We are hosting our next Founders Diaries event on Monday Feb 10 with Jeremy Allaire of Allaire Corp/Brightcove/Circle fame – we would love to see you there! Register to attend here.
How time flies….
It has been 3 years (!) since we launched the Founders Diaries event series, and we have been enthralled with the response of the Boston start-up community. What started as a single inspirational talk by Robin Chase from Zipcar and a data-heavy blog post from our team has become a much larger tradition, and one we have been fortunate to share with 1,000+ attendees to date.
Accomplished start-up leaders like Michael Simon from LogMeIn, Steve Papa from Endeca, Paul Sagan from Akamai, David Cancel from Drift, and a multitude of others have been extraordinarily generous in sharing their trials, tribulations, and victories on the way to building foundational Boston companies. Those gathered have shared in laughs, heart-wrenching stories (Akamai losing a co-founder to tragedy on 9/11, whose memory inspired the team for years to come), ‘wows’ (LogMeIn’s picture-perfect early growth #s in spite of early rejection from investors), and tales of culture reigning supreme (Datto’s Austin McChord wins the award for most creative in-office competitions/races). We are deeply appreciative of not only our speakers but those who come to listen, ask questions, and share their own stories over apps and drinks.
Up Next: Good things come in 3’s…
Our next distinguished speaker, Jeremy Allaire, earns the unique commendation of having started 3 (3!!) successful start-ups, displaying a relentless determination to build products, hire teams, and close customers across decades.
Jeremy started his entrepreneurial journey as Co-Founder/CTO of Allaire Corporation, where he led the company’s product and GTM strategy and helped grow the business to 1M customers, $120M+ revenue, and a sale to Macromedia in late 2000. After serving as CTO of Macromedia, he then moved into online video distribution as Founder/CEO of Brightcove (from inception through the IPO), building a $130M+ revenue company that today powers video on ~25% of the top 10k websites worldwide and receives 250M+ unique visits per month. In his latest act (we won’t dare call it final at this point!), Jeremy co-founded and serves as CEO of Circle, a crypto finance company that makes it possible for people everywhere to create and share value in a way that is affordable, open and empowering.
From web application servers to online video to crypto, Jeremy has identified and harnessed trends in a way that few can.
Empowering the next generation….
When first examining the data on ‘large exits’ ($400M+) in Boston from the past 25 years, what stood out most is how certain companies serve as fertile ground for successive entrepreneurial endeavors, similar to the ‘Paypal mafia’. The initial assessment (including valuable crowdsourced additions) highlighted Akamai (40+ alumni start-ups), Genzyme (28), and Hubspot (28) as launchpoints for entrepreneurial leaders. Jeremy’s companies similarly stand out. Allaire Corp, Brightcove, and Circle have collectively produced 33 alumni start-ups from their employee ranks (counting founders/early start-up CEOs).
A few fun facts about these alumni adventures (listed here – contributions welcome!):
-8 multiple-time entrepreneurs on the list
-6 alumni companies had 2 or more co-founders from the Allaire Corp/Brightcove/Circle mafia (‘no new friends’, as they say)
-JJ Allaire (Jeremy’s brother) co-founded Allaire Corp and has founded three subsequent companies: Onfolio, FitNow, and R-Studio
-Notable outcomes include EqualLogic ($1.4B to Dell; co-founded by Paula Long) and Imprivata (IPO then $544M sale to Thoma Bravo; Patrick Morley led as early President/CEO); both are Allaire Corp alums (Paula in engineering, Patrick on the business side)
-The group also includes a few high-potential, high-growth companies including Mux ($32M raised from YC, Accel), RStudio (millions of users, the default IDE for R, recently became a public benefit corp), Vested (an early-stage company re-imagining employee stock options), and Hummingbird (taking a new approach to RegTech, an area near/dear close to our heart)
-David Orfao served as President/CEO of Allaire Corp through its sale to Macromedia before co-founding General Catalyst, a leading VC firm; General Catalyst has funded at least 7 of the Allaire-related alumni start-ups (here’s to paying it forward!)
Alumni Start-ups: Notable Exits
Alumni Start-ups to Watch
Despite all the entrepreneurial activity and success to date, we are sure to see even more in the future from those in the ‘Allaire’ mafia (we are watching you, Circle alumni, for great things)!
We hope you’ll join us on Monday February 10th to hear Jeremy’s wisdom, and maybe even cross paths with an alumni founder! Please sign up here to attend – see you there and at future gatherings!
– Team F-Prime
Kudos to Nisha Rangarajan for key research and analysis in support of this post.
Sources: LinkedIn, Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and VentureFizz.