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Posts Tagged ‘Cofounder’

Yahoo EVP Ash Patel, One Of the First Yahoos, Announces His Departure

Ash Patel, a senior Yahoo exec and one of the company’s longest serving employees, will shortly be stepping down. His last day will be next Monday.

Patel was one of Yahoo’s first sixty employees, and joined shortly before the company went public in April 1996. There are just six current Yahoo employees who joined before Patel, the company says.

His first job at Yahoo was “technical Yahoo,” a title given to all engineers. He created the My Yahoo product and also built Yahoo’s first instant messenger client. He stopped coding for a living in 2002 and has since been in a series of product and engineering executive positions.

His current role is EVP Product Architecture & Strategy. He has also served as Chief Product Officer and has run the engineering group at Yahoo.

I met with Patel this morning for a little over an hour to talk about his time at the company the early days at Yahoo.

One of his favorite moments was summer 1996, he says, when cofounder David Filo would stay up all night watching the news and manually updating results from the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Most updates to Yahoo’s website were manual in those days, he says, although there were a few partners sending in content in a variety of formats.

Patel also talked about how annoyed he would get trying to test Yahoo’s instant messenger client during the wee hours of the night when no one else was awake. He couldn’t test new features on his sleeping friends, so he added a feature where a user could add themselves as a friend. That feature is still part of Yahoo Messenger.

Says Filo, “Did you know that you can add yourself as a contact in Yahoo! Messenger? Well, you can. Why? Because Ash needed a way to test the code to see if it was actually working the way we wanted it to while Messenger was first in development. He couldn’t wait. He wanted that feedback immediately and he wanted that chance to get things right on the fly. That’s the kind of ingenuity Ash brought to Yahoo!. He helped us to move faster than we thought we could and to find new ways to look at our work from the user’s point of view.”

Patel says Yahoo is in a transition period but is building the infrastructure it needs to compete in the future. Everyone is focused on social right now, he says, and so is Yahoo. But they have product plans for “what’s next after that” as well.

I asked Patel about Yahoo’s current troubles, saying that Yahoo sort of feels like England in 1940, surrounded by the Nazis (I’m not sure who the nazis are in my analogy, but we met very early this morning and it was the best I could come up with). His response – “Well, look who won the Battle of Britain…Things turned out ok.”

We also had a side discussion about whether Carol Bartz could play the part of Winston Churchill. But like I said, it was early.

What’s next for Patel? He says he’s going to take a few months off with his family and start to think about the future this summer. He advises a few startups, he says, although he doesn’t seem to be suggesting, yet at least, that a startup is in his future.

One thing is clear – Patel will be missed. He is a genuinely likable and intelligent guy who’s seen a lot over the last 14 years. It’s a loss for Yahoo that he’s leaving, but this guy clearly will continue to bleed purple.

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Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out

One of the cofounders of Zynga, the company’s executive vice president of sales and business development Andrew Trader, is no longer with the company, we’ve confirmed. He has been quietly removed from the company’s management page. Remaining cofounders – Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron and Steve Schoettler, remain.

As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named.

Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment.

Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now.

Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion.

And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.

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Andy Rubin Has Some Steve Jobs In Him

Andy Rubin, pictured above surrounded by press after the Nexus One event today, is the guy who founded Android and sold it to Google in 2005. And he’s starting to remind me a little of another product fanatic, Steve Jobs.

Everyone knows about Jobs’ amazing ability to build hit products and disrupt entire industries. I wrote extensively about this in What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?. Jobs is all about the product. Every last detail. And it shows. He’s disrupted the mobile phone, music, film and television industries, and we haven’t even mentioned the Macs yet.

But Jobs is also notoriously touchy and difficult to work with. He demands perfection and doesn’t really work well with others. And Jobs is distrustful of the press. Apple’s PR group is mostly there to not return calls.

We forgive him all that, of course. Because he’s changing the world, and forces competitors to do better just to try to keep up. The world, particularly the tech world, is a far more colorful place because of Jobs. There is no one at Apple who has the product vision to push that company forward once he steps down. He’s the Alexander the Great of today’s tech world. And he’s also able to captivate a crowd when he’s on stage.

