Lucy: Startup Institute has named its new CEO, and it turns out he's been hiding in plain sight for months.
Dylan: The startup boot camp announced on Wednesday that longtime employee Rich DiTieri is taking over the role that was previously held by Diane Hessan, who stepped down last summer to work on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The company also announced five other additions to its leadership team that have been made in the last four months.
Startup Institute has been through a whirlwind of changes over the past two years. Besides losing Hessan, other employees in leadership roles have stepped down. The company also pulled out of Chicago and Europe, leaving Startup Institute with only two locations, Boston and New York, and a newfound focus on profitability over growth.
DiTieri, who was previously director of Startup Institute's Boston program, told me he started as CEO at the beginning of the year. In the past few months, he said he's had his head down to focus on making new changes — including the addition of a new part-time program to boost corporate innovation training — as well as building the company's new leadership team.
When it was founded in 2012, Startup Institute was designed as a full-time curriculum of classes that would enroll people who were dissatisfied with their corporate jobs and re-train for a career in the startup world. Over time, the boot camp found that large companies actually had a need for employees with a startup mindset, so Startup Institute not only had startups as hiring partners but large companies, too, like John Hancock.
DiTieri said Startup Institute is now going to lean heavier into employee training for larger companies. He said larger companies have been interested in sending their employees to take classes, but they weren't quite willing to let them go on a sabbatical, per se, for the full-time program. That's one of the main reasons Startup Institute has started its new part-time program, which currently has employees from Bose and Gillette enrolled.
Lucy: Joining DiTieri on the leadership team are Peggy Yu as COO, David Yourgrau as VP of business development, Jaime Goldstein as VP of curriculum, Elizabeth Ames as Boston’s managing director and Justin Miller as VP of marketing. Previously, Yu was interim director at Harvard Business School's Rock Center for Entrepreneurship; Yourgrau held roles at Offerpop and LevelUp; Goldstein was program director at the MIT Communication Lab; Ames was a consultant for social enterprises; and Miller, formerly of Barton Associates, has helped launch Tech in Motion and InnoNorth. Read more: Startup Institute's New CEO Plans Bigger Push into Corporate Innovation Training
Lucy: We're trying to verify the news that Microsoft has acquired Hexadite, a Boston-based provider of security automation software, for $100M. An Israeli business news website broke the story earlier today, which is not unexpected since the company's research and development department is in Tel-Aviv. Founded in 2014, Hexadite produces AI-powered software to investigate online threats, rate the seriousness of alerts and provide an automated response. A Microsoft spokesperson just let us know that the company has "nothing to share at this time" regarding the alleged acquisition. Read more: Microsoft Reported to Buy Boston Cybesecurity Startup Hexadite
Dylan: More acquisition news today. LifeSite, a provider of digital vault solutions based in Mountain View, announced today that it has closed a purchase agreement with Boston-based Mustbin. The mobile app company was founded in 2012 by Brian Shin, the founder and former CEO of Visible Measures. Visible Measures sold to AcuityAds for $10M earlier this year.
Dylan: Three big personnel news items today:
No. 1: Two of Ventureapp's founding members, Boris Revsin and Caitlin Bolnick, have left, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Revsin, who previously co-founded Dailybreak, had been serving as president. Bolnick had been part of Ventureapp's founding team as a product manager. Her LinkedIn profile says she is now a summer associate at VC firm Accomplice.
Katie Sullivan, Ventureapp's director of communications, confirmed Revsin's and Bolnick's departures. She said Revsin left about a month ago, adding "as is the case with most startups, folks move on as a company grows and evolves." Bolnick, on the other hand, is heading to Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business this fall, Sullivan said.
Sullivan added that the company recently hired Katie Muto to work on the product team. Muto was most recently co-founder and CEO of Spots, a real-time search service for businesses that went through MassChallenge.
Ventureapp raised a $4M round led by Accomplice earlier this year as part of its pivot from a marketplace of service providers for small businesses to a messaging app for businesses.
Three of Ventureapp's other founders are Chase Garbarino, Greg Gomer and Kevin McCarthy, who started and ran Streetwise Media, the umbrella company for BostInno and its sister sites that was acquired by American City Business Journals in 2012. (Thanks for creating my job, guys.)
Lucy: Now for the second item: John Valentine has left MassChallenge as senior director of U.S. partnerships to become manager of technology discovery and communications for Thales xPlor. XPlor is the innovation arm of Paris-based Thales, a large employer that works in aerospace, transportation, defense and other sectors. Valentine told us the Boston office has eight employees.
Dylan: The third announcement: TrueMotion, which is developing apps to reduce distracted driving for insurance companies, has hired former Liberty Mutual exec Ted Gramer as its new CEO. Scott Griffith, former Zipcar CEO and chairman co-founders, had been serving as interim CEO.
Lucy: You probably remember that Mark Zuckerberg's dorm at Harvard was Kirkland House, as portrayed in The Social Network. Yesterday, Mr. Facebook visited his old room together with his wife Priscilla Chan, and live-streamed the whole tour on, guess what, Facebook.
Dylan: Lee Hower, co-founder and partner at NextView Ventures, wrote a blog post about how startups should stop saying that they're 'killing it' when they really aren't, and why "wide-spread posturing has very real consequences that founders should consider." The post ends up being a good how-to on what companies can do when they find themselves in a rut: "It seems simple, but the first step is being honest with yourself as a founder, and being honest with your co-founders. Don’t shrug off poor sales or user growth, a dysfunctional team, a wave of bad PR, or other challenges confronting the business. If you’re in denial, it’s impossible to fix what’s broken."
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