As expected, Yahoo content chief Jeff Weiner has left the troubled firm to serve as an "entrepreneur-in-residence" — read: wannabe CEO of an as-yet-undisclosed startup — at Accel Partners and Greylock. Working at two VC firms is unusual, but both have invested together in companies such as Facebook. [Accel Partners]
He invented The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Have you friggin' heard of it? Dan Lyons, the Apple CEO impersonator whose identity so bedeviled us until he was outed last year, is leaving Forbes for Newsweek, taking the place of Steven Levy as Newsweek's house technophile. So much for a brave leap into the unknown world of the Web. Lyons had made no secret of his discontent at Forbes, where the website is run separately from the print magazine and the two sides hate each other; high-level strongarming was required to get Forbes.com to link to Lyons's blog, which he will now take with him to Newsweek. (Photo by Mark Coggins)
After Yahoo database expert Jeremy Zawodny announced he was leaving the company, a Hacker News commenter speculated that he'd go work for Twitter. "A few months ago Twitter may have been interesting, mostly for the technical challenges," Zawodny responded. "But now I'd rather hack on FriendFeed." FriendFeed, the latest fixation of the Web set, has a redeeming quality for hardcore geeks: The mounds of useless yet constantly updated personal trivia it aggregates from Flickr, Twitter, and other narcissism-enabling Web services makes for one heck of a database to keep online.
Scratch another name off ex-Yahoo Bradley Horowitz's list of Yahoo's doomed and departed. Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner, the man in charge of core products like Yahoo.com, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger has resigned from the company, a person familiar with the situation told the LA Times. He's accepted a new role as an entrepreneur-in-residence shared between venture capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. That means he'll get an office (or two), a big paycheck (or two) and a charge to think up big ideas — a great gig for a new dad. It's an unusual arrangement, but both firms are stuffed full of ex-Yahoos who probably see an angle in helping Weiner out. The LA Times's source says Yahoo will not immediately replace Weiner, but instead delegate his responsibilites to group of execs. Kind of the way you spread peanut butter over toast, you know?
Personal Life Media's Susan Bratton snapped a picture of a banner being flown over the Valley advertising Yahoo's job listings page yesterday. While we know the company is bleeding talent, we didn't realize it had gotten that bad. But you could sign up now and cash in on that severance package if financier Carl Icahn's takeover bid is successful. [AdPulp]
If Jeff Weiner, head of Yahoo's search, community, and media properties, leaves the company, who's left to run things? An outside hire seems unlikely, Michael Arrington points out, given Carl Icahn's fight with the Yahoo board. That leaves a battlefield promotion for one of Weiner's direct reports, shown here from left to right: Brad Garlinghouse, Scott Moore, Vish Makhijani, and Tapan Bhat. Here's our handicapping of this horserace:
After a long search, the New York Times Co.'s About.com has a new CEO, former Digitas exec Cella Irvine. We heard rumors the last one, Scott Meyer, was forced out in February; the management team, we were told, had threatened to quit if he wasn't. Commenters, including several claiming to be About.com employees, disputed the story. One, however, hinted at why Meyer really left:
Sun Microsystems chief researcher John Gage will leave the company and join venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Gage, who joined Sun in 1982, will focus on "green" investments. Meanwhile, Sun wilts. After corporate clients slowed their tech infrastructure investments, Sun reported second quarter losses and Gage is the second top executive to leave the company in the last two weeks. Rival Hewlett-Packard poached Sun's top salesman Don Grantham. Sun says as many as another 2,500 could follow the pair out the door, though executive suites HP and Kleiner Perkins do not await them all.
A splashy hire for Yahoo in 2001, Libby Sartain's reputation as "Chief People Yahoo" rapidly dwindled. She was pushed out in March, but Yahoo didn't make a big to-do about her successor, David Windley, who was promoted from within. Windley ran HR for the advertiser-and-publisher group when now-president Sue Decker ran it; while Windley reports to CEO Jerry Yang, one's inclined to think his loyalties lie with Decker. Human resources is a useful function to control in the midst of a power grab.
Perhaps my weekend sojourn in Hollywood left me jaded. But an email anonymously tipping Valleywag about YouTube's "head of monetization" and former Google Web search lead Shashi Seth leaving the Googleplex to become COO at multimedia browser developer Cooliris smelled fishy. Seems we weren't the only site that got a tip, which suggests that our Yahoo Mail-using correspondent is probably a flack using the time-honored entertainment industry trick of a publicist "leaking" a detail to the press. My guess? Someone representing Cooliris. Though hiring the guy who was ultimately accountable for the failure of YouTube to make any money doesn't seem like a real "top talent" poaching from Google.
