MGMT Boston

??? Clockwork is building FP&A software for professionals, by professionals ? ?? It's W7 / Q4 / 2024 & this week in our MGMT Boston startup series we’ve got Clockwork, a startup creating a platform for growing businesses who need access to powerful financial tools but didn’t have the resources or time to invest..until now. Founder & CEO Fady Hawatmeh started his career at Boeing, working on FP&A (financial planning & analysis) and strategy for the aerospace giant. During his tenure he built a library of financial models for family & friends back home in St. Louis. These were entrepreneurs short on time who were running restaurants (like his dad!), small businesses, and consulting firms who needed help with FP&A.? Eventually, he built his own outsourced CFO consulting firm based on the demand of 100s of Excel spreadsheets building models on models for clients. Their bootstrapped business became Clockwork, an FP&A software platform built for growing, resource constrained entrepreneurs because none of the other solutions in the market (now competitors) offered anything close to what was needed for small business owners. Clockwork is democratizing FP&A for the 30M+ small businesses in the U.S. who need better tools to scale their operations so they can spend more time with customers. Their GTM focus is on companies without CFOs as those roles tend to be the last executive role a company hires. The team will be adding conversational AI tools into their platform in 2025 to enable leaders to use prompts to elicit data and analysis with “smart alerts” that will flag certain trends and even use industry benchmarking data to guide actions.?In addition to their AI roadmap items, they will be adding more integration partners. Their vision is to become the Workday for companies “you’ve never heard about”. Peter Zotto, the former Co-Founder & CRO of Profitwell, has joined Clockwork as COO to help fine tune their foundational operations to scale. Having the addition of a COO who has “been there and done that” with a playbook that aligns well with Fady’s vision should help the team accelerate into 2025. Clockwork already has 1000s of users on the platform and doubled their revenue growth each quarter in 2024 without adding headcount, backed by Underscore VC, G20 Ventures, and more. Fady recently moved the company to Boston from Chicago where all new hires will work to build a generational company with the surrounding talent and network to make it happen. We’re glad to have you building here in Boston! Operators to Know: -Matt Cronan, Director of Engineering? -Adam Grant, Sr Software Engineer -Shelby Martinez (Churney), Director of Customer Success & Onboarding? -Manasa Priyamvada Mannava, Sr. Software Engineer -Kyle Saechao, Software Engineer If you're interested in learning more, including the key roles Clockwork is hiring for, the full post is linked in the comments And sign up for the newsletter to see who we bring you in the weeks ahead!

???? Brian Mongeau is a servant, soldier, operator, and leader who’s invested his time (and dollars) into leading teams with a bias to action in a multitude of demanding environments across the globe ???? ?? It's W6 / Q4 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Brian, the VP of Operations at growth stage cybersecurity company Caveonix. After beginning his career in the Army serving our nation as a Green Beret, Brian has successfully made the transition to venture backed startups..with just a few pit stops in between! At Caveonix, Brian is responsible for executing strategic initiatives & handling leadership responsibilities across Sales Operations, Customer Success, Solutions Architecture, and Partnerships. Through honing their product focus and staying committed to serving customers, Caveonix is on pace for triple-figure growth in 2024. Both Brian and his wife are from the Boston area and want to grow their careers & lives here. It’s the tight sense of community, smart people, and even “slight edge” that Boston residents have that’s tough to beat. ??♂? Chaos & Ambiguity = Opportunity ??♂? In the Special Forces, Brian went through a lot of tense situations. Ever the statesman, he likes to say that chaos and ambiguity present opportunities. He’s been trained for it! As he’s transitioned to the startup world, he has learned that many people are worried about change and chaos. But his experiences have taught him that these situations are opportunities to learn and demonstrate your abilities. During his time in the Army, they had a process for navigating rapid change. First, they encouraged their operators to take a tactical pause, look around, and get their bearings. Basically, rapidly figure out your “context & stakeholder mapping” before taking your first step. Then when you do take a few steps, stop and ask yourself “is this working / making sense?” Respond, iterate, and do it again. If you can slow things down in a chaotic environment and develop a deliberate learning cycle through processing your learnings, in military and civilian environments, you can go far! 3 Career Insights / Learnings ?? Maintaining Learning Mentality - “The best people I know, who consistently impress and who I’ve tried to emulate, are the people who put learning front & center every day with a sense of humility” ?? ?? Hone Your Strengths, Lean on Team - “I used to think that not being well rounded was a weakness...I’ve learned that being effective is about honing your strengths and building a well rounded team that can fill in each other’s gaps” ??♂? Have a Bias for Action - “It’s better to have an 80% solution acted upon than waiting for a 100% solution. You can always iterate & improve if at the very least you’re in the game and moving forward. If you wait, you might miss opportunities” Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!

