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Posts Tagged ‘owen van natta’

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is starting a new startup called Asana to solve enterprise collaboration, and he just closed a $9 million series A round from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz. this follows $1.2 million angel round last spring from investors including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Mitch Kapor, MySpace CEO Owen van Natta, Sean Parker, and former Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel.

Moskovitz, who was Facebook’s first CTO, founded Asana with another former Facebook (and before that, Google) engineer, Justin Rosenstein. Matt Cohler, also a former Facebook executive who is now a partner at Benchmark, will be taking a seat on Asana’s board. And two of its investors, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel, currently sit on Facebook’s board.

The company is keeping its enterprise collaboration product close to its vest. All Rosenstein will say is that it is time to replace “desktop-centric data models” with Web-based tools. “This is not social networking,” he says. “These are productivity tools. We are re-imagining the problem from the ground up with with the Web in mind from day one.”  Today, people still primarily use email to collaborate. Asana wants to come up with something better.

Sounds like Google Wave or Yammer or something completely new but in the same vein. I asked Cohler why he invested. He was even more vague: “Huge market, totally new and compelling product.” Thanks.

Asana is hiring. In fact, the new money will go primarily towards recruiting world-class engineers and product designers. Some of the perks, besides awesome investors and going after big markets, include:

• In-house yoga. Every week we do yoga as a group, including +1s, with a private instructor. (Optional, but pretty awesome.)
• Organic homecooked meals twice a day.
• Three 30″ monitors. Actually, we let you spend up to $10K on your setup, however you think best.

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AOL may be brushing up its brand image in preparation for its spin-off IPO in December, but brushing up its underlying business will take a little longer. Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth released a report on AOL today complete with an earnings and revenue model going out to 2014 (see below). He projects absolutely no growth in revenues over the next five years, and only a one-time bump in profits in 2011, due to cutting one third of its current labor costs, before declines set in again.

In other words, investors who buy AOL stock will do so because it is a cost-cutting and turnaround story not a growth story, and that will determine what kinds of investors will buy the stock.  Anmuth outlines some of the key factors which investors should be paying attention to.

Key things to watch for:
1) Time Warner shareholder reaction following the spin;
2) significant cost-cutting to drive free cash flow;
3) a new search deal beginning in late 2010;
4) whether AOL’s display strategy can gain traction;
5) trends in key metrics like Unique Visitors and Page Views.

Since all existing Time Warner shareholders will become shareholders of AOL, if a lot of them decide to dump their shares that would create downward pressure on the stock. But Anmuth feels that a fair valuation is $35 to $39 a share, giving AOL a market capitalization between $3.8 billion and $4.2 billion. As AOL goes through its layoffs and other cost-cutting, those measures should help its free cash flow by eliminating about $300 million in annual expenses.

However, AOL cannot cut its way to prosperity. The cuts will buy CEO Tim Armstrong some time to put his new content strategy into place and boost display ad revenues.

Even here, though, AOL is fighting against a downward trend (see chart above). Display ads are driven by pageviews, which are down 22 percent year-over-year across AOL’s sites to 14.3 billion. Unique U.S. visitors to AOL sites are down 11.5 percent from a year ago to 98.5 million people.

AOL also runs display ads across other sites, of course, but is able to charge a premium for its own audience. The core of that audience still comes from its 5.4 million access subscribers, who are declining but still account for about 60 percent of AOL’s EBITDA (earnings before income taxes, depreciation, and amortization). They are also AOL’s most valuable audience in terms of advertising, which explains why Armstrong felt it was necessary to hold onto the access business as long as possible.

The other big source of earnings comes from AOL’s very lucrative search deal with Google, Armstrong’s former employer. Anmuth estimates that AOL gets 92 percent of the search revenue generated by search ads on its site through its deal with Google, and that search ads account for 36 percent of its EBITDA.

Armstrong needs to renegotiate that deal and play Google off of Bing, which might end up with the business and pay AOL a higher revenue-share than the 88 percent it will be paying Yahoo through it search deal still awaiting approval. The problem for AOL is that its overall share of searches, while still a significant 3 percent in the U.S., is less than half what it was three years ago, and keeps going down.

That leaves Armstrong with getting display ad revenues back on track. Anmuth forecasts that AOL’s display ad revenue growth will lag the industry’s recovery until 2012, remaining essentially flat next year and then growing a tepid 3 to 5 percent annually after that. Fortunately, selling ads is what Armstrong does best, so he might surprise investors on the upside there. But as these numbers make clear, it is going to be a tough slog.

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Our buddy Kyle at iFixIt.com has just announced a beta version of iFixIt Answers, a collaborative repair community for gadgets. It might be a great resource for friends and family who can’t figure out how to work the TV remote.

How does it work?

You ask a question on Answers and then can follow as folks help out and answer your questions. This also creates a database of answers for multiple devices including MacBooks, iPods, and Sony laptops. It’s a good idea because Kyle has a great following of DIYers and most of them aren’t out to troll the forums with dumb questions or answers.