Venture capital has a talent problem. (Some wags might say the problem is a complete lack of talent, but not this one.) The difficulty: Potential hires are either too junior, and hence useless as anything but a startup-hunting associate, or too senior to be brought in as anything but a full partner, a process which is difficult and expensive. Benchmark Capital has found a clever solution. It's hired Jonathan Teo, a former Google engineering manager who played a key role in the company's international expansion, as an "investor," according to his LinkedIn profile. (A source close to the firm tells me his exact title may not be settled yet.) Teo's non-partner hire at Benchmark is an indicator of a venture-capital industry in flux — but one that seems willing to experiment. A healthy sign. (Photo via Jonathan Teo's Friendster)
Joost, the once wired, now tired Internet-TV revolutionary, has hired away Danny Passman and John Schultz from Dailymotion where they were both creative directors. Schultz will be director and Passman head of global programming strategy. While the company does need help with better content, they're also getting whipped by Hulu because of the latter's simple browser interface. [MediaWeek]
Despite her protestations of innocence, it's pretty obvious that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had a hand in getting top Google flack Elliot Schrage to follow her to her new employer. She's not alone. One Facebook insider recently observed that for every Googler hired at Facebook, they pull another four former colleagues with them. The place is getting "overrun," says one close observer of the company.
Adam D'Angelo's departure "broke my heart," one Facebook insider told us. But Facebook's backers are shedding no tears. We hear that both Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Accel Partners are considering D'Angelo for an entrepreneur-in-residence role — a sinecure venture capital firms offer Valley executives while they're looking for a new startup idea. He's also talking to Google, which is surely eager to reverse the flow of its employees to Facebook.
We hear that Rachel Whetstone, Google's European communications director, will replace Elliot Schrage as the company's top flack after Schrage left for Facebook. Her background may make her a perfect fit, in more ways than Google would like you to know. Unlike Schrage, Whetstone has some experience with rough-and-tumble politics, having served as chief of staff to British Conservative party leader Michael Howard. She also may be better suited to dealing with CEO Eric Schmidt's periodic outings with mistresses: She herself had an affair with Viscount Astor, a top Tory official, which scuppered her political career and led to her joining Google.
Virgin Mobile and EMI veteran Tom Ryan, most recently kept on the entepreneurial dole by Bessemer Venture Partners, will join Chicago-based SkinnyCorp, the parent of online T-shirt company Threadless, as its CEO, founder Jake Nickell writes on the company blog. In response, users commented: "^5!" which, according to Google, means "high five!" in hipster. Silicon Alley Insider reports that Threadless earns annual revenues of $20 million off of just 20 employees. The site keeps costs so low by having the users design the products, typically fanciful T-shirts that look good when worn with Chuck Taylors and posted to Tumblr.
Netscape cofounder and propagator of porn social networks Marc Andreessen will join Facebook's board of directors, Kara Swisher reports. Andreessen will join current board members Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Clarium Capital's Peter Thiel, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Andreessen is the chairman of Ning, a company which sells tools for rolling your own social network. If your mom has an excellent visual memory, she will probably remembers him for appearing on the cover of Time magazine without shoes on. You can tell her that he dresses better now, but only slightly. Why Andreessen, and not a proxy for new investors Microsoft or Li Ka-Shing?
Nearly a year to the day after signing up to co-host of Revision3 geek how-to show Systm, David Randolph has left the show to pursue a gig with an unnamed new client — that a tipster is guessing to be Pixar, based on a blurry phonecam picture of the studio's latest creation, Wall-E. It makes sense on two levels: One, Pixar is incredibly secretive. And two, having been behind the gates once myself, the place is littered with models of movie characters past and present. Hope this little peak behind the scenes doesn't get Randolph fired by an enraged Steve Jobs.
That was fast. Not only has BoomTown confirmed our earlier report that Elliot Schrage, Google's top flack, had interviewed at Facebook; he's been hired, too, according to an internal memo sent by CEO Mark Zuckerberg from India. Which is odd: At a meeting earlier today, asked about the Valleywag item on Schrage, COO Sheryl Sandberg feigned ignorance about Schrage's interviewing for the job, but talked up what a great fit he'd be with her, given their shared Harvard, D.C., and Google backgrounds. First Sandberg threatens to shoot Valleywag, and now she's agreeing with us? At least one member of the Google PR team concurs with Sandberg on this much: Better that he go to Facebook than stay at Google.