?????? Clasp is a mission-driven, venture-backed fintech startup tackling critical talent shortages by bridging the gap between education and employment ???? ?? It's W6 / Q4 / 2024 & this week in our MGMT Boston startup series we’ve got Clasp, enabling employers to invest in future talent where it matters most -easing overwhelming student debt - creating lasting bonds between employers and employees. In 2018, Founder Tess Michaels was frustrated. As she progressed through her MBA studies at HBS, she had concluded that not only was higher education expensive, the borrowing process was less than consumer friendly, and there were a ton of inequities in terms of access. In June of 2024, 43M+ Americans held federal student loan debt and the collective balance exceeds $1.7T. Student loans are the second largest category of consumer debt behind mortgages. It’s a major asset class! In 2022, with a national network of schools & programs, and over 10,000+ students on its fintech platform, the Clasp team evolved from their ISA roots to realize an even bigger vision: helping turn student loans from a liability into an asset for employers and talented graduates alike. Today, Clasp matches employers with workforce shortages and students with student loan debt to not only recruit student talent earlier, but help pay off their student loans over a specified retention period once they join full time. That’s a win-win. Working principally with CHROs and Finance teams, they are facilitating smoother employee acquisition and retention with the numbers to back it up. Their team has internal data which shows that every $1 invested through Clasp returns up to $3-$4 in savings by replacing signing bonuses and lowering employee turnover costs. Clasp has reached seven figures in ARR and is planning to grow their enterprise footprint as they continue this exciting new direction heading into 2025. The team has grown to almost 50 FTEs, with 30 based in Boston, including their entire eng, product, partner success, finance & marketing orgs. Sales, naturally, spans the coasts. With Tess founding Clasp while at HBS in Boston and David Kafafian & their CTO, Andrew Kenney, based here, it has become a natural HQ for the company’s growth as they’ve added a number of local headcount this year and plan to continue growing in Boston in 2025. Operators to Know: -Rachelle Fecteau, MBA, SHRM-SCP, Director of People -Scott Russian, CFA, VP of Finance -Renèe M., VP of Operations -Karoline Andris, Chief Compliance Officer -Graham Opie, PMP, Director of Operations & Program Management -Morgan Viehman, Director of Brand & Marketing -Harsh Rana, Data Engineering & Analytics Manager -Kevin Toomey, Senior Manager, Product -Carissa Zukowski, Senior Manager, Engineering and Data If you're interested in learning more, including the key roles Clasp is hiring for, the full post is linked in the comments And sign up for the newsletter to see who we bring you in the weeks ahead!

