We will be launching updates to VentureFizz soon which will include a new profile page and a custom homepage. We will keep you posted on these updates - stay tuned!Continue
TripAdvisor is an anchor company in the Boston tech scene. The consumer travel giant was founded in 2000 by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in 2000 and went public in 2011. The company was one of the first websites to utilize user-generated content for its reviews.
With the company's deep roots in the Boston tech sector, several of their alumni have gone on to start other companies or have become part of the leadership team at other Boston tech companies. Below is a slideshow which highlights successful 20+ alumni of TripAdvisor.
For this slideshow, we used the following criteria:
Must be based in the Boston area
Tenure at TripAdvisor for at least two years
Currently a founder, board member, or executive (VP or higher)
We didn't include anyone from the FlipKey acquisition, as that group could be its own spider web.
With a constantly growing business, Rapid7 recently went through a branding and identity exercise to recalibrate and ensure that our customers are clear on who we are and what they can expect when they partner with us. We’ve long been very clear about who we were from an internal core values standpoint. Ensuring the values and beliefs we cherish internally map directly to how our customers and partners can expect to engage with us externally is critical.
I found this work really interesting. I’ve always believed that when people (and companies) embrace their authenticity and find productive ways to execute being true to who they are, they just plain build a better business. Our company uses thePredictive Index, which is a fantastic tool for helping to assess. For me, one of the most insightful parts of the tool is the disconnect between how people truly see themselves, versus how they believe they need to show up for work. For me personally, if I worked in an environment that I felt required me to “show up” in a way that is significantly different from my true self, I’d get pretty uncomfortable pretty fast. It’s one of the reasons culture fit becomes so incredibly important when individuals and companies choose each other.
As we reconsidered our core values, we found that not a lot needed to be changed. What we truly valued as a company eight years ago when we created our values still resonates as our north star. We did make one big tweak, however, to our value of “individual excellence.” When we established it, it was intended to illuminate our need to bring our very best selves to our work every day. Work hard, give it your all, live our values. However, as we reflected on what we might tweak to make our values ever more impactful, we landed on the concept of “Bring You.”
The elements of the original value still remain; of course, we want people to do their very best each and every day. We also realized we want them to be their best. By editing a bit of language, we landed on recrafting a value to more accurately reflect what’s important to us both as individuals and as a company. Ultimately, we want every single person we employ to feel comfortable in their own shoes. Specifically, the value now states “Our people are at the center of our success. You bring your authentic self. You are fully engaged and bringing your best. You want to transform through engagement with others. And ultimately WE optimize who WE can be together.” Pretty straight forward, right?
I love this new reframing of the value, because it is in strong support of our diversity and inclusion focus, as well as continuing to encourage people to do their absolute best work. That said, it’s all in how individuals choose to embrace this sentiment that will make it land the way we intended. For example, I might interpret it to mean, “Wow, this means I get to totally be myself…and everyone will accept my opinions, approach, etc.” That could go off the rails pretty quickly, right? We’ve found it pretty beneficial to not just outline the definition of the value, but also provide behavioral examples of what good – and not so good – living of that values means. In the case of this particular value, we want you to be uniquely yourself AND have empathy and respect for others. It takes confidence and self-awareness to bring your authentic self to work, but we all need to be mindful that it needs to be balanced with a keen appreciation of other people’s unique attitudes, experiences, and perspectives. Therefore, someone who truly lives this value not only values diversity, but they embody the notion of inclusion. Ultimately, they strive to bring their best self every day and inspires others to do the same.
Crafting core values are the foundational work that every company should invest in if they intend to thrive. It’s not just about listing a set of attributes and aspirations; if you truly establish a set of values that you can connect all of our processes, activities, and mindsets around, you are investing in the future health of your company. Like everything, it’s never fully done. You must revisit, re-energize, and retool as you scale to ensure they are still appropriate and effective. I’m incredibly excited we just went through this exercise. I’m even more excited we continue to evolve in a way that is inclusive and impactful to both our people and our customers.
athenahealth is one of the anchor companies in the Boston tech sector and has been consistently a leader in terms of innovating in the HealthTech industry.
Richard Barnwell, the Senior Vice President of Engineering at athenahealth, connected with us to give an inside look at the company's engineering team. Barnwell shares the details on their tech stack, the engineering team’s culture, and what a potential hire can expect during the interview process.
Can you share a summary on what athenahealth does?
athenahealth partners with hospital and ambulatory customers to drive clinical and financial results. We offer medical record, revenue cycle, patient engagement, care coordination, and population health services. We combine insights from our network of more than 120,000 providers and approximately 117 million patients with deep industry knowledge and perform administrative work at scale.