Rubin isn’t Steve Jobs. He doesn’t have the product track record that Jobs has (no one in the world does). And Rubin is shy on stage – he doesn’t make any real effort to win over the crowd. There was no “and one last thing” line at today’s Nexus One launch by Rubin. Only Steve Jobs can really pull that off.

But Rubin is a product fanatic in the same way that Jobs is. The NY Times did a good overview of Rubin in 2005. One line about Rubin, a former Apple engineer and cofounder of WebTV and Danger, stuck with me from that article: “Mr. Rubin is a proven member of an earlier group of engineers-turned-entrepreneurs who have a passion for building complete digital systems.”

I’ll say. A lot of credit for the Nexus One goes to his senior team, particularly Mario Queiroz and Erick Tseng (two people Google put on stage today). But the vision for the Nexus One was all Rubin, we keep hearing from people at Google. And he wouldn’t compromise, even after it was clear Google would miss their original deadline of shipping the Nexus One in time for the 2009 holiday rush. “Rubin kept saying it has to be thinner,” mumbled one tired team member to me after the event, “so we made it thinner.”

He has incredible power within the Android group at Google, and even VPs at Google there make sure not to cross him. People who work with him have told me of his amazing attention to detail and his unbending demands that a product be perfect before it goes out the door. A lot of that shows in the Nexus One, Google’s first complete end to end hardware and software system.

Rubin has many of the same personality traits as Jobs. He’s a product visionary and fanatic who likes the dictatorial style of product development. He’s not great with people, and doesn’t deal well with the press. At today’s Nexus One event you could see his barely contained frustration at the questions fired off at him during the Q&A session. “I’m just not going to say anything else about that” was one quip he fired off after a reporter kept asking the same question over and over. Jobs, of course, doesn’t do Q&As.

And that’s just fine with me. I don’t care if the people we cover are likable, or like me. Being affable or loquacious isn’t a job requirement for Awesome Product Guy. You just have to have a strong vision, be unwilling to bend, and have the means of following through with that product to launch.

Like Jobs, Rubin has known failure. He’s even been fired from his own company, Danger. But like Jobs, he went on to bigger and better things. For Jobs it was NeXT and Pixar, then back at Apple. For Rubin, it was Android.

Is the Nexus One as disruptive as the iPhone? No. Apple started this party and the Nexus One is part of that same revolution. But it’s disruptive in different ways, and its openness (and paring with Google Voice) is pretty exciting. And I get the feeling that his team is just getting started with this whole Android thing.

Ten years from now we’ll look back. Rubin may just be another exec at another big company. Or he may be something more. Heck, he may even be running Apple. His personality would fit right in.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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TechCrunch Interviews (The Very Happy) Skype CEO Josh Silverman

Skype CEO Josh Silverman can’t stop smiling in this video interview we recorded in Menlo Park this morning. And no wonder – despite serious legal and spinoff drama, Silverman has managed to close his multi-billion dollar spinoff of Skype from eBay. His legal troubles have evaporated. Skype is growing like a weed. And he’s managed to keep his job running the business. Life is good.

All he has to do now is manage board meetings with two of the more forceful personalities on the planet – new investor Marc Andreessen and cofounder/new investor Niklas Zennstrom.

Well, that and keep this train on the tracks. Skype has exploded to over half a billion users, and is adding 300,000 new ones every day, Silverman says in the interview. 1/3 of usage is video, despite the fact that video calls can only be 1-1. Voice calls are multi-party. And revenue is cruising along at $185 million/quarter with 24.2% margins. Up to 20 million people are using Skype at any one time.

We talk a little about Skype’s business in the interview. But most of the focus in 2010. “You’ll see Skype become a lot more ubiquitous in a lot more places, both mobile devices as well as embedded devices,” he says, adding “expect to see us on a lot more platforms.”

We also spoke about Skype as a developer platform. Extras is now long gone, but Silverman reiterated that soon Skype will push far more powerful developer tools that can turn Skype into a service. That means Skype can run outside of the Skype client. That doesn’t necessarily mean Skype in the browser, they still say Flash isn’t powerful enough to run Skype in browser. But perhaps we’ll see Skype code being build directly into browsers.