Welcome Andrew Lau, Co-Founder & CEO of Jellyfish on this episode of ?? The Lantern ?? Jellyfish is an engineering management platform, helping engineering & business teams work better together. This growth stage startup helps companies understand their technical investments across product lines, predict when features will finish development, and what part of the SLDC (software development lifecycle) might be slow and why. They even handle software capitalization and tax credit automation. Jellyfish's platform comes down to helping leaders run an engineering organization, better link up with the business, and make teams work together more effectively. ?? What’s going on inside Jellyfish this fall? ?? Andrew and the Jellyfish team are excited about all the GenAI & co-pilot features coming out. AI is here and Jellyfish’s customers are trying to figure out how it’s changing things. Jellyfish’s GitHub co-pilot dashboard helps software teams, in a data driven way, understand how these changes are affecting engineering teams. Certain groups are seeing strong acceleration and others are seeing less. Jellyfish is helping teams understand how this adoption is going to work and where it’s important. ?? What has Andrew learned from building Jellyfish? ?? Default Yes and Treat People Right. ??♂? ??♀? Default Yes - In general, you should participate more. Whether it’s a cool project you see in the office or going to an event, the default should be yes. It doesn’t mean you can do everything! But start with a posture of yes. Go help customers, support the next generation. ?? Treat People Right - It is a small world in technology. That intern of yours will be your investor in 5 years. That person you met in a hallway could hire you down the road. Someone you met at a meetup a few years later could be your co-founder. There’s all this magic that happens when you treat people right and give more chances for serendipity to happen ?? How can we help? ?? Let’s all be a little bit louder, a little bit prouder, a little more team Massachusetts. We have a great environment here. Amazing… companies, technologists, product, and GTM leaders. Sometimes we’re a little too hard on ourselves and need to flex a little bit more. It’s all here! A rising tide lifts all boats! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston and Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan

Sarah Clarkson is a FinTech product leader who has cultivated a rigorous research process throughout her career. It's W4 / Q4 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Sarah, the Staff Innovation Product Manager at FinTech growth company Vestmark, who has?validated her learnings & choices through research along her professional journey. An MIT Sloan glad, Sarah started her career in tech at EverQuote, where she discovered her interest in product development and accepted a return offer for after graduation. From there, Sarah joined Cogo Labs, a Cambridge-based incubator, where she worked on the launch of a FinTech product and led an early-stage team developing a blockchain product. Sarah then transitioned, with a team of colleagues from Cogo, to join Vestmark. Sarah is responsible for launching new products for Vestmark, a well established late stage growth financial technology company. Her team works on incubating new products to diversify Vestmark’s product portfolio and increase market share. ????Research = Door Knocking???? Throughout her career, Sarah has learned that knocking on doors and connecting with different people allows for an informed decision making process for her future. With each ‘coffee chat’ Sarah learned that to make the connection stress-free the key was to focus on the questions she would like to better understand as the target outcome. At every career junction, she spoke with people in the industry about their experiences - doctors before medical school, alums from graduate school programs, and folks at potential companies. Using a consistent format, she tweaked her questions, took notes, and built on each conversation. For research and relationship building, she’s built a diligent process. And if you’re out there thinking about the next step in your career, Sarah is always happy to pay it forward when someone reaches out! 3 Career Insights / Learnings ??♀? Learning Drives Momentum - “Learning is a big driver for me, both personally and professionally. Always staying curious and not being afraid to ask questions to help follow that curiosity has helped career transitions and professional growth.” ?? Team Trust - “I’ve learned to value strong relationships with mutual respect over the course of my career. Whether it’s comfort sharing feedback on ideas, or knowing each member is accountable, a team that has established trust produces amazing results.” ?? Navigating Ambiguity - “Being comfortable in ambiguous situations but also being able to eliminate ambiguity for members of your team is an important balance. You have to balance ambiguity for team agility with creating a shared reality for target execution.” Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!

