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James Houk shared thisJames Houk shared thisWe are all in shock witnessing the massive explosion that hit Beirut on August 4th 2020 where 2,700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate were detonated. The extent of the damages is devastating: 100+ deaths, 4K+ injured and 300K+ homeless. The explosion hit a country that was already hit by the worst economic crisis of its history, eroding the value of the Lebanese pound by 80% and plunging many Lebanese into poverty. Lebanon has faced months of sky-rocketing unemployment, hyperinflation and climbing poverty. The country was already headed into famine and now the port used to import food has been bombed, crops have been destroyed and people – already starving – are now left with no roof over their heads. Last night, my people slept in shattered homes, during a global pandemic, with an economy facing a devastating economic crisis. This morning, my people woke up to a Beirut they’ve never seen before: streets paved with broken glass, a city shattered into pieces and rubble, a country dusted with ash, and a sea drowning in chemicals. We are calling on our friends and on the world to donate and help us provide disaster relief to this beautiful country I call home: https://lnkd.in/gkxP8Xr #Lebanon #Beirut #DisasterreliefHelp raise £7500000 to provide disaster relief after the explosion in Beirut – JustGiving CrowdfundingHelp raise £7500000 to provide disaster relief after the explosion in Beirut – JustGiving Crowdfunding
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisOur friend Jason McGourty from Star Mountain Capital visiting us from New York! Jason’s interview with Andrea releases soon, stay tuned for more updates 👀🗽
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisAfter 5827 days, hundreds of clients, and a lifetime of memories, I am “graduating” from BCG! When I joined BCG in 2010, I wanted to become a good consultant. BCG gave me much more than that. It taught me how to be comfortable with ambiguity, how to solve (almost) any problem, and how to learn from everyone. Most importantly, it taught me how to be a better human. After 16 years, leaving BCG feels like leaving my parents' home to go to college. I am excited about what is ahead, but I know where home is. More than anything, I leave with gratitude. To all my mentors, peers, teams and BST colleagues — THANK YOU. For the opportunities, the friendships, the challenges and the lessons. I am co-founding an AI-native company. I feel excited and anxious, which is exactly how I felt on Day 1 at BCG. More to come on this. Leaving Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is genuinely hard. I will miss the energy, the client challenges, the intellectual rigor, the extraordinary people, and yes, the mileage points. Thanks BCG!
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisThank you to our Hutch’s Operations Teams for hosting us at your beautiful sites throughout Oklahoma this week. Your commitment to quality food, outstanding customer service, and strong in-stock availability was truly evident at every stop.🍕🍔🌯🥪🥗 We greatly appreciate the hospitality, partnership, and pride you continue to bring to the Circle K business #OneTeam. It was a great week visiting your teams and seeing the operation firsthand. Thank you for everything you do!
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisOne of the highlights of attending a FIFA World Cup match last week was the opportunity to lead a fireside chat with Mia Hamm before Team USA played. While her accomplishments as one of the greatest athletes of all time speak for themselves, what struck me most was her perspective on building winning teams. Mia shared just how important the last 4 players selected were as the first 16 on the winning 1999 Women's World Cup roster. Why? Because talent alone doesn't build championship teams. Those final spots were filled by people who did whatever the team needed, elevated those around them, and contributed to the culture. That lesson feels just as relevant in business. Great organizations are built not only by exceptional talent, but by people with humility, resilience, and a commitment to helping others succeed. Thank you, Mia, for sharing your experiences and insights, and thank you to our clients and colleagues for a memorable evening. And of course...Go USA!⚽ #Leadership #Teamwork #FIFAWorldCup
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisWe're in a special moment, and NY Tech Week always gets me energized. So many awesome people doing awesome stuff, each pushing on a different vector to make the future better. Every conversation left me a little lesson and a little more gas on the fire. A short and definitely incomplete list of people I loved talking to: (1) Jeremy who was generous with his lens on the strategy that fuels a successful pharma innovator: mutually beneficial partnerships, leaning into your product's strength, and anticipating how markets will evolve. (2) Hannah who radiates the hard-won wisdom of a scrappy marketer, clearly an expert and clearly still hungry to push her capabilities and impact. (3) Daniel who shed light on how he thoughtfully grapples with many of the same frameworks and uncertainties that I do on the delicate early-stage balance between scaling and efficiently perfecting the core. (4) Chris who embodies curiosity, presence, and introspection (some of my most valued traits), exploring these and other topics and their relationship to building businesses, relationships, and community. My takeaways: (a) get outside and go to intentional events; the people you bump into hold wisdom and passion you can grow from. (b) across very different problems, the same approach is worth trying: start from the outcome you want (e.g., a patient knowing a treatment exists, or building something new), put a framework around the opportunity and path to achieve it, and then get your hands dirty and reach for the tools to make it real. They exist and are easier to adopt than ever. Great time to be a New Yorker, a builder, a person who wants to make anything better, and a human 🔥
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisI am thrilled to share that I’ve officially joined Reddit, Inc. as the VP of GTM Strategy and Operations. There is an undeniable energy that comes with getting on a rocketship, but what really drew me to Reddit is that it’s the most authentically human place on the internet. In a world that feels increasingly automated, it’s a platform built on real community and genuine connection—and the business opportunity ahead of us is massive. A huge thank you to Stephen Riad and Jen L. W. for this incredible opportunity and your trust. Thank you everyone for the exceptionally warm welcome over these first couple of weeks. The culture here is mission-driven, brilliant, and human. I am so excited to dive in! Let’s go!
