PubSub CEO Steps Down, Acquisition Rumors

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1. Salim Ismail
   

   March 8th, 2006 at 8:00 am

   Ha! Mike, not only do you run the best parties, but you’re #1 in creating and swirling rumors…

   The best quality a startup CEO can have is to know when to transition. At PubSub, the target was a significant funding event. Planning for that transition is the first thing I do in all my startups, and was especially important at PubSub due to the staggering opportunity that exists for the company. There are very few times in a career that one gets to work on something world-changing. PubSub is that big.

   Since day one, Bob and I have planned for me to lead the company to a certain ‘event’ and then have me exit. A number of events required some crossing of that chasm and in October, I brought Gus into the company as Interim CEO and we’ve been working together to hand off more and more responsibilities for several months now. You’ll note that we started appearing together at events and then biz dev calls followed and so on. The Structured Blogging announcement was one example of this successful cooperation.

   Regarding your ‘power struggle’ with Bob, there are always tensions between the business and technology thought leaders in any company. At PubSub, this tension