Serial entrepreneurs

(Correction: Because of an editing error, a quotation accompanying a picture of Netezza chief executive Jit Saxena with a story about entrepreneurs in yesterday's Business & Innovation section should have been attributed to Peter Falvey, managing director of Revolution Partners LLC.)

Among Boston-area technology startups, Jeremy Allaire is known as the kind of entrepreneur who can see around corners and envision markets still a year or two from fruition.

Allaire's first company, started in 1995 with brother J.J., rolled out software that became a standard tool for website development just as companies everywhere were hustling to plant their flags in cyberspace. The eponymous Allaire Corp. of Newton went public in 1999 and was acquired by Macromedia Inc. for about $360 million in 2001.

That venture launched when Jeremy Allaire was in his early 20s. Now, at the ripe old age of 34, he is busy navigating the convergence of technology and entertainment.

His new company, Brightcove Networks in Cambridge, uses broadband and search technologies and new video formats to download Internet movies to computers and television sets. Allaire believes that Internet video programming is about to explode.

Allaire is typical of the serial entrepreneurs who increasingly define the technology business in venture capital hubs like New England. Where bootstrappers of past generations built their businesses to last and maybe to hand down to their children, many of today's brightest innovators have become itinerant gunslingers fortified with venture financing. They hatch technologies, shepherd them into the marketplace, and negotiate ''liquidity events" in which their investors can cash out at a hefty profit, usually within five to seven years. Then they do it all over again.

''The serial CEOs are getting adept at taking companies from start to something that can be sold," said Matthew Littlewood, a partner at the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm in Boston, who tracks high-tech investments. ''When the IPO market was stronger, there was more of an attitude that 'we can make this into a big company.' "

But in today's market, with few initial public offerings, the cycle means fewer chances to grow independent companies in places like Massachusetts, where dozens of high-tech startups have been snapped up by IBM Corp., Computer Associates Inc., Microsoft Corp., and other giants.

''The environment is less conducive to creating the next EMC," said Peter Falvey, cofounder and managing director of Revolution Partners LLC, a Boston investment bank that advises companies on mergers and acquisitions, widely viewed now as the most viable exit strategy for startups.

Scores of first-time technology and life sciences executives who came of age during the technology boom of the 1990s are well along in their second acts, and many are in their third or fourth. Their track records make them especially attractive to venture capitalists.

Brightcove raised $16.2 million in November from investors like AOL Time Warner, Accell Partners, and InterActiveCorp, whose chairman, Barry Diller, sits on Brightcove's board.

''This time around I have a much more sophisticated understanding of what it takes to put together teams," Allaire said. ''I have a very strong understanding of the financing opportunities that are available to companies and what attracts investors. And I still have a lot of fire in the belly as to what we're trying to accomplish, which is to transform multimedia distribution."

Most serial entrepreneurs prefer to talk about growing their businesses, rather than about the inevitable exit. But the ultimate job of those who run venture-backed technology companies is preparing them for the day when they will be sold or taken public so the venture capital firms can recoup their investment.

Among the entrepreneurs, many continue to harbor hope they can make it through the IPO window.

''The company continues to grow, and then the exit happens, whether it's an IPO or something else," said Jit Saxena, 60, CEO of Framingham data warehouse appliance maker Netezza Corp., which landed $15 million in venture capital last year from a team that includes Battery Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Matrix Partners. The investors were impressed with Saxena's past performance: He led his first startup, software firm Applix Inc., through an IPO back in 1994.

But most of today's repeat entrepreneurs take a realistic view, Falvey maintained.

''Their assumption going in is they're going to be sold, so they try to get their companies to $30 million, $40 million, or $50 million in revenue, rather than going for the home run," he said. ''If it's in your DNA to go for the home run, you're going to be frustrated."

Falvey worked in the 1990s for Robertson Stephens, an investment firm that took hundreds of high-tech startups public. But such firms have stopped tracking small-cap public companies, discouraging institutional investors from taking a chance on them.

The higher cost of regulatory compliance, meanwhile, has soured CEOs at venture-backed companies on testing the public markets. Some who grew successful companies in the past, like Bob Davis at Lycos and David R. Skok at SilverStream, have departed entrepreneurship for venture capital.

Those who remain haven't shaken the entrepreneurial bug. Robert Connelly, 45, chief executive of Waltham's Domantis Ltd., was bitten years ago while working for Abbott Laboratories. Dispatched to integrate a small company Abbott had acquired, Connelly was intoxicated by the faster pace there.

''That was my first brush with entrepreneurial activity," he recalled. ''There were people there who were multitasking, who were wearing 20 hats. I decided that was what I wanted to do."

Connelly later served as CEO for Veritas Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, but left after concluding that he and the founder lacked a shared vision. His current company, Domantis, is a drug-discovery company developing therapeutical molecules called human domain antibodies. It raised $29 million in venture capital last quarter, the largest venture round in New England, from a team that includes 3i Group PLC, Albany Venture Managers Ltd., and ISIS Equity Partners PLC.

While he would love to see Domantis listed on the Nasdaq exchange, Connelly acknowledged that running a public company today makes life far more difficult for a chief executive. ''Our plan is to take the company forward, so that both exits are realistic for us," he said.

Four-time CEO Dave Balter, who launched his first company in college, sold two of his startups, Retro-fit Merchandising and 360 Merch, in October 2001. Last month, he took his first venture capital infusion, a $13.7 million round from General Catalyst Partners and IDG Ventures to grow BzzAgent Inc. of Boston, a word-of-mouth marketing and media firm and his current startup.

''Part of the fun is how a business moves and grows," Balter said. ''What I'm doing today is totally different from what I was doing a year ago, because the business is at another stage."

Balter, however, is realistic about the exit. ''You put a lot of yourself into every business," he said, ''but it's still a business."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.