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James Houk liked thisGrateful to TEDxLittle Armenia and USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies for the opportunity to share this story. If you've ever been told to "pick a lane", I hope this resonates. https://lnkd.in/eG76AhMnJames Houk liked this"Stop watching your other life from the 10th row. Walk onto the stage." From a five-year-old violinist in Aleppo to an engineer at NASA, a consultant at BCG, and now an AI founder — Armen Derkevorkian's life has refused to fit into neat boxes. In this talk, he explores what happens when the world keeps asking you to choose: musician or scientist? Practical or passionate? Logic or emotion? Through stories spanning childhood violin competitions, brutal engineering exams, and the moment everything changed, he reveals why the real breakthrough came not from picking a side, but from refusing to. Watch the full talk here: https://lnkd.in/eG76AhMn #TEDxLittleArmenia #HybridIdentities
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James Houk liked thisJames Houk liked thisThank you Google! I still can't believe I was at the heart of the company’s growth engine during this momentous shift to AI. Working in GCS to drive results at scale has been the ultimate masterclass in passion, innovation, and discipline. To Margarita Bradley and Selin Song - thank you for the opportunity and for your unwavering support. I am a better leader for having worked with you both. To RSO Leads - Shruthi Hari, Robert Wieker, Atul Rangarajan, Kevin Krogmann, Deirdre Fitzsimons, Dilip Roussenaly - I don't know how we ever gathered such an amazing group of humble, brilliant, effective, and kind peers. To CSO Leads - Wyatt MacKenzie, Monil Doshi, Liz Kernion, Katherine Layman, and Janely Gutierrez - thank you for your incredible dedication, impact, and friendship. To CSO - I miss you all already! You truly are the best team in the world. Having the honor of leading this team was the highlight of my time at Google. I am incredibly proud of everything we’ve accomplished together and cannot wait to see the impact you continue to make. And, to Hugo Bernardo - thank you for being my number one coach, tutor, therapist, etc. ... and a pretty darn good husband and dad too! What's next? Stay tuned! More to come soon.
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James Houk liked thisThe advice that got me into startups was: take your big company job at Google seriously. Before I found my way into startups, I had an attitude issue that I wasn’t self aware about. I convinced myself that since my role at the time (where I was treated extremely well) was not my “dream job”, it didn’t deserve my best effort. And it showed - on my first performance review, I got a 2 out of 5: “consistently meets expectations”. The bare minimum. One evening I was walking around Google Campus in Mountain View on a call with my former professor, Verinder Syal. I explained to him that working at Google was fine, but my destiny was in startups, and as a result, it didn’t really matter how I did my work at a big company. I expected him to co-sign my POV (he was my Entrepreneurship professor after all). I got a reality check. - My ego was making me waste my opportunity. - Millions of less fortunate people would trade spots with me in a heartbeat. - The problem was my attitude and work ethic. - Dropping me into a startup would not fix that. I remember in that moment feeling embarrassed and stubborn. I was at Google and people were asking ME for advice. Obviously I would succeed at a startup. Did I really need to change? The sting subsided and I started to make some adjustments. My work got better. Something else started to happen - the attention to detail required to build zero defect spreadsheets & clarity required to communicate with Google’s BoD and executives were helping me in my hunt for a startup opportunity. 6 months after that call, it was time for my next performance review. 5 out of 5 - “Superb” 8 months after that call, I was in a new dream job at a startup. Saving your best work for my dream gig was a tempting mindset. In my experience, starting where I was served me better than any dramatic leap would have. Professor Syal, I think we’re overdue for another call! Bonus: Photo from my last day at Google, with era appropriate IG Filter
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Centhujan Vytheeswaran
$550M Series E at a $12.55B valuation. 🎉 I've been at Temporal just under three months and the number isn't actually the part that's stuck with me. It's that in nearly every customer conversation I've had since joining, someone tells me unprompted how much Temporal has changed how they build. Teams finally moving off brittle legacy orchestration they'd been patching for years. Teams shipping AI agents that run for days or weeks and actually hold up once real traffic hits them. That's what makes this round make sense to me. Reliability was never optional. AI just made skipping it very expensive. A bit of the context behind the raise: annualised revenue run rate up more than 200% YoY, net dollar retention above 200%, 1.9 trillion billable actions processed in August alone, and more than 4,300 paying customers including OpenAI, Snap and NVIDIA. Thank you to every Temporalite doing the work behind those numbers, to the customers who trust us with the systems they genuinely cannot afford to have fail and to our partners who help us get there. Three months in and it still feels like the start. Plenty more to build. 🚀 #Temporal #DurableExecution
