Mr. Murphy (Photo: Twitter)
Looks like startup non-incubator Betaworks is in a hiring frenzy. Days after announcing it had snapped up former Tumblr VP Andrew McLaughlin, the company is making news again with another Entrepreneur-in-Residence hire.
Paul Murphy, COO of Aviary, is leaving his post at the photo editing startup to join the Betaworks folks at their sweet Meatpacking office.
Mr. Murphy wrote on his Tumblr today:
I’ve wanted to help start and run businesses from the earliest stages since I wound down a company I co-founded in college. Even though we’ve recently hit a number of major milestones (funding, partnerships, growth), I’m at a time in my life where if I don’t pursue my goals now, I may never.
Ah, the "now or never" mentality, a truly classic excuse for leaving a startup.
Mr. Murphy, who worked at Microsoft for 10 years before joining Aviary last year, will be working with Betaworks "to incubate new ideas while helping a number of companies in the portfolio scale."
Mr. Murphy is also the second executive to be poached from Aviary in a handful of months, following a heady pivot last year. Back in April, Dwolla nabbed Aviary's head of biz dev, Alex Taub.
For all the pivot hiccups, Aviary seems to be doing a-okay. Writes PandoDaily:
Users of the B2B tools grew to 11 million in 10 months, with 150 million photos edited a month. The company launched a partnership with Flickr, replacing Picnik as the photo site’s editing tool, as well as several larger unannounced deals I’ve heard murmurs of. Five of the top 20 photo apps in the iOS app store use Aviary tools. The company raised a new $6 million round of funding in June, bringing its total to $17 million.
Sounds like the kids are all grown up and empty nest syndrome is setting in at the aptly-named Aviary.