Jeremy Hitchcock | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Worcester Polytechnic Institute (BS) |
Occupation | Venture capitalist |
Title | Co-Founder New North Ventures Co-founder and Former Chief Executive Officer of Dyn |
Jeremy Hitchcock (born September 11, 1981) is co-founder and CEO of wifi management and IoT security startup, Minim (NASDAQ: MINM), [1] based in Manchester, NH. Jeremy is also a Partner at New North Ventures, which invests in artificial intelligence, cyber security and communication sectors. [2]
Hitchcock was born in Rochester, New York and grew up in Bedford, New Hampshire. After graduating from Manchester’s West High School Hitchcock attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), graduating with a BS in Management Information Systems.
Hitchcock began his academic career at WPI by studying chemistry but in his sophomore year, he teamed up with fellow students Tim Wilde, Chris Reinhardt and Tom Daly to work on a remote access project. This project became known as Dyn.
Hitchcock started Dyn in his dorm room at Worcester Polytechnic in 2001 and led the Internet performance management company from its headquarters in Manchester, N.H. upon graduation, bootstrapping it for more than 10 years before raising its first funding, a $38 million Series A in 2012 from North Bridge Venture Partners. [3] Hitchcock resigned from the business in May 2016 [4] prior to the Oracle acquisition, [5] which officially closed on January 31, 2017.
In late December 2010 Dyn was international news when they pulled the plug on controversial website Wikileaks.org ceasing services to direct traffic to the site. Wikileaks was under intense international scrutiny over its disclosure of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and had become the focus of cyberattacks. After consulting with coworkers, customers and industry experts Hitchcock made the difficult decision to sever ties with the group citing its threat to the other 500,000 websites that use its free service. [6]
In October 2016 Dyn was again in the news after they were at the center of the largest DDoS attack using IoT devices infected with Mirai malware, which temporarily disabled parts of the internet causing outages at Twitter, Comcast, Spotify and Visa among other major platforms.
Seeing how vulnerable Dyn was after the botnet attacks Jeremy co-founded Minim, an AI-driven WiFi management and Internet of Things (IoT) security platform for service providers. [7]
Hitchcock served as former Chair of the Board of Manchester Moves, a volunteer organization working to connect the City of Manchester to the rest of the state via rail trails and greenways. The Hitchcock family also makes charitable donations to the New Hampshire Food Bank and Families in Transition. [8] With his family, Jeremy established the donor-advised Hitchcock Family Fund through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, which provides financial support to a range of organizations including several children’s charities. [9]
Co-Chair for the Workforce Development Committee at the New Hampshire Tech Alliance [9]. He also formerly served as trustee to the Community College System of New Hampshire. [10]
Jeremy was a leading voice behind the pioneering STEAM Ahead NH initiative that is modernizing public education in New Hampshire. [11]
Jeremy started and operated an independent bookstore, Bookery in Manchester, New Hampshire. [11]
The Hitchcock’s also serve as principals to Orbit Group, providing venture capital and private equity opportunities for community-building enterprises and economic development initiatives in Manchester, New Hampshire. [12]
Hitchcock serves as a trustee of his Alma Mater Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he was 2015 Innovator of the Year. [13]
Hitchcock is an active angel investor, some of the startups that he has invested in include Desktop Metal, Customter.io, and Deice among others. [14]
Jeremy started a venture firm with Brett Davis investing in companies that also serve in the national interest. The firm is called New North Ventures. [15]
WPI’s 2015 Innovator of the Year Award [16]
2016 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist [17]
Deloitte Technology's Fast 500 ranking in 2013 and 2015 [18]
UNH’s 2019 Paul J. Holloway Entrepreneur of the Year Award [19]
New Hampshire 200 (2021) [20]
Recipient of New Hampshire The Walter R. Peterson Education and Public Service Award 2022 [21]
Hitchcock has also been recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University System of New Hampshire and Rivier University for his effort on workforce and economic development. [22]
He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, Politico and the Boston Globe. [23] Hitchcock was also featured as a special guest in a February 2013 episode of webseries This Week in Startups. [24]
References
Manchester is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire and the tenth most populous in New England. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 115,644.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover and moved to Durham in 1893, and adopted its current name in 1923.
The University of New Hampshire at Manchester is the urban campus of the University of New Hampshire College of Professional Studies. It was established in 1967 and is located in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Dyn, Inc. was an Internet performance management company that also dealt with web application security, offering products to monitor, control, and optimize online infrastructure, and also domain registration services and email products. The company was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2016. It began operating as a global business unit of Oracle in 2017.
Robert A. Baines is an American politician who served as the 53rd mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, from 2000 to 2006. A Democrat, he was first elected in November 1999, defeating incumbent Republican Raymond Wieczorek. Manchester mayoral elections are held every other year. In Baines' last successful bid for the office, he was elected by over two-thirds of the voters. He was defeated by Republican Alderman Frank Guinta on November 8, 2005.
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The 2014 New Hampshire gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the governor of New Hampshire, concurrently with the election to New Hampshire's Class II U.S. Senate seat, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
The 2014 United States House of Representatives elections in New Hampshire were held on Tuesday, November 4, 2014, to elect the two U.S. representatives from the state of New Hampshire, one from each of the state's two congressional districts. The elections coincided with the elections of other federal and state offices, including governor of New Hampshire and U.S. senator. This election marked the first time since 1992 that New Hampshire elected members of two parties into the House of Representatives, and is to date the only time since 2010 that Republicans won any congressional election in New Hampshire.
Harvard Innovation Labs (i-Lab) is an institution which aims to promote team-based and entrepreneurial activities among Harvard students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and members of the Allston and Greater Boston communities.
OurCrowd is an online global venture investing platform that empowers institutions and individual accredited investors to invest and engage in emerging technology companies at an early stage while still privately held. Based in Jerusalem, the company launched in February 2013, and has since opened overseas branches in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, and the UAE.
Softeq Development Corporation is a privately held, full-stack development company focusing on low-level programming hardware,, and software apps for web, desktop, and mobile. Softeq builds end-to-end IoT and cloud infrastructure solutions, and provides technology business consulting services, and is an ISO 13485:2016 company with certified partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, and Xamarin. Softeq serves Fortune Global 500 companies: Verizon, Epson, Purple Innovations, Microsoft, Lenovo, AMD, Disney, Intel, NVIDIA, and Halo by PAWS. From 2018 to 2021, Softeq appeared in Inc. 5000, the annual rankings of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in the United States. Softeq is headquartered in Houston, TX, with development centers in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Monterrey, Mexico with offices in Munich, Germany, and London, United Kingdom. Softeq has over 500 employees globally.
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