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Deb Besemer shocked herself when she agreed to become CEO of a local technology startup — custom jewelry startup Paragon Lake Inc.
“I was calling myself retired for a couple of years there,” Besemer said.
Retirement, for Besemer, had meant sitting on the boards of Brightcove Inc., Bullhorn Inc., Double-Take Software Inc. and My Perfect Gig Inc. Bob Davis, general partner at Highland Capital Partners and an investor in Paragon Lake, is also on the Bullhorn board.
He started telling Besemer about a company he was excited about, even though he knew she wasn’t looking for a CEO position. “I said, ‘Bob, I’ve heard that before,” Besemer recalls.
Bessemer, former CEO of BrassRing Technologies, which was sold to Kenexa Corp. (Nasdaq: KNXA) in 2006, will start her new job as CEO of Paragon Lake on May 18.
Paragon Lake is the first consumer business Besemer has led — all of her previous positions have been business-to-business plays. She said that new challenge was part of what motivated her to take the job. A jewelry lover herself, she said the opportunity to try to change the way people bought jewelry also attracted her.
“It’s the worst shopping experience on the planet,” she said.
While there aren’t market estimates for the custom jeweler market, Besemer said the jewelry market is more than $60 billion.
For her first year as CEO, Besemer plans to build a network of 50 jewelry stores as partners, with plans to partner with designers and manufacturers later. Paragon Lake has touchscreen kiosks in stores where a customer can design an item and pick it up later. Down the road, the company plans to allow consumers to design jewelry from home and have it delivered.
Lexington-based Paragon Lake is Besemer’s fifth Massachusetts-based startup — and she said she’s hoping it will be her fifth successful startup. Paragon Lake was founded in 2006 by co-founders Matt Lauzon and Jason Reuben, then students at Babson University. Last July, the company landed a $5.8 million Series A round of financing from Highland Capital and Canaan Partners, which operates an office in Westport, Conn. The company also made headlines as an entrant in the VC firm’s Summer@Highland incubation program in 2007.
Lauzon, who will move to COO from CEO, said he was looking for a CEO to scale the company’s operations.
“She’s not in it to build a company that’s going to be flipped. She’s in it to build something that’s going to last,” he said.
Staff writer Galen Moore contributed to this report.
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