?? Modulate is using AI to monitor millions of voice interactions for toxicity, building a better, safer online experience ?? It's W4 / Q4 / 2024 & this week in our MGMT Boston startup series we’ve got Modulate, an audio technology platform expanding their use cases to enable better online communities. Modulate’s story begins on the MIT campus. Co-Founder & CTO Carter Huffman stood in a brightly lit hallway facing a whiteboard. He was determined to solve a six line physics equation when suddenly a looming figure came up behind him. It was Mike Pappas, Modulate’s Co-Founder & CEO. Looking down at the whiteboard, Mike said “I think you’re missing a ‘-’ sign on line three”. The equation was solved. Modulate was born. Oh come on! This isn’t the movies! But it was the start of an enduring friendship built on a mathematical foundation. Carter & Mike felt that there would be some important audio applications to be built using new AI research in the same way that visual & natural language research was being commercialized. The video game industry is over $200B globally, $40B+ in the U.S., and there are more than 3B gamers worldwide. Unfortunately, a small fraction of those users (<5%) exhibit toxic behavior. That small minority has a massively outsized impact on the gaming communities. The Modulate team set out to solve this problem, using audio algorithms. Because even a partial solution could have a large scale impact. Taking their machine learning capabilities, they built ToxMod. Over the pandemic the team really found their footing and, soon after hitting $1M in ARR, raised their $30M Series A (Q3 2022). The team has proven out product market fit and grown the team to 35+. Modulate is the industry leader in voice moderation for gaming, available in 18 languages and counting. ToxMod’s pricing model is based on volume of content processed, today working with some of the biggest names in the industry like Call of Duty (Activision) and Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar Games). Modulate is gearing up for a big 2025 and has moderated over 160 million hours of voice data to date. They’ve helped customers take 80 million + moderator actions against harassment and toxicity to date. That’s real action! Operators to Know (Locally): -Pranil Bhavsar, Senior Cloud Engineer -Corin Buchanan-Howland, Director of Engineering -Sandrine Chavy, Director of People Ops -Terry Chen, Chief Operating Officer? -Nathan Crafts, VP of Sales -Miranda D., Senior BizOps and Strategy Manager -Mark F., Director of Account Management -Malik H., Full Stack Software Engineering Manager -Ken M., Director of Product -Rachel Manzelli, Senior Machine Learning Engineer -Zachary N., Core Engineering Team Lead -Mark Nolan, Director of Marketing -Michael Tom, Marketing Manager -Amanda Y., Director of Finance If you're interested in learning more, the full post is linked in the comments And sign up for the newsletter to see who we bring you in the weeks ahead!

Welcome Jason Lavender, Co-Founder & CEO of Electives on this episode of ?? The Lantern ?? Electives is in the corporate training space, offering live learning for employees that they actually enjoy. Their instructors come from a wide range of backgrounds from FBI agents to astronauts to college professors to local startup operators ?? What’s going on inside the startup this fall? ?? After raising their Series A in March of 2022, Jason & team are excited about embedding AI into their product from a strategy, customization & personalization standpoint. With 500+ classes on the platform, employers can type in text prompts with their goals and Electives’ AI will surface learning recommendations for their customers ?? What has Jason learned from building a startup and how do they talk about it at Electives? ?? Get out of the building! Go talk to customers, prospects, and do your research in the market. When you start building a team it's natural to pull back into the building to build features, source instructors, etc. Now they are pushing everyone on their team to go out to hear from customers and solve problems. Jason & team have a bias for action. If someone sees something or thinks of an idea, they encourage them to go test it (on a small team of 25 people). Don’t keep those ideas to yourself. And get out of the building to do it! ?? How can we help? ?? Electives thinks of themselves as a two sided marketplace. They always love meeting People leaders who are responsible for investing in their talent. Electives is also always sourcing instructors, including a recently joined EVP of Client Success at a local Boston tech company, who is teaching client centricity. There are so many people who don’t realize they love teaching until they put together a class. If you have an interesting lived experience at a company, reach out! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston and Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan

Welcome Sean Smith, VP of Product at Denim on this episode of ?? The Lantern ?? Sean looks after Product at Denim, a tech forward factoring company for fleets and freight brokers. They work with SMBs in the freight & logistics space, help them move money, and get access to working capital. ?? What’s going on inside Denim this fall? ?? Denim is bringing together their Product & Service groups to provide a more connected, seamless client experience. Sean’s team is using new low code & no code automation tools to scale more effectively and grow their portfolio. Hopefully this year they will 2x - 3x the business. With that growth comes service challenges and the need to lean into tools without having to grow headcount at the same rate as revenue growth. ?? What has Sean learned from building startups? ?? Everybody in a startup needs to build and sell. If you can build and sell, you can get in front of customers to knock their socks off and be helpful. It creates a lot of opportunities to say yes ?? How can we help? ?? Operations is hard! Sean is new to this world and if you’re an ops or automation pro, he’d love to chat! Growth is hard and expensive! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston and Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan

