Vimeo without founder Jakob Lodwick: quite successful
Is IAC's Vimeo, the video-sharing site founded by bizarrely charismatic (and just plain bizarre) New York entrepreneur Jakob Lodwick, missing its founder? In a word, no. Lodwick lost his job due to insubordination last November; his dare-you-to-sue-me funding of an IAC employee's music startup, in an apparent violation of his noncompete agreement, is right in line with the nose-thumbing he did while on the job. We heard IAC finally fired Lodwick because he would blow off meetings with upper management when it wanted to talk to him about things like marketing and growth. So who got it right — IAC chairman Barry Diller's suits, or the wannabe iconoclast?
The suits, it turns out. Without Lodwick at the helm, Vimeo's gone from a flatlining also-ran to a fast-growing alternative to YouTube. NewTeeVee reports that Vimeo traffic more than doubled from February to May. Guess Lodwick just wasn't cut out to be a Killer Diller, after all.