The Endeca Effect

Twenty-one years ago, I had the good fortune to have a former boss, Steve Sayre , call me up and tell me about this interesting new company he was working at that was looking for a product marketing & product management leader. Following many of the same principles I still do today, I interviewed with Endeca and took the plunge.

The next four and a half years were an amazing ride for me as we grew from under $1m in revenue to more than $65m, became the dominant player in something we all now take for granted (faceted search in e-commerce), and expanded to multiple industries.

Endeca went on to become one of the most storied Boston tech startups and was acquired for more than $1b by 甲骨文 in 2011.

I've gone on to many other startups and mid-stage companies but always stayed connected to my Endeca colleagues and history. Earlier this year, I got connected with Matt Crane , who had recently moved back to the Boston area and was profiling Boston-area startups and operators. As he traversed the Boston tech ecosystem, he discovered how many of those companies traced their roots back to Endeca. We got to talking and thought it would be fun and insightful to go back and revisit the Endeca story through the eyes of many of the people I worked with who have gone on to found their own companies.

So I started reaching out to some of my former colleagues. Matt was amazed at how many of them - now CEOs in their own right - immediately responded and agreed to be interviewed for this project. I wasn't surprised at all - Endeca was a special place, and the Endeca network remains exceptionally strong and supportive.

Over the course of several weeks, we talked to Andrew Lau ( Jellyfish ), Julie Yoo ( Kyruus Health and a16z), John Andrews ( Celect, Inc. ), Steve Fredette ( Toast ), and Vinay Seth Mohta ( Kyruus Health and Manifold ). And, of course, we also spoke with Steve Papa - Endeca's founder, who has advised many of these companies and leaders and founded and leads Parallel Wireless . There are dozens and dozens of others we could have talked to, but in the interest of completing the project, we stopped there!

Matt has started publishing the results of our interviews in a series of posts - the first one dropped this morning. There are great lessons learned about what happened at Endeca, why it succeeded where so many other companies fail, and what these great leaders learned in their formative years there.

I'll be sharing the other posts as they come out - or you can follow Matt Crane or MGMT Boston to see them directly and learn about many other Boston-area startups and operators.

Thank you, Matt, for doing a great job capturing and telling these stories! It was indeed a trip down memory lane revisiting those days - hopefully, their insights and ideas will inspire up-and-coming leaders!