Welcome Daniel Pelaez, Co-Founder & CEO of Cyvl on this episode of ?? The Lantern ?? Cyvl is a hardware enabled software platform reinventing infrastructure management for public works departments throughout America. It’s an outdated, overlooked industry we depend on to manage our country’s critical infrastructure. Using laser technology, cameras, and GPS sensors Cyvl is 3D mapping every centimeter of local infrastructure - starting with roadways - to provide better insights and help governments prioritize their time and funds. They are the easy button for public works departments. ?? What’s going on inside Cyvl this fall? ?? The team is expanding their coverage across the U.S. after initially focusing on New England. Today they’re in 30-40 states across the U.S. They’re also focused on building out the team in Somerville through the end of year and into 2025. They landed their first VP of Product and are now looking for talented software & ML engineers, a VP of Sales, and more. ?? What has Daniel learned from building a startup at Cyvl? ?? Hard work pays off. But you need to put in the work every single day. There are no overnight success stories. Find something that you’re really passionate about and dedicate your life to it! As long as you put in the work...and don’t break the laws of physics...your goals are achievable. Don’t give up! Talk to customers as much as you can. Solve a big problem. We took that seriously and talked to over 100 public works departments before we built anything to reaffirm that people would want this. Definitely do that before building something no one wants! ?? How can we help? ?? For anyone really engaged in their communities, bring awareness of civil solutions and solutions like Cyvl to your public sector teams. It’s tough for municipalities looking for better ways to do things. If you think your roads can be improved, they are here to help! We’re digging deeper on Cyvl in tomorrow’s newsletter. Make sure to check it out! The Lantern is brought to you by MGMT Boston and Innovation Economy Banking at J.P. Morgan

?? Dana Louie is a thinker, builder, strategist, advocate, and most importantly operator ?? ? It's W3 / Q4 / 2024 and this week in our MGMT Boston up & coming operator series we’ve got Dana,?the Director of Strategic Programs at InvoiceCloud, Inc. who previously sat in between HubSpot’s multivariate growth ambitions and its sprawling SMB ecosystem. Dana joined InvoiceCloud soon after the company had been taken private in a private equity buyout in January of 2024. InvoiceCloud is a leading provider of digital payment, customer engagement, and outbound disbursement solutions. At InvoiceCloud Dana is reporting to their CEO and focused on executing strategic initiatives to enable growth and efficiency. Dana helps lead a variety of initiatives to make the company more valuable, leveraging playbooks from the company’s investors, her own experience, and the support network around the company. She loves anchoring her career and life here in Boston. Dana has optimized for The Hub coming out of graduate school to be close to family, friends, and its talented ecosystem of builders. We’re lucky to have you! ?? Executing a Strategy - Negotiation, Getting Buy-In, and Driving Alignment ?? The scrappy distance runner who ran a few extra miles to pivot from corporate development to InvoiceCloud has learned that “everything in life is a negotiation.” She’s not just talking about deal terms. Everything she’s done - from consulting to venture investing and even now in her work at InvoiceCloud - has been tied to creating value and seeing how much of it makes sense to capture and share. Framing goals and obtaining buy-in is a critical part of that process. To Dana, success comes from having a plan and doing what you say you are going to do. Having a clear analytical approach helps drive alignment for Dana and her teams as they make strategic decisions.? 3 Career Insights / Learnings ??♀? Advocating for Yourself - “I’ve found that working hard only gets you so far. Knowing what you want and using your voice to get there is critical to successful career growth.” ?? Aligning Your Values - “What do you want from your career experiences and how do you plan on living your life? If you want to build a life that balances ambition, health, family, and friends, aligning your career to match those personal goals and career ambitions is a must.”? ?? Finding Your Fit - “I’ve been in positions where I felt I had to change who I was to succeed. For example, I’m a naturally extroverted person who likes to make friends with my counterparts, but I’ve been in high-stakes negotiation roles where ‘being kind and relatable’ was seen as a downside. Big surprise, that wasn’t the right role for me! Figuring out your true strengths and finding a team that will appreciate you for them will allow you to thrive.”? Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter to see the operator learnings we bring you in the weeks ahead!