They pulled the trigger: Owen Van Natta is now the CEO of MySpace and will report to Jonathan Miller, the new CEO of Digital Media for News Corp.

Van Natta is a former Facebook and Amazon executive who, until today, was the CEO of a decidedly unstable music startup called Playlist. He’s got the resume to run MySpace, but as we said yesterday there are some serious questions around whether he’s the right guy. He still owns a significant part of Facebook and he’s clearly leaving Playlist, and the executives and investors he brought on board, in a bad situation. He joined that company just a few months ago. The rumor is that they’ll now be forced to shut down, although Playlist announces in a separate release that board member John Sykes, a cofounder of MTV, will take over as CEO for now.

This has been a dramatic week for MySpace, and the situation probably couldn’t have been handled more poorly. One person close to the situation described the firing of DeWolfe and the hiring of Van Natta as resembling “retarded drunk people riding bumper cars.”

We broke the news that News Corp. was looking to replace founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe on Tuesday. Later that day we confirmed the news. On Wednesday News Corp. issued a short press release that DeWolfe was leaving and that cofounder and president Tom Anderson would be moving to a new role.

We published a short list of possible candidates for the new CEO, which included Van Natta. Negotiations were concluded yesterday, we’ve heard from a source close to News Corp.

During all this time very little news has made its way to MySpace, and even the executives were left completely in the dark. Yesterday an executive of the company asked me if I’d heard any news and whether he was on the list to be terminated. That’s a sad situation.

“The clowns have taken over the circus,” he said.

More. Much more, on this story later.

The full press releases of both announcements are below:

News Corporation Names Owen Van Natta Chief Executive Officer of MySpace
______________________

Los Angeles, CA, April 24, 2009 – News Corporation today announced the appointment of Owen Van Natta to the role of MySpace Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. Mr. Van Natta will be based in Los Angeles and report directly to Jonathan Miller, News Corporation’s CEO of Digital Media and Chief Digital Officer.

A highly-regarded digital executive, Mr. Van Natta, 39, previously served as Chief Revenue Officer and Vice President of Operations for Facebook, where he helped negotiate Facebook’s $240 million investment from Microsoft. Earlier, he served as Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development for Amazon.com. Most recently, he was the CEO of Playlist, Inc., an online music company.

“Owen combines a deep understanding of social networking, a keen business sense and the operational experience to guide MySpace through its next phase of growth. I’m confident his leadership will be an invaluable asset,” said Mr. Miller. “I plan to work closely with Owen to shape our long-term vision around this vibrant community that already attracts more than 130 million users worldwide.”

“I’m thrilled to have the privilege to pilot MySpace in what is sure to be an incredibly exciting and rewarding next chapter for the business,” said Mr. Van Natta. “I feel honored to build upon the immeasurable achievements of the MySpace founders and look forward to working with Jon and the MySpace team to meet the challenges and make the most of the opportunities before us.”

While serving as Vice President of Operations and Chief Revenue Officer for Facebook, Van Natta focused on revenue operations, business development, strategic partnerships and technical operations. As Vice President of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon.com, he managed global marketing programs and strategic partnerships. He was also part of the founding team of A9.com, the Amazon.com search company, and was responsible for site operations and sponsored-link advertising. Owen earned a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Playlist Names Board Member and Veteran Media Executive
John Sykes as CEO

MTV Co-founder and Former VH-1 President Replaces Owen Van Natta

Palo Alto, Calif., April 24, 2009 – Playlist, the leading social media network where over 43 million music fans discover, create and share playlists, announced today that Board Member and industry veteran John Sykes has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer. As a Co-founder of MTV, President of VH1, and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, Sykes brings extensive operating experience and industry relationships to the company as it partners with the music industry to provide advertising, subscription and e-commerce services to music consumers.

Owen Van Natta will serve as an Advisor to Playlist.

“John was a pioneer of the MTV revolution that forever changed the music industry landscape by giving fans a whole new way to discover and enjoy music,” said Bob Zangrillo, Chairman of Playlist. “Playlist looks forward to leveraging John’s tremendous track record operating media businesses and deep relationships in the music industry as it builds out the world’s premier social media service.”

“Creating and sharing playlists has become a phenomenon in our culture. With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site where fans go to discover, share and enjoy their favorite music,” said John Sykes, CEO of Playlist. “Leveraging our newly forged partnerships with the music community, we can now offer consumers deep access to their music and provide the industry with powerful new revenue streams.”

Playlist, one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, continues to establish partnerships with the entertainment industry in an effort to offer a comprehensive collection of content that can be discovered, shared and monetized at www.playlist.com.

About Playlist
With over 43 million registered users, Playlist is the number one site in the nation where consumers discover, organize and share their favorite music across the social Web. The company leverages over 50 million user created playlists to help media companies and the record industry virally promote, distribute and monetize their content. The company is based in Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit www.playlist.com.

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