UPDATE: We've since published Part 2 of the Where Inc. Mafia.
If you trace the phrase “tech mafia” back to its roots, you get PayPal, and its relentlessly innovative team of entrepreneurs and investors.
But we want to focus our sights on a local subset of the digital payment giant, the PayPal Media Network. Before 2011, this branch of PayPal’s business was a Boston startup and went by Where Inc., and, to dig even further back, uLocate Communications.
The company was founded in 2005 by a trio of entrepreneurs – Geoffrey Palmer, Frank Schroth and Alan Phillips – to provide location tracking to GPS-enabled cell phones. In 2007, the startup relaunched to offer location-aware smartphone widgets, a pivot that proved fruitful. The company started turning a profit, strategically weaving in user memberships with e-commerce fees and adding a location-based advertising network. In spring 2011, Where sold to eBay-owned PayPal for $135 million.
Founded in 2005, Where Inc. sold to PayPal in 2011 for $135 million.
At the time of the deal, Where had raised nearly $20 million in funding from Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital and others. More than 120,000 retailers, brands and small merchants were using Where's network daily to drive customers to their doorsteps. The startup had grown from 30 employees a year earlier to 120 and had been profitable for the preceding six quarters. It had picked up two startups in the location space along the way: Newburyport, Mass.-based deal site LocalGinger and MIT-spun social network Zync.
After the acquisition, some people from the company’s crew departed to found their own startups. Others stuck around the PayPal Media Network in management and leadership positions. A handful took to angel investing and venture capital. Regardless of current pursuits, however, each member of the Where team has leveraged the knowledge gained and connections made for the net betterment of Boston’s innovation community.
This will be the first of two posts tracing the connections of Where's team post-acquisition. Check back Monday for more on the company's innovative legacy.
The Major Player
Chang was part of the executive team at the time of PayPal’s acquisition of Where, where he served as vice president of product. He’s a veteran of Newton-born TripAdvisor, co-founder of Mobicious, a consumer mobile app developer that was acquired by Exclaim Mobility in 2010, and former director at m-Qube, a mobile content startup that was scooped up by VeriSign in 2006. When Where was acquired by PayPal, Chang moved up the ranks to COO of the then-newly named PayPal Media Network.
Chang is also a co-founder of the PayPal StartTank, a free Boston-based incubator for the next wave of entrepreneurs that’s now helping its third cohort of companies. (StartTank now plans to start operations in London and Chennai, India, as well.) Chang is also a Techstars and MassChallenge mentor and angel investor, mostly focused on local deals. Crashlytics (acquired by Twitter in 2013) and at least two Start Tank alumni, Manicube and Careport Health, make up part of his portfolio, as does clypd, a programmatic TV ad startup founded by fellow Where alums. You can read more on StartTank and other Where alums' angel investments, below.
The Spinoffs
Clypd
Cambridge programmatic television and video ad exchange startup clypd was founded by a pair of Where executives and PayPal Media Network alums Joshua Summers (photo, right) and Doug Hurd in 2013. Summers was brought onto Where’s team as the vice president of ad operations in the wake of Where acquiring peer recommendations social network company Zync, which he helped found, in 2008. After the Where-PayPal deal, Summers took on the role of head of ad product and operations for about a year and a half before breaking ground on clypd with the help of Hurd. Hurd worked as Where’s senior director of business development and later as director of business development at PayPal Media Network. The sales specialist is also an angel investor, and counts bike sharing startup Zagster in his portfolio.
Clypd raised $3.2 million in Series A in March 2013 from Scott Savitz of Data Point Capital and Ryan Moore of Atlas Venture. Summers' and Hurd’s old boss and then-general manager of PayPal Media Network, Walt Doyle, and Nanigans CEO Ric Cavillo also contributed to the round.
Where Angel Fund
In December 2013, Where Inc. veterans pooled their money into an angel fund through which to make investments into early-stage startups in adtech, ecommerce, mobile, consumer tech and digital media. Aptly named the Where Angel Fund, it aims to dole out between 10 and 12 investments a year, each around $50,000 to $75,000.
Among the former Where team members participating are: David Chang, Craig Forman, Dan Gilmartin, Niall Hawkins, Doug Hurd, Arik Keller, Paul Barnhill, Jing-ta Chow, Ron Braunfeld, Markus Wuersch, Max Metral and Sarah Hodkinson.
A number of other local tech leaders are also currently in on, or have invested through, the fund, including: Crashlytics chairman Wayne Chang, TrustLayers chief executive Adam Towvim, Gazelle CMO Sarah Welch and TripAdvisor’s SmarterTravel general manager David Krauter and senior vice president of global product Adam Medros. (Chang worked at TripAdvisor alongside Krauter, Medros and Welch.)
The fund is operated using equity crowdfunding startup Launch Angels, which is a PayPal Start Tank company and was founded by Chang’s wife, Shereen Shermak.
PayPal’s Start Tank
In 2012, Chang and former Where team member Karen Landy launched the Start Tank out of PayPal’s Downtown Boston offices to pay it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs. The Start Tank is an ecosystem-builder. Burgeoning teams get free work space, along with a network of contacts, from top clients to investors, to help grow their business. Experienced leaders and mentors (over half of which are formerly of Where) are also present to provide wisdom, guidance and collaborate with teams. With PayPal Media Company’s connections, expertise and community, the Start Tank makes the tech and venture capital world more manageably small for green startups. The incubator is now of its third wave of companies, with the admissions process becoming increasingly selective.
But the Start Tank’s influence extends beyond Boston’s innovation sector. Nine of the incubator’s most recent class participated in a Brand-a-Thon, an event held alongside The Ad Club to bring together Boston’s startup scene and advertising industry, with the ultimate goal of giving young, cash-strapped startups free professional branding advice.
The One to Watch
Placester
This Boston Techstars 2009 grad and real estate tech startup has quite a few ex-Where employees. In April 2013, Placester closed on a seed round of $2.5 million. The financing came from Romulus Capital, Apricot Capital, Angel Street Capital and a slew of other individual investors … including Where alum and clypd Co-founder Joshua Summers. Soon thereafter, Placester picked up two Where and PayPal Media Network alums and data architects – Michael Mastroianni and Masumi Nakamura (photo, left) – as principal engineer and vice president of engineering, respectively.
A year later, the Cambridge company announced that it had closed another chunk of funding, worth $5.5 million, and had doubled its staff to 34. Another pair of former Where employees – Laurie Anderson Jakubiak and Alexandra Moran – were soon on board, working as the director of user experience and a user interaction designer, respectively.
Images via LinkedIn, Start Tank, Twitter
Writer's Note: A previous version of this article suggested that Placester had the most ex-Where employees. With the exception of PayPal Media Network, clypd employs the most Where alums in Boston, David Chang told us. Wayne Chang's role has also been corrected to Chairman of Crashlytics. Ron Braunfeld, Markus Wuersch and Max Metral have been added to the list of former Where team members participating in the Where Angel Fund.
For more on Where's mafia, check out Part 2 here.
