In startup parlance, a “mafia” usually refers to a group of colleagues who all made money simultaneously from a successful exit. But there’s another kind of mafia here in Boston, more akin perhaps to a McKinsey class, bonded by friendship, age, ambition, and the experience of having worked for and left LevelUp/SCVNGR.
In April, I wrote a lengthy post about LevelUp, and in the process spoke to a number of ex-employees, among others, about the state of the company. In the course of that reporting, I came across a mostly unrelated story: how the churn at LevelUp has created a network of ex-employees who are collectively taking the Boston startup scene by storm.
“The SCVNGR alums have a pretty tight knit group,” one former employee told me on the condition of anonymity. “We help each other get jobs, make introductions and commiserate about the stressful life of startups. I think for most of us, the people we worked with at SCVNGR was the most rewarding part of the job.”
Indeed, a constant in all my conversations was the belief that founder Seth Priebatsch hires good people, many of whom are also fairly young. For at least a couple dozen of Boston’s up-and-coming innovators, SCVNGR and then LevelUp were a place to cut one’s teeth, and to meet a group of like-minded and equally talented individuals.
“A lot of people were around the same age group,” said Cort Johnson, co-founder of Terrible Labs, who left SCVNGR two years ago. “Everybody would go out together after work. You spent a lot of time together in the office. You got to know those people pretty well because you’d have breakfast lunch and dinner with them.”
As one after another moved on from the company for various reasons, the cohort fanned out to join Boston’s most promising startups, and the friendships remained.
“One thing LevelUp does well is hire incredibly talented, curious employees,” another ex-employee told me. “Given the high turnover rate, this means that there is now a powerful ex-LevelUp network of folks in all sorts of fascinating industries, who are always 100% willing to go out of their way to give career advice, recommendations, or introductions. Everyone benefits, and it’s shaping up to be a lifelong network.”
The companies at which the LevelUp Mafia now work include local successes like HubSpot and Nanigans, as well as others outside of Boston, like GitHub. (Some sources offered to compile a list of where ex-employees now work, which I’ve included below.)
Whatever happens to LevelUp, the network that it has created locally will be among its lasting impacts on Boston. Ex-employees will continue to hire and advise one another, to found companies and recruit their old SCVNGR friends to join them. The network may not be explicit – there’s no meetup or listserv or anything like that – but it is powerful and lasting.
“[It’s] nothing formal,” Johnson told me. “You’re just friends.”
UPDATE: Peter Valhouli-Farb, formerly of SCVNGR now at Bessemer made an interesting point to me by email:
…Also think its important to note that a lot of these guys are starting to penetrate more of the enterprise /SMB side of the ecosystem rather than going out and building real consumer businesses (what LevelUp/SCVNGR really is). LevelUp probably had the best “consumer” team in the area and makes me somewhat bearish on the future of consumer in Boston that not a lot of new companies have spun out of SCVNGR. On the other hand, it will happen over time but what they did was build an incredibly impressive sales organization and there are a whole host of future VP of Sales that will be emerging soon.
The LevelUp Mafia
This list was provided by an ex-LevelUp/SCVNGR employee. I have not verified every one, so please leave any omissions or revisions in the comments.
Founded companies
Cort Johnson and Joe Lind — Terrible Labs
Chris Shaw – co-founded LexSpot
Employees at other startups or related firms
GitHub – Jake Boxer – iOS engineer
HubSpot – Lia Cefalu, Ryan Neu
Nanigans – Kyle Sherin, Emily Strauss and John Dobrowolski, used to work at SCVNGR. Also Chris Zegel and Laurie Bloom.
TrueLens – Anish Kattukaran and Chris Shaw did marketing and brand sales for SCVNGR previously.
PromoBoxx – Janet Comenos, Director of Sales
Practically Green – Fabian Perez former SCVNGR engineer / designer, Aaron Graves (VP Engineering)
Insight Squared – Will Smith – former designer
Scoutmob – Mike Huddleston
Zinch – Jeff Kirchick
Klarna (big swedish startup) – Colin Treseler
Silicon Valley Bank – Smith Anderson
Bessemer – Peter Valhouli-Farb
Thinking Phone Networks – Jim Spang
Simply Measured – Kyle Emerson
Digital Lumens – Zach Mitchell
Google – Catherine Armato
