Former Zipcar exec Doug Williams joins RunKeeper's team, as new VP of engineering

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

RunKeeper's Jason Jacobs has an edge over many startup founders: he used to work as a recruiter. So when talented people are looking for their next gig, his grapevine tends to tell him about it.

That's how Jacobs connected with Doug Williams, right, who'd served as VP of engineering and IT at Cambridge-based Zipcar for six years, as the car-sharing network grew from a startup into a public company, and the engineering team there grew from three people to more than 40.

"My old boss at [executive recruiting firm] Howard Fischer Associates, Jeff DiSandro, introduced him to me as simply a 'good guy to know,'" Jacobs writes via e-mail. "We immediately hit it off." Williams left Zipcar in May, and was spending some time at the Waltham VC firm Matrix Partners considering his next move. While Jacobs says he didn't have a specific search going on for a head of engineering at RunKeeper, "We were starting to think about bringing in some foundational leadership to go build a big, enduring company, and to keep up with our aggressive growth. We also share a common investor with Zipcar in Steve Case's Revolution Ventures (Steve is on the Zipcar board)."

Williams joined RunKeeper this week as its VP of engineering. The Boston company says 12 million people now use its mobile app and web site to set fitness goals and track their progress. That number has almost doubled over the past year, Jacobs says.

I last covered RunKeeper in November of 2011, when the company raised $10 million.