July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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After Ross Levinsohn departed as Yahoo’s interim CEO last year — a position many assumed he would keep indefinitely — there’s been speculation on where he’d end up.

Today it was announced that Levinsohn will become the CEO of Guggenheim Digital Media, a new umbrella company that includes several entertainment-minded news sites, including The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Adweek.

The move isn’t very surprising, considering Levinsohn’s previous work experience. He began at Yahoo in 2010, with the goal of boosting Yahoo’s media properties, and was eventually named interim chief exec of the company after then-CEO Scott Thompson stepped down due to misinformation on his resume. His short stint (before getting the boot by current CEO Marissa Mayer) saw Yahoo make seemingly lucrative syndication/distribution deals involving Yahoo’s status as a web portal, such as those with Spotify and Dailymotion. Prior to that, Levinsohn was head of Fox Interactive Media — so, the man knows the media business.

As CEO of Guggenhiem Digital Media, Levinsohn will be tasked with maintaining success on its top web publications, boosting the company’s other properties and events, and identifying “new investments.” I’m guessing that means the new publishing umbrella company could acquire other web publications in the future.

Photo credit: Yahoo/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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Former Windows boss Steven Sinofsky, who recently left Microsoft after an executive shakeup, has accepted a teaching position at Harvard University’s business school.

“Excited to return to @HarvardHBS to teach again this spring!” Sinofsky wrote on Twitter today. “New perspectives, recharge, share experiences, write. #sabbatical”

The tech world was rocked when Microsoft announced Sinofsky would be leaving the company just weeks after the launch of Windows 8, on which he had led development. But it looks like it didn’t take him long to find another gig.

Sinofsky told his Twitter followers that he will be teaching product development and will work under the title “Executive in Residence.” He will focus his time on “research, writing, classroom on [product development], planning, collaboration, and more.”

Previously, Sinofsky taught a few classes at Harvard Business School and helped write “Microsoft Office: Finding the Suite Spot” and “Learning from Projects: Note on Conducting a Postmortem Analysis.”

Steven Sinofsky photo via Sean Ludwig/VenutureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
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Prominent futurist and author Ray Kurzweil has accepted a position as director of engineering at Google, where he plans to work on technology developments in language processing, machine learning, and other areas.

Kurzweil is well-known for authoring several books about the future of technology and “the singularity,” a period when he says humans will merge with intelligent machines. He believes we have made discernible progress with artificial intelligence but have much further to go. For example, he’s publicly criticized Apple’s Siri as “primitive” and thinks it needs a lot of work. Perhaps that means he’ll work to improve Google’s competing Now service.

“I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality,” Kurzweil said in a statement.

Google has indeed made some of his predictions a reality. The most notable example would likely be Google’s self-driving cars, which, to date, have logged many thousands of miles without an accident.

“In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic,” Kurzweil said. “Fast forward a decade — Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones. It’s easy to shrug our collective shoulders as if these technologies have always been around, but we’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google is at the forefront of much of this development.”

While he has taken on this role at Google, Kurzweil said he will also continue acting as a tech thought leader by hosting academic lectures and talking with press.

For more on Kurzweil, check out an interview we had with him back in October:

Ray Kurzweil at DEMO via Stephen Brashear

July 9-10, 2013
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Updated at 10:17 a.m. PT with original quotes from Blake Irving.

Former Yahoo and Microsoft executive Blake Irving will take over as chief executive officer of major web domain business Go Daddy, succeeding interim CEO Scott Wagner.

Irving takes command a company that’s successfully attracted nearly 11 million customers — mostly small businesses — that use its domain purchasing and web hosting tools. But the company has attracted scrutiny as well, especially when it came out in support for the controversial SOPA bill. After a major backlash, Go Daddy reversed its position. Irving said he supports the privacy of Go Daddy’s many users.

“My position is that we fully respect the privacy of website owners,” Irving told VentureBeat today. “I look at SOPA and PIPA as things that are behind us.”

Irving’s last role was as Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer for two years. Before that, he served as a professor at Pepperdine University and as corporate vice president of the Windows Live platform at Microsoft for eight years.

He said he will use his recent experience at Yahoo to help Go Daddy expand its platform and number of applications. Two of his major priorities will be expansion in mobile and international.

“Many people internationally are going on the web for the first time through mobile devices,” Irving said. “We’ll want to design for mobile-first in many cases. … 11 million is a nice number, but 20 million or 30 million is what we should be striving for.”

