Editor's Note: This story has been updated with more information about Jim Crowley and Jennifer Lum's new startup.
Startups can sometimes go for years without revealing their plans to the public. This is what we call "stealth mode," in which a company keeps most details about itself secret.
There can be good reasons for doing this, as a 2013 article in Entrepreneur magazine highlights. This includes protecting intellectual property and giving startups enough time to hammer out their strategy before they expend too much time on branding. After all, it does take a lot of time and resources for a startup to start marketing itself.
While some startups stay completely quiet before revealing their products, others will talk about their product in more broad terms or discuss milestones such as new funding rounds (Desktop Metal comes to mind for both of these).
We have rounded up five Boston-area startups in stealth mode you should be paying attention to, mostly because of the founders' previous credentials and the capital they are raising. The founders hail from HubSpot, Skyhook Wireless, Adelphic Mobile, Carbonite and iRobot, among other companies. While they have mostly been quiet about what they're working on, we've been able to, in some cases, dig up details on the products they're developing and how much money they have raised.
Here are five stealthy Boston-area startups that should be on your radar:
Forge.AI
Jim Crowley, who stepped down as CEO of Skyhook Wireless last year, is out raising capital with his former colleague Jennifer Lum, co-founder of Adelphic Mobile, for a new artificial intelligence startup, a source familiar with the matter told me. Another source told us that the company is called Forge.AI, which has a website outlining its vision for "fueling intelligence machines" and listing five job openings.
While Crowley has previously talked about his new startup in broad terms previously in a podcast with G20 Ventures, it was not known what Lum's next step would be after she stepped down as Adelphic's chief strategy officer following its sale to Time Inc. Crowley and Lum previously worked together at m-Qube, a mobile marketing startup that was acquired by VeriSign in 2006.
In the podcast with G20 Ventures, Crowley said he was building software that would help businesses process unstructured data — like things said on television or written in a news story, which Crowley gave as examples — so that it can be used for machine learning and analytical purposes.
Lum and Crowley did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
BlueArchive
This is the new cloud storage startup from Carbonite co-founders David Friend and Jeff Flowers, who have so far raised about $8.5 million in capital, according to two Form D filings from the past year. But don't get used to the name: the company's bare-bones website says it's officially launching on May 1 with a new name. The website also promises that it will "forever change the cloud storage landscape." Another line teases us to "stay tuned we mark the beginning of the commoditization of cloud storage."
Friend has been tight-lipped about the company so far, but we'll be learning a lot more soon.
Owl Labs
This video conferencing tech startup from two iRobot veterans has already lined up some big-name investors, including Android co-founder Andy Rubin. The company, which was co-founded by Max Makeev and Mark Schnittman, has raised $5 million so far, according to a Form D filing from last year. Its investors are Matrix Partners, iRobot Ventures and Rubin's hardware-focused VC firm, Playground Global, according to a job listing also from last year.
Makeev's LinkedIn profile says Owl Labs aims to "transform the video conferencing experience by making it natural," adding that "remote participants can finally feel like they've physically joined the meeting from anywhere in the world using Owl," the startup's video conferencing software. While Owl Labs' website currently provides little information, a previous version of the website list product features such as 360-degree vision and a dynamic microphone system.
Owl Labs and Antonio Rodriguez, general partner at Matrix Partners, have not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Phil Beauregard and Matt Grace's New Startup
After co-founding two startups that were both acquired in 2015, Phil Beauregard and Matt Grace appear to be working on their next software startup together, and it has already attracted interest from VC firms, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Beyond that, not much is known about what they're exactly working on.
Beauregard and Grace previously co-founded Objective Logistics, a maker of restaurant management software that was acqui-hired by the Boston cybersecurity company now known as Carbon Black. They also co-founded a startup called Rekindle that was acquired by HubSpot in 2015. Before moving onto the new startup, Grace served as HubSpot's director of engineering and Beauregard has been angel investing and advising startups, as well as helping run the annual Unpitch event.
The two have said they aren't ready to share more details yet.
Data Plus Math
This is a startup from the co-founders of Integral Reach, which won a $50,000 prize from MassChallenge in 2012 and was sold to Rovi, the media tech company now known as TiVo, nearly a year later. The co-founders, John Hoctor and Matthew Emans, have raised nearly $3 million for Data Plus Math, according to a Form D filing from last year. According to a filing with the state of Massachusetts, the company is "developing and providing media measurement and metrics services."
Hoctor has so far declined to comment on specifics about the company.
Know of a startup you think should be on this list? Let me know at dylan@americaninno.com/boston.
