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News & Updates - Thursday, May 31, 2007

Trend Watch: Big Co. Execs Joining Startups

Mike Volpi left Cisco late last year despite being heir to John Chambers' throne. He could have taken a position with any number of open CEO jobs at Fortune 500 companies. But Volpi may be set to take over the CEO role at video startup Joost, says PaidContent.

Sure Joost has raised $45M from top investors and has done some impressive early deals. And sure Volpi has old ties with the Skype founders and investors who are behind Joost - Volpi was on the board of Skype.

If this move happens, we see a parallel with a move by a former eBay senior exec, Jeff Jordan to take the CEO job at OpenTable. Jordan who was president of eBay's PayPal division until his resignation in July 2006, and before that was in charge of eBay's North American operations from 2000. Like Volpi, Jordan was presumed to be a successor to his CEO - in this case eBay CEO Meg Whitman. OpenTable is a venture capital-backed startup that makes software called OpenTable System, which helps more than 7K restaurants manage electronic reservations.

We see these moves as assurance from some smart people that the venture economy has strong fundamentals.