What are some of the different technologies that the engineering team gets to work with and at what scale?
The bedrock of our technology, which grew up over the past 22 years, is predominantly on a Linux, Apache, Oracle, Perl based stack in our own private cloud. However, over the past several years we’ve made concerted efforts to modernize and embrace a more polyglot environment. We now have teams building in Node, Java, and Python, embracing Elasticsearch and Postgres, shuttling bytes around in Kafka, deploying in containers orchestrated by Kubernetes within our own data center or using tools like CloudFormation to deploy in various public clouds. Largely our front ends are written in React/Redux or in some cases natively mobile for Android and iOS.
What are some of the interesting projects that the engineering team is tackling?
There are many exciting projects happening right now that I’m not at liberty to discuss. However, I can share our flu tracker.
Does your engineering team have a chance to work on projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities?
Yes, in fact, many of the tools we leverage in the course of our daily work were built in this fashion. We have participated in and hosted healthcare hackathons. Some of the most exciting projects are actually those that just started growing organically. One recent examples that comes to mind projects that was done was to help developers assess the quality of their code.
What is the culture like at athenahealth for the engineering team?
At the heart of our culture is the principle of unconditional positive regard. The default assumption that there are always good intentions behind our words and actions creates an environment where collaboration can thrive. We truly believe diversity makes us stronger and inclusivity is one of our core values. Our engineers are expected to be teachers in addition to learners. We value personal growth and career development. We stay focused on delivering customer success. We do not shy away from new challenges.
What can a potential employee expect during the interview process?
We use a behavioral-based interviewing approach. That means we ask candidates to describe how they have handled certain situations in the past. During this interview, we look at behaviors that demonstrate the competencies we know lead to success in that particular role. It is no coincidence that we use the same competency library again during performance evaluation. Employees can also view the competencies for any role which is useful for career advancement as well as seeking new opportunities within the company.
Are you involved in any local tech organizations or Meetups?
Absolutely! Boston is such a great area for this. We regularly send engineers to attend Grace Hopper, ReDev, and more.
Rapid Fire Q&A
What’s on tap?
Harpoon’s Dunkin Coffee Porter
Star Wars or Star Trek?
In an effort not to alienate the two fandoms, we opt for Dr. Who.
iPhone or Android?
Our clients are heavy iPhone users, we are split.
Coffee - hot or iced?
Hot
Favorite employee perk?
Donut Fridays!
What TV show describes the engineering team’s culture?
Firefly, because we always find a way to keep flying.
What music is playing in your office?
From sampling a few headphones wearers, pretty much everything.
Cleanest desk / Messiest desk:
Team Profiles
Alice Aizawa is an engineering manager, who believes the success of an organization is achieved by enabling and trusting in the power of individual engineers. As a manager, she focuses on mentoring and growing people. She also has a keen interest in the latest technologies including Kubernetes, Cloud Security, etc.
Mariana Baca is a Principal Software Developer at athenahealth and has been working there for two and a half years. She has been working on transforming medical billing front-end technologies using ReactJS. Mariana is also the scrum master for her team and helps run the Scrummaster's Guild at athenahealth. She previously worked at Oracle and has a degree from the Media Lab at MIT.
What do the companies Rent the Runway, Birchbox, ThredUp, Cloudflare, Evertrue, and InsightSquared all have in common? Well, they are all companies that you may have heard of… but did you know that they all participated in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition? It’s true and this is a small sampling of the amazing companies from this competition.
Sure, careers in management consulting and investment banking are still commonly considered by b-school grads, but its the path of entrepreneurship that has been one of the fastest growing areas of interest for students.
Thus, I was excited to interview Tom and get an inside look at entrepreneurship at HBS. Tom has over 20 years of experience as a faculty member and he is also the faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, which supports these students who are looking to transform their ideas into successful startups and even perhaps… change the world.
In this episode of our podcast, we also cover lots of great topics like:
ABC’s Shark Tank and how so many HBS affiliated companies have appeared on the show.
Tom’s background and what led him down the path of academia.
How HBS has evolved over time as it relates to entrepreneurship and its curriculum, including their case method approach.
The common mistakes where entrepreneurs get tripped up.
Tom’s thoughts on whether or not entrepreneurship is a trait someone is born with or is it something that can be taught.
Advice on how to get into Harvard Business School.
Plus, a lot more.
You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing us a 5-star review—it will definitely help us get the word out there!
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy An account on VentureFizz will also be created so you can manage your email subscriptions and personalize your experience on VentureFizz.