If you've been in the startup world long enough, you've probably heard of people throwing around the word "mafia" as a way to describe startups that have been founded by alumni of a certain company. Like the HubSpot Mafia. Or PayPal Mafia.
According to new research by Boston venture capitalist David Jegen, one Boston tech company that has produced many startups through former employees is Akamai. How many? Thirty-nine, which puts Akamai above other Massachusetts counterparts with successful exits, including RSA (29), Genzyme (28) and HubSpot (25).
Other startup-producing companies on the list include Endeca (10), TripAdvisor (10), Wayfair (10), Kayak (9), Vertica (4) and Trusteer (4). If those last two companies sound unfamiliar to you, Vertica was an analytics database management software company that got acquired by HP in 2011 and Trusteer was a cybersecurity startup acquired by IBM in 2013.
Jegen, a partner at F-Prime Capital, the venture arm of Fidelity Investments, said his list of alumni startups from successful Boston exits isn't comprehensive and that he'll post about more companies, including Rue La La and LogMeIn, in the future. If you think he's missing any good ones, make sure to send him (or us) a note.
Update: Jegen has created a Google spreadsheet of the list to crowdsource new contributions.
Another caveat to Jegen's list is that a few of the startups only had early employees, not founders, who were previously at one of the bigger companies. I noticed the irregularity when I saw Cohealo and Cybereason on the list. Cohealo's connection to Akamai is through an early employee who was previously at Akamai. Cybereason's connection to HubSpot is through Mike Volpe, who was appointed CMO of the cybersecurity startup last year.
Jegen acknowledged the few exceptions on the list, saying that means that only 34 out of the 39 startups listed for Akamai actually had founders from Akamai. (It would also bring Kayak's number down to seven.) Regardless, Jegen's research still does a good job of quantifying the impact older tech companies have on new ventures popping up in Boston.
"Our philosophy was that an early, senior employee so greatly shapes the business that we would rather over-include than under-include," Jegen said of the other startups on the list.
Here are a few startups founded by former employees of Akamai, HubSpot and Endeca:
Akamai
InsightSquared: Bryan Stevenson, co-founder and former CTO at InsightSquared, was previously a senior software engineer at Akamai. He is now CIO at Catalant.
LevelUp: Harald Prokop, LevelUp's CTO who joined in 2012, was previously senior vice president and chief architect at Akamai.
Muse Paintbar: Ray Weaver, co-founder and chairman at Muse Paintbar, was previously director of product marketing at Akamai.
HubSpot
Bedrock Data: Jon Marcus III, founder and chief evangelist at Bedrock Data, was previously an outbound sales manager at HubSpot.
Dockwa: John Nagro and Matthew Fradette, Dockwa co-founders, were previously at HubSpot as director of engineering and senior sales manager, respectively.
Tettra: Nelson Joyce and Andy Cook, co-founders at Tettra, were previously at HubSpot as product managers.
Endeca
Salsify: Salsify co-founders Rob Gonzalez, Jason Purcell and Jeremy Redburn were previously at Endeca as senior product manager, general manager of Endeca's ebusiness and director of product management, respectively.
Shoobx: Jason Furtado, CEO and co-founder at Shoobx, was previously a product manager at Endeca. Matt Rowe, the company's general counsel, was previously corporate counsel for Endeca.
Toast: Toast co-founders Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm were previously at Endeca as manager of development, product manager and solution engineer, respectively.