We also spoke briefly about Chrome OS. Google’s new operating system doesn’t let users install software, meaning Skype is out. Flash is the only third party plugin Google will say will be included. Things like Silverlight and Skype are in limbo unless and until Google decides to include them. Silverman ends the interview with “If the Google folks are interested in building Skype into Chrome we’d certainly be interested in having that conversation.”

I hope they do have that conversation, soon.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Epic Fail: Startup Lemons Turned to Lemonade

When so many conferences feature CEOs rehashing their past successes, FailCon does exactly the opposite. The event asks successful founders, investors and developers to discuss their past blunders and what they’ve learned from them. While this may seem like a series of sob stories, the result is actually a list of practical tips on how to reduce risk, manage teams and recover from adversity. In today’s afternoon sessions several panelists shared their war stories and set the stage for lessons.

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Gnip founder Eric Marcoullier had some colorful words for the audience, “Sometimes I feel like a stolen watch salesman. When someone asks to hear about one of my failures I can open up my coat and ask which one they’d like to see.”

While the entrepreneur / programmer is best known for his successes with MyBlogLog and gaming site IGN, Marcoullier talked about the recent layoff of seven of twelve employees from his API aggregation platform company.

Says Marcoullier, “Misery is nature’s way of telling you you’re doing it wrong…Since we’ve changed directions, we’re currently working on a new platform and we’ve released more features in one month than we had in the previous 6 months. I don’t know if we’re going to succeed, but we’re going to find out a lot faster now.”

Meanwhile, social Q&A site Aardvark’s cofounder Max Ventilla talks about the importance of hiring the right people, building a culture of iteration/experimentation and setting the stage for continual learning. Aardvark is a great example of a well-executed real-time company and we first gave it a favorable review in late March.

Says Ventilla, “There’s an infinite number of B+ players available to hire, but you’ve got to get people who are passionate about the product and who will attract other good employees.”

Ventilla explains that co-founders should be patient and continue to experiment with processes and products. He stresses that startups should task specific people in an organization to disseminate data and discuss new approaches as a group.

“Transparency needs to be a default,” says Ventilla. “Executives need to be willing to learn and discuss business in order to gain collective wisdom as a company.”

Discuss

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Look At Me: Effectively Pitching The Blogosphere

When you’re bootstrapping your startup from your basement suite, media relations is often the default responsibility of the non-tech cofounder. For those who haven’t already navigated the emotional peaks and valleys of a PR job, the effort can be daunting. Nevertheless, when you finally get through to someone, you forge a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship. In the past few weeks a number of startup companies have asked for feedback on their pitches. Rather than getting into the gritty details, we thought we’d offer a couple of helpful tips:

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1. Know Your Audience: We’re not asking you to know our kid’s names or stalk us on Facebook, we’re asking you to know the ReadWriteWeb audience. Our readers come to us for web-related product reviews, features and trends. We generally don’t write on gadgets or events, and we certainly don’t cover feline toilet solutions. Figure out what the writer wants and deliver on it. If you don’t hit the nail on the head the first time, then try a different angle in a couple of months.

2. Message Delivery: Try to research the best methods to send your pitches. As per our past article, ReadWriteWeb prefers to receive pitches via tips[at]readwriteweb.com. You can also send us your RSS feed and we’ll keep tabs on your regular updates.

3. Embargoes: An embargo gives reporters a head start on writing an article before news is publicly released. ReadWriteWeb does everything in its power to honor embargoes; however, many bloggers openly oppose them. As a rule of thumb, get a verbal agreement to the embargo before forwarding any sensitive documents.

4. The Difference a Day Makes: Slow days are great days to offer demos and pitch company features. The ReadWriteWeb team still works on Friday mornings and Sunday nights despite the fact that few PR pros pitch us on those days. Rather than pitching at the same time as a mid-week Apple release or major acquisition, consider pitching us when you know we’re looking for stories.