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Michael Murphy
When Boston tech leaders woke up this week, many were still feeling the ripple effects from Amazon’s major cloud outage 🌩️—impacting everything from online finance to local healthcare and large-scale data analytics. As these disruptions hit regional biotech 🧬, higher ed 🎓, and fintech 💳 sectors, the pressure is rising for more resilient, scalable, and local-first digital infrastructure. 📍 Boston Metro West now sees increased urgency for enterprise-grade, multi-path connectivity as cloud events drive leaders to rethink how their data—and their business—stay online. Lightpath’s three diverse, protected Boston–Ashburn fiber routes (with one bypassing congested NYC/NJ corridors) are purpose-built for this next generation of business resilience. The surge in AI-powered workloads 🤖, and Boston’s rise as a national innovation and education hub, are outpacing legacy network and data center models. With nearly 180 interconnected Eastern Seaboard data centers and dedicated access lit at all major Boston facilities, Lightpath gives Boston organizations a strategic onramp into true AI-grade infrastructure—supporting up to 800 Gbps for compute, research, and collaboration. Recent investments by Boston-area colleges into high-speed campus networks and new AI curriculum, along with cloud and SaaS accelerations from regional startups 🚀, show one trend: Hybrid work, secure telehealth 🏥, and fast digital transformation are now table stakes. Lightpath’s managed SD-WAN, dedicated internet, and DDoS Shield deliver secure, high-availability cloud access—essential for your K-12, biotech, financial, and healthcare teams navigating today’s risks. 💬 Ready to rethink your infrastructure? Message me to learn more.
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Khyman Bowen-Lombard
New York City remains one of the most competitive markets for product management talent and the compensation reflects it. Here's what we see NYC startups and scaleups paying in 2025: ⠂Product Managers: $132K–$185K base (up to $215K) ⠂VPs of Product: $202K–$430K base (avg. $262K) ⠂Chief Product Officers: $300K–$365K base But there's more to the story than salary. NYC's talent pool is diverse, with many PMs coming from finance, media, or agency backgrounds. For software startups building product-led companies, finding experienced product builders means paying a premium. 🔗 Read the full analysis on compensation, hiring challenges, and what it takes to compete: https://bit.ly/48MCNeK
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Michael Murphy
Boston startups just raised nearly $922 million in February alone, minting two new unicorns in Code Metal and Tomorrow.io, with VulcanForms announcing a third factory and 100 new hires. The Boston Business Journal confirmed Greater Boston VC activity remains scorching hot heading into March 2026, and that momentum is reshaping the infrastructure landscape across the region. 🚀 This growth trajectory tells a bigger story about what's happening beneath the surface in Greater Boston and Metro West. Every new campus, every acquired entity, every expanded lab or facility creates a network integration challenge most architectures were never designed to absorb at this velocity. Growth doesn't pause for a six-month network buildout. Here's what scaling organizations miss: expansion doesn't just add endpoints, it multiplies complexity. When VulcanForms builds a third factory, a biotech firm acquires a Cambridge lab, or a university opens a new research center, the network must deliver rapid integration of new sites, entities, or environments without disrupting what's already running. Each new location shouldn't become a custom integration project that drains IT resources and delays time to value. 📊 For education institutions across Boston and the Merrimack Valley funding Research Cyberinfrastructure Expansion + Hybrid Learning Expansion, this challenge is acute. Researchers move terabytes of data off-hours to work around congestion. New campuses each become bespoke buildout projects. K-12 districts expect seamless remote learning readiness, yet student data can't flow on the same network as general traffic because FERPA compliance demands segmentation of critical workloads and environments. Lightpath addresses this with Dark Fiber, Ethernet, and Wavelengths delivering sustained high-throughput data movement for research computing, plus scale without re-architecting as enrollment grows or campuses come online. Our Managed WiFi and Private Networks ensure segmentation of critical workloads and environments, keeping student data isolated while enabling deterministic behavior for time-sensitive workloads that live virtual classrooms demand. Lightpath builds where others hesitate, investing ahead of demand across the Route 9 corridor and Greater Boston so the fiber is already there when you're ready to grow. 🎓 The result: rapid integration of new sites, entities, or environments with direct access to Lightpath engineers who own the outcome. That's fiber with a heartbeat. Is your network keeping pace with expansion, or is every new site a custom project delaying your research and learning mission? Let's schedule a call with my engineer to map it out. Message me. 📩 #EdTech #BostonStartups #HigherEducation #FiberNetwork
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