Lola co-founder Paul English is "like a python," says the company's newly-appointed CEO, Mike Volpe.
BostInno reported on Monday that Mike Volpe, Cybereason’s chief marketing officer, is leaving the cybersecurity firm to take a CEO role at a Boston-based startup. Later the same day, word got out that the mysterious company is Lola, the travel startup led by Paul English.
Volpe will officially start his tenure on Aug. 1, while English will remain co-founder and step into a CTO role.
Volpe and English have known each other for three years. Volpe was one of the earliest employees at inbound marketing company HubSpot, where he was fired in connection with a controversial book about Hubspot's culture; he become CMO at Cybereason in June 2016. English, who co-founded travel engine Kayak in 2004, has invested in over 40 companies.
As angels, the two high-profile executives invested in Boston-based recruiting software company Drafted and customer service startup GetHuman (co-founded by English). They share a similar investment philosophy, English said, which privileges the team over the product.
In a conference call, Volpe and English chatted about how they made the decision to step into a new role, English's "python-like" recruiting tactic, the critical conversation they had at Lolita bar in Fort Point (while eating fish tacos) and their plans for Lola.
Paul, why did you choose Mike as CEO?
English: I have been looking for a COO with marketing chops and Mike has often been described as the best marketer in Boston, one of the best B2B marketers in the country. Originally, when I reconnected with Mike, I was thinking about 'Could I talk he into coming and joining us as COO?' [...]. We had a long dinner together and I, basically, just loved his energy: I loved how he talks about people, about his current team at Cybereason, about his past teams. I just thought it would be really fun for me, personally, to bring Mike onboard as CEO, and have us grow the culture together.
Do you remember the moment you made the offer? Can you describe Mike's reaction?
English: We were at "Lolita" in Fort Point Channel. When I made an offer, he was taken aback. I think his first thing was, he's not looking for jobs, because he's very happy at Cybereason [...]. But I think Mike wanted to keep talking, because he was intrigued. I think we both saw that the partnership would work well with the two of us.
Volpe: I think we'd each finished our first fish taco. For any other job, I was super-happy where I was, but having known Paul for a while, and just knowing that it is really a unique opportunity to work with somebody who is a perfect complement to my skill set was very intriguing and something that, in the end, I felt I couldn't turn down.
Mike, your side of the story. Can you describe the look on Paul's face when he made the offer?
Volpe: Paul is, I think, one of the world's best recruiters. When he decides he wants somebody, he's like a python, except he has other people that [...] help squeeze you and pull you into the company. After having breakfast with Paul, he very quickly reached out to a bunch of people involved with Lola that I also know: a couple of board members, an advisor. All these people started texting, emailing me, and wanted to have coffee with me. I could just feel the python's grip getting a little bit tighter. By the time he was making an offer, it was more like the final step for him.
Mike, taking the reins of Lola is your first time as CEO. What skills as a marketer are you taking into this new role?
Volpe: One of the things that makes this first-time CEO opportunity really attractive is that it's a situation where the founder is a technical founder, with a ton of product experience [...]. Most of the first-time CEO jobs come in a situation where, if you've not founded the company, there's animosity between the board and the founder, maybe somebody has been pushed aside. This a really unique opportunity that's completely the opposite, and not the case at all; so, in many ways, it's actually the perfect first-time CEO opportunity.
Paul, you’re shifting now to a CTO role. You were CTO and co-founder of KAYAK for ten years. What did you learn as a CEO that you can use coming back to your old role?
English: Lola is my fifth company and I've gone back and forth between CEO and CTO for each of my companies. This was my third time being a CEO at Lola. There are certain things that I like about the CEO job and there are certain things that I'm terrible at. I like storytelling, trying to figure out what is the story that resonates with people (especially with employees, but also with customers, with investors, with the press). I love hiring, recruiting, fundraising. The things I'm terrible at as CEO is that I'm not really a numbers guy.
Paul, what is going to happen to the current CTO of Lola, Dennis Doughty?
English: Dennis and I have been friends and colleagues for decades. We first worked together at Interleaf, in Cambridge, in 1994. Dennis's title is senior vice president, engineering. He's instrumental in doing the things in engineering that I'm not good at either.
Currently, Lola has no CMO. Mike, will you also be CMO at Lola?
Volpe: No, we're going to build out a full marketing team, a full sales team. The worst thing I could do would be trying to run marketing and being CEO at the same time.
English: We're 50 people in total as a company; we probably need ten to 15 people in sales and marketing, so I'm guessing we'll hire eight to ten people over the next two to three months.
Paul, what do you think Mike can teach you?
English: Certainly, the craft of marketing, both on the creative side and on the quantitative side. Mike is an excellent communicator, he's known for that. At Hubspot, he's the guy who figured out how to communicate something that, on a surface, is a little bit complicated product. I'm looking forward to him taking our product, which I would say is simpler than Hubspot's, and trying to help us figure out how to get the message out there.
Mike, what do you think Paul can teach you?
Volpe: I love Paul's creativity and big-picture thinking. He has some phenomenal ideas about how to merge different technologies and turn problematic customer experiences into something that's far more delightful.
What are your day-to-day plans about working together?
English: In the last couple of weeks, Mike and I have been on email 24/7. It's not unusual for me to get an email late at night. In this modern day, it'll include a lot of face-to-face. We pretty much run the company on Slack at this point, so I would imagine that Mike and my partnership will involve all three of those things.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
