Founders’ Diaries
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An intimate forum showcasing the untold stories behind Boston’s most successful companies.
At F-Prime, we believe that listening to iconic founders tell their origin stories is a privilege. The tribal knowledge they share is a gift. So we started the Founders’ Diaries, an intimate forum to which we invite entrepreneurs to hear the personal stories behind some of Boston’s most successful companies
Looking back, looking forward
Legendary entrepreneurs including Robin Chase of Zipcar, Jeff Glass of m-Qube, Mark McWeeny of Rue La La, Michael Simon of LogMeIn and Paul Sagan of Akamai have participated, sharing their stories with Boston’s up-and-coming leaders in a closed-door environment. We look forward to continuing to bring inspiring stories to current and future generations of Boston entrepreneurs.
Jeremy Allaire, Founder of Circle
Join F-Prime for Founders Diaries, a forum for Boston entrepreneurs to hear the personal stories from founders of the most iconic companies in the region. For our winter event, we are excited to feature Jeremy Allaire.
Jeremy Allaire is a technologist and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and 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. Jeremy has more than two decades of experience building and leading global internet software platforms and online service companies. Before founding Circle, Jeremy founded and served as CEO of Brightcove, an online service aimed at disrupting the traditional video distribution industry. From inception to IPO, he built the $130M+ in-revenue company which todays powers video operations on nearly 25% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide and receives 250M+ unique visits per month. Prior to Brightcove, Jeremy was a technologist and entrepreneur-in-residence at General Catalyst, a Cambridge-based venture firm focused on early-stage software and consumer internet investments. Jeremy also co-founded and served as CTO of Allaire Corporation, where he led the company’s product and GTM strategy. During his tenure, the company grew to serve over 1M customers around the world and generated $120M in revenue. Allaire Corp was sold to Macromedia in late 2000, where Jeremy continued to serve as CTO. Prior to his involvement in the Internet industry, Jeremy was a student of international political economy.
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Austin McChord, Founder of Datto
Join F-Prime for Founders Diaries, a forum for Boston entrepreneurs to hear the personal stories from founders of the most iconic companies in the region. For our winter event, we are excited to feature Jeremy Allaire.
Jeremy Allaire is a technologist and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and 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. Jeremy has more than two decades of experience building and leading global internet software platforms and online service companies. Before founding Circle, Jeremy founded and served as CEO of Brightcove, an online service aimed at disrupting the traditional video distribution industry. From inception to IPO, he built the $130M+ in-revenue company which todays powers video operations on nearly 25% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide and receives 250M+ unique visits per month. Prior to Brightcove, Jeremy was a technologist and entrepreneur-in-residence at General Catalyst, a Cambridge-based venture firm focused on early-stage software and consumer internet investments. Jeremy also co-founded and served as CTO of Allaire Corporation, where he led the company’s product and GTM strategy. During his tenure, the company grew to serve over 1M customers around the world and generated $120M in revenue. Allaire Corp was sold to Macromedia in late 2000, where Jeremy continued to serve as CTO. Prior to his involvement in the Internet industry, Jeremy was a student of international political economy.
David Cancel, Founder of Drift
David Cancel is a serial entrepreneur, podcast host (Seeking Wisdom) and angel investor/advisor. He is best known for creating hypergrowth products and product teams at companies such as Drift, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery and Compete. David has been featured by media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Fast Company, and has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Harvard, Harvard Business School, MIT, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Bentley, and other universities. His popular blog davidcancel.com has been read by 1M+ entrepreneurs, and his Twitter account @dcancel has 135k followers and is considered a “must-follow” account for entrepreneurs, executives and product people.
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Steve Papa, Founder of Endeca
We are privileged to welcome Steve Papa, founder and CEO of Endeca on November 1st at CIC Cambridge. With Endeca, Steve completely reimagined the database ultimately leading to Oracle acquiring the company for a reported $1 billion. Steve has held key roles in redefining technology companies over the last 20 years, and has continued to be a significant contributor to the tech community as an entrepreneur, investor and advisor, including being the founder/CEO of Parallel Wireless and Chairman of Toast. We’re thrilled to bring his story to Founders Diaries.
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Paul Sagan, former CEO of Akamai
Paul Sagan is a director of Akamai Technologies, which he joined as chief operating officer and employee #15 in 1998, and served as CEO for nine years until 2013. Paul also is a director of two other public companies, EMC and VMware. Previously, Paul served as a director of iRobot, and earlier at Dow Jones & Company, Digitas and Maven Networks before they were acquired.
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Michael Simon, Co-Founder of LogMeIn
Michael Simon served as LogMeIn’s Chairman and CEO from its founding into 2003 until 2015. He currently serves as Chairman of the board of directors of the company. He grew the company from a single access product line used by thousands of users to a leading provider of essential cloud services used daily by millions people across the globe. After co-founding the company with Marton Anka in 2003, he took LogMeIn public in 2009 – the first of two VC-backed IPOs in Massachusetts and one of eight nationally during the year.
Michael serves on the board of HubSpot, the Graduate Studies Advisory Council at the University of Notre Dame, and the Board of Trustees of The Carroll School.
Prior to LogMeIn, Simon founded Uproar Inc., a publicly-traded provider of online game shows and interactive games, acquired by Vivendi Universal Games, Inc. in March 2001. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, an M.B.A. from Washington University St. Louis, and a soft spot for athletic teams that sport an Irish motif.
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Mark McWeeny, Co-Founder & CEO of Rue La La
Mark McWeeny is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Rue La La, a leader in the digital private sale space with a membership base of over 15 million.
Mark joined the company in 2003 and was a founding member of the Rue La La management team. At Rue La La, he served as the CFO, CMO, as well as the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development prior to his appointment to CEO. Before joining Rue La La, Mark was General Manager of Corporate Development for uBid.com. He has also held positions at the Princeton Review and Mercer Management Consulting. Mark received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management with concentrations in Marketing and Finance, and his BA in Political Science from Northwestern University. Mark also advises startups and sits on the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) – a non-profit trade association for the digital marketing, e-commerce and Internet business community.
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