Yahoo's Dave Goldberg leaves to join Benchmark Capital
Dave Goldberg, until recently vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music, has joined venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).
Goldberg founded online music delivery company Launch Media in 1994, and sold it to Yahoo in 2001. He will seek out ideas in the music industry and other consumer media businesses, he told VentureBeat today in a phone call.
Goldberg recently made a splash criticizing digital rights management. “It’s not solving anything from a piracy perspective,” he repeated again today. “It’s not solving a problem, and its creating a huge cost in the system.”
An EIR is someone who finds an idea for a company and then starts it, typically with funding from the venture firm backing him, in this case Benchmark. Besides scouting for a new company, he’ll be helping out with Benchmark’s existing companies, he said. He may also consider buying a company and taking it over, he added. He said he’s looking forward to becoming an entrepreneur again. He’s been commuting to Yahoo Music’s LA offices for five years, and working at Benchmark means a five minute commute.
Under Goldman, Launch became a major online destination for music videos, artist features and music news.
This is the second announced departure of a Yahoo executive to a venture firm in as many days. Yahoo consumer search VP, Andrew Braccia, just announced he was headed to Accel.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
