The context of Endeca at the time, as we’ve highlighted, was the tug of war between being a platform company vs. a vertical application company. In order to raise capital in 2001 to get the company off the ground, they had to pitch a platform and didn’t necessarily have the persuasive arguments for why they should be a vertical application company instead.
Good people that work well together is a fundamental necessity in startups. Finding ways for them to grow to keep them together long enough to find success is even more important! One way to do that is to ask unreasonable things of them. The Special Operations group was another place where Endeca could bring in talented folks they didn’t necessarily have a place for yet and keep them busy before reorganizations or strategic repositionings as the company grew.
Large markets matter. Being bold matters even more. Timing, of course, matters too. The biggest lesson, according to Steve Papa, was a “failure of imagination”. With the right imagination, timing & strategy Endeca could have potentially built an e-commerce business that rivaled the scale of Shopify. But they didn’t see it. And different things are possible at different points in time (and cycles). Maintaining focus through market cycles is also such an important way to learn and build. They built the Endeca platform with eBay as their scale target in terms of product variety, scale of users, throughput, SKUs, etc. A “pile of all the stuff in the world” and a completely unreasonable ask.
In 2011, Oracle acquired Boston based Endeca for $1.075B. The acquisition ended an 11 year journey spanning the Dot-com bubble, 9/11, the Great Financial Crisis, 3 Super Bowl wins, 2 World Series titles, 1 NBA Championship, 1 Stanley Cup and the punishing drumbeat of technological progress.
Dan McCarthy has been building bridges since undergrad, only the context of what kind of bridges and how they are built has changed. A consultant turned Product leader, Dan serves as the Senior Director of Product at Kard, a remote fintech startup.
Swapt is “software that helps increase brand awareness and help you track return on investment of your in-person campaigns and activations”. Founded in 2022 by former Klaviyo engineer Andrew Smith & Co-Founder Trevor Brown, Swapt is on a mission to help customers make sense of their offline data and make e-commerce into, well, commerce. They’re backed by Klaviyo founders Andrew Bialecki & Ed Hallen with additional seed capital from Asymmetric Partners & Perkins Cove Partners.
Michele Choi is on a journey to find balance at the intersection of professional impact and personal fulfillment, doing the hard work to grow through each experience. As the Head of Business Development & Marketing at Medley, she’s helping this NYC-based group coaching startup develop mid-career leaders through growth opportunities, pivots, and more. She knows a thing or two about growth & pivots.
Elucid offers software to aid in“cardiovascular disease diagnosis and prevention.” Founded in 2013 (commercially) by Andrew Buckler, they’re shining light on a better way to treat and prevent cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in pretty much every developed country and leads to 17M deaths worldwide. Every year.
Just outside of Philadelphia born and raised, Jon Coombs spent most of his days on tennis courts competing and grinding out multi set matches, probing opponents’ weaknesses and biding his time before smashing winners. Today, as a Group Product Manager at Flexcar, Jon owns their Risk Product to build an inclusive customer experience and minimize risk costs for this rapidly growing startup.
Herald is “the easiest API for commercial insurance”. Founded in 2021 by Matthew Antoszyk & Duncan Crystal, these Co-Founders began their startup journey built on the infrastructure of a 20 year friendship. They met as kids at summer camp, a slightly more blissful environment than the crucible of early stage startups. If you want to know what someone’s really like there’s no better way than roasting marshmallows together. Oh and by the way CTO Jacob Barnett went to the same camp too! Maybe someone should turn this camp into an accelerator.. Anyway, back to Herald.