5. Don’t Use a Template: We don’t care how your pitch is formatted as long as it’s interesting. You could string together a thousand buzzwords and get lumped in with your competitors or you could stand apart with a simple paragraph explanation and a link. If you pitch in a voice and style that’s true to you, your passion will come through.

Photo Credit: Lead – Plastic Revolver, Inset of Chris Messina – Roland Tanglao

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Look At Me: Effectively Pitching Bloggers

When you’re bootstrapping your startup from your basement suite, media relations is often the default responsibility of the non-tech cofounder. For those who haven’t already navigated the emotional peaks and valleys of a PR job, the effort can be daunting. Nevertheless, when you finally get through to someone, you forge a lasting relationship and mutually beneficial relationship. In the past few weeks a number of startup companies have asked for feedback on their pitches. Rather than getting into the gritty details, we thought we’d offer a couple of helpful tips:

Sponsor

1. Know Your Audience: We’re not asking you to know our kid’s names or stalk us on Facebook, we’re asking you to know the ReadWriteWeb audience. Our readers come to us for web-related product reviews, features and trends. We generally don’t write on gadgets or events, and we certainly don’t cover feline toilet solutions. Figure out what the writer wants and deliver on it. If you don’t hit the nail on the head the first time, then try a different angle in a couple of months.

2. Message Delivery: Try to research the best methods to send your pitches. As per our past article, ReadWriteWeb prefers to receive pitches via tips[at]readwriteweb.com. You can also send us your RSS feed and we’ll keep tabs on your regular updates.

3. Embargoes: An embargo gives reporters a head start on writing an article before news is publicly released. ReadWriteWeb does everything in its power to honor embargoes; however, many bloggers openly oppose them. As a rule of thumb, get a verbal agreement to the embargo before forwarding any sensitive documents.

4. The Difference a Day Makes: Slow days are great days to offer demos and pitch company features. The ReadWriteWeb team still works on Friday mornings and Sunday nights despite the fact that few PR pros pitch us on those days. Rather than pitching at the same time as a mid-week Apple release or major acquisition, consider pitching us when you know we’re looking for stories.

5. Don’t Use a Template: We don’t care how your pitch is formatted as long as it’s interesting. You could string together a thousand buzzwords and get lumped in with your competitors or you could stand apart with a simple paragraph explanation and a link. If you pitch in a voice and style that’s true to you, your passion will come through.

Photo Credit: Lead – Plastic Revolver, Inset of Chris Messina – Roland Tanglao

Discuss

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Lazyfeed Implements RSSCloud/PubSubHubBub for "Real Real Time"

In an email today, Lazyfeed cofounder and CEO Ethan Gahng informed us that the RSS reader is now supporting both RSSCloud and PubSubHubBub protocols, allowing for real-time integration of Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, and Feedburner content.

“Our internal tests show that the service has actually become significantly faster,” Gahng wrote. “Now some content from as recent as several seconds ago is being notified through Lazyfeed.”

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Lazyfeed is a feed reader intended for the ever-growing market of, as we wrote previously, “those of us who are too lazy for RSS feeds but still in the market for real-time, personalized blog searches.” Internally, we’ve found the site incredibly useful. “To be frank, it’s been so useful in churning up news items that I’ve been hesitant to discuss it publicly,” Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote in a recent post.

Just a few days ago, we wrote about Lazyfeed’s announcing support for RSSCloud. Lazyfeed was the first feed reader after RSSCloud creator Dave Winer’s own software called River2 to support the new protocol, which added a real-time element to RSS feeds from, among other sources, Wordpress blogs.

Additional implementation of PubSubHubBub allows for real-time content from Atom feeds, including Typepad blogs, Blogger blogs, and Feedburner content. “It is now really like an instant messenger, ” wrote Gahng in a blog post.

Gahng went on to discuss the issue of real-time Feedburner content, saying, “It seems that Feedburner itself is not real-time. Right now, all content from Feedburner-hosted blogs is not being collected in real time. It seems that the feed is updated several minutes after the actual post is published.

He further suggested a “relay of two real-time notifications” between a blog and the Feedburner server through either of the real-time feed protocols.

Discuss

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