On the topic of Go Daddy’s bombastic advertising, Irving said he appreciates the “edginess” of the ads. But he said future videos, like a recent Frank’s Pizza ad, will have a greater emphasis on how Go Daddy helps small business owners.

Irving will begin at his new post on Jan. 7, 2013. He will also join the Go Daddy board of directors at that time.

Blake Irving photo via Yahoo/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
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High-end online retailer Gilt Groupe has named Citigroup exec and GG director Michelle Peluso as its next chief executive officer, the company announced today.

Gilt Groupe’s board has been searching for a new CEO for several months to replace CEO and founder Kevin Ryan. Peluso will take over Ryan’s job in February.

Peluso is a storied executive and currently holds the title of Global Consumer Chief Marketing and Internet Officer at Citgroup. Before her stint at Citigroup, she was the CEO of Travelocity for six years.

“I’m tremendously excited to be leading a company with a brand I love and a team I’ve come to greatly admire,” Peluso said in a canned statement. “Gilt has done a terrific job establishing itself as one of the most innovative online shopping destinations, and I am looking forward to continuing to build on Gilt’s growth and success.”

Ideally, Peluso will bring some fresh perspective to Gilt’s operations. Founded in spring 2007, Gilt has raised $221 million to date. Gilt raised $138 million in May 2011 at a valuation of $1 billion. Ryan told AllThingsD that the company will be looking to go public “at some point in one to two years.”

Michelle Peluso photo via Crains New York

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Allan Leinwand has been the lead force behind Zynga’s hybrid cloud efforts. But the struggling social games company’s chief technical officer has to take a similar position at ServiceNow, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Zynga chief marketing officer Jeff Karp also announced that he is leaving the company today.

As the architect of Zynga’s “zCloud,” Leinwand used a combination of public and private clouds to better scale Zynga’s many social games. His talk at last year’s CloudBeat conference impressed us, and we featured a guest post by Leinwand last December that described the challenges and successes of the hybrid cloud approach. By February, the company had shifted 80 percent of its game traffic to its private cloud.

But even with his successes, Leinwand had good reason to leave. Zynga has had a hard time lately, with its quarterly reports disappointing and its executives fleeing for pastures far from FarmVille. The company has been accused of insider trading, and Zynga’s stock is sitting at $2.82 a share today.

Before Zynga, Leinwand helped found Vyatta, a leader in software-based networking. He also spent several years with Digital Island and Cisco.

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Allan Leinwand photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
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New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been attempting to recruit Twitter VP Katie Jacobs Stanton to boost the company’s media products, AllThingsD reports.

Mayer is reportedly pushing Yahoo to focus more on its products and users, a dramatic shift that could help revive the company. She’s even removed Yahoo’s stock ticker from its internal company website to get employees thinking more about products and less about the company’s finances.

Stanton seems an ideal choice to help revive Yahoo because she has worked for Yahoo, Google, and now Twitter. At Yahoo, she helped launch Yahoo Finance, and at Google — working under Mayer — she helped launch Google Finance. Stanton then had a brief stint working for the Obama Administration on citizen participation. Now she’s shaping Twitter’s international experience. She knows popular products that people rely on and ideally could help oversee more big launches.

If Mayer successfully peels off Stanton from Twitter, she’d need to offer her a big role. Since Stanton is a VP, ideally she’d become a high-powered Yahoo VP with some major responsibilities. Since former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, who was previously in charge of all media efforts, has left, there is a vacancy there. Stanton could also be put in charge of revamping Yahoo’s popular but outdated home page.

Check out a video of Stanton speaking below at the Re:publica 2012 conference in May:

Stanton photo: republica2010/YouTube

Ex-Yahoo CEO and resume-fudger Scott Thompson has been selected by retail organization ShopRunner to lead its efforts to take on Amazon.

Thompson attracted a lot of attention when he moved from PayPal to being Yahoo’s CEO. But just a few months after he was hired to replace previous CEO Carol Bartz, Thompson resigned for overstating the credentials on his resume in SEC documents. Now, former Googler Marissa Mayer has been tapped to lead Yahoo and help the ailing tech company find its way back to relevance.

The new gig at ShopRunner will be a considerable step down for Thompson. ShopRunner makes it possible to get 2-day free shipping from many major retailers, including Toys R Us, Petsmart, GNC, American Eagle, and more, but it charges members $79 a year. It’s essentially a large-scale counter to Amazon Prime, which gives Amazon members free 2-day shipping and free streaming videos for $79 a year.

Thompson believes his time at PayPal has prepared him for ShopRunner:

“Joining ShopRunner is a tremendous opportunity to build on the strong foundation that the company has already established,” he said in a statement. “While PayPal and ShopRunner are fundamentally different businesses, there are similarities in each of their success. Both companies are focused on building the broadest network of satisfied merchants by providing the value that creates a large and loyal customer community, creating a virtuous circle.”

Scott Thompson photo: Yahoo/Flickr

Hot social media service Pinterest has hired Facebook Corporate Communications Director Barry Schnitt to lead communications and public policy, VentureBeat has confirmed. He will start in mid-June.

“Barry brings incredible relevant experience to Pinterest and will be pivotal as we grow our community,” a Pinterest spokesperson told us. “Pinterest has tremendous respect for Facebook and is grateful that Barry can apply his invaluable experience here at Pinterest.”

Pinterest recently raised $100 million in new funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. That money appears to be going toward hiring people like Schnitt, and we’re sure many other folks are being looked at as the company expands internationally.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Schnitt has been the director of corporate communications and public policy at Facebook for the past four years. Before that, he worked a senior manager of communications and public affairs at Google for eight years.

Earlier in his career, Schnitt worked as a legislative aide to California State Senator Byron D. Sher, working on transportation, healthcare and education issues. Schnitt has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis.

Hat tip to AllThingsD

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Hot advertising tech startup AdRoll made headlines last month when it hired Google sales director Suresh Khanna. But the company is not done hiring by a long shot and has just brought onboard two top engineers from Rivet Games, a move the company revealed today as its new rebranding goes live.

While ad technology may not exactly be sexy, it will ultimately shape how the web functions. Advertising funds nearly every free web product you get, so the big question for companies is how to improve the process of selling ads while not annoying the crap out of web users. AdRoll might have cracked that code somewhat with display advertising by offering a platform for retargeted ads. Retargeting basically increases the chance of bringing customers back to your online store or site after they’ve left, and its LiquidAds take that a step further by showing users specific products again. AdRoll customers include Microsoft, Hipmunk, BustedTees, and the Portland Trail Blazers.

AdRoll CEO Aaron Bell (pictured) told VentureBeat that a lot of pieces of the AdRoll puzzle are falling into place right now, as the company tries to control its growth. In 2011, AdRoll had a 414 percent increase in revenue, a 400 percent increase in ad impressions, and a 334 percent rise in customers, which now number more than 3,500. It is also now profitable.

The new engineering hires from Rivet Games go hand-in-hand with the company’s growth and controlling the huge amount of data it processes on customers and conversions. Customer needs and demands are growing fast, so the company has to scale up operations with its SaaS platform. Along with opening a new data center, it’s also working to improve its RTBuddha real-time bidding technology.

“It’s hugely important that we’re able to crunch large data sets,” Bell told us. “We think we can be the next [Google] AdWords, and the value we provide is similar to that.”

As for the re-branding, AdRoll has a new logo (right) and site that are live today. As AdRoll’s profile gets bigger, Bell said the company wants to be taken a bit more seriously. The colors have changed from pink and blue to black and blue, and AdRoll will soon launch a new user interface for its SaaS dashboard.

“This is industry leading technology and we care about keeping up with our customers,” Bell said. “With the introduction of the new branding, and as we continue to scale our technology, we’re looking to attract all kinds of customer segments.”

Together, these latest moves by AdRoll represent a shift from being a lean startup to one that makes waves in its industry. No doubt AdRoll will be a company we’ll be watching this year.

San Francisco-based AdRoll has raised just $4 million in a single round of funding, with backing from the likes of Merus Capital, Accel Partners, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Omar Khan, the Samsung exec who often introduced the world to Samsung’s latest Galaxy phones and tablets at events, has been hired to lead mobile initiatives for Citigroup.

“Omar Khan was a valued member of the Samsung Mobile US team but has decided to leave Samsung Mobile to pursue another opportunity,” Samsung said in a statement. “Omar is not leaving to join a competitor to Samsung, and we anticipate having a continued relationship with him once he settles into his new role.”

Khan left his VP position at Motorola in 2008 to join the Samsung Mobile team as Senior VP of strategy. Many of Khan’s duties will shift Tim Rowden, VP for product development at Samsung Mobile.

Khan isn’t the first mobile executive to leave for a financial services company, as Dan Schulman, who used to head Virgin Mobile, joined American Express to lead its mobile business operations.

Citi indicated in a press release that it was excited to create the new position for Khan in order to help the company deliver its products and services to new mobile devices that are shaping world commerce.