feinstein: I think it’s great to laud the market-development efforts of some of the firms you mention, but I think you are way too harsh. VCs are in business to make money for their limited partners (investors). Although there have been some exits by first-time entrepreneurs, and they should be applauded, there have been way more successful exits by companies that fit the traditional model (experienced executives, targeting an existing business, etc.).

■Howard Anderson: Most venture capital in the Boston area got started [along] the Red Line. Venture capitalists moved to Waltham . . . to be closer to their golf clubs. There is an inverse relationship between the success of a firm and its distance from MIT.

■Bettina Hein: Have you been listening in on my conversations? This really hits a nerve. As a local entrepreneur in Kendall Square (full disclosure: I’m not a first-time entrepreneur, just turned 35, and have taken VC money before), I just dread the drive out to Waltham. Among entrepreneurs in town we joke about the trips to “the Evil Empire’’ and wonder why anyone likes working so far removed from the action. I learn so much from the repeated and rapid interaction with other entrepreneurs and investors in Boston/Cambridge.