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AOL Alumni Seek Excitement of Start-Ups
From left, Hooman Radfar, Austin Fath and Chris Marentis at Clearspring. Marentis started the company after he spent eight years at AOL.
(By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"It really speaks to the growing ecosystem of entrepreneurship and partnership of the AOL network," said Lehman, who has also invested in another start-up connected with his former employer. "It's becoming more like the West Coast companies that have spawned a lot of other ventures."
That ecosystem is making it easier for people like Lisa Hook to find opportunities locally, instead of uprooting the family to tech hotbeds such as Silicon Valley or New York. The former president of AOL's wireless and broadband unit is now chief executive of SunRocket, a Vienna-based Internet phone service provider that has received $80 million in venture capital funding. The Time Warner merger was a turning point for her.
"I thought to myself, 'I can stay here and keep doing the same thing, or I can find new challenges,' " said Hook, who retired in 2004.
In July, two of her former co-workers joined FreeWebs Corp., a Silver Spring start-up that helps people build Web sites, just as it received $11 million in funding from local venture capital firms.
Rick Robinson, who was AOL's vice president of member experience, joined the company and recruited Andrea Spiegel, then vice president of audience programming operations, to jump aboard. Both had grown frustrated by AOL's lethargic pace when implementing new ideas. The departure of numerous managers left gaps in the staff. AOL, they felt, was losing touch with its core customers.
"I wanted to be somewhere that was very nimble and where I was able to express ideas and try things out in an atmosphere that was like AOL 10 years ago," Robinson said.
An AOL spokesman said the company is proud of its record.
"AOL has always attracted some of the best and brightest people in the industry, but we're also proud to have served as an incubator in training scores of executives who have gone on to start and lead other companies," said Andrew Weinstein, a company spokesman.
AOL no doubt will keep a close eye on its alumni, said Mark Frantz of RedShift Ventures, which has invested in a start-up that involves a former AOL executive. "We've finally unlocked AOL," he said. "It's hard to say why the talent is coming loose now -- whether it's driven by pink slips and falling stock prices -- but it's a talent pool that needs to be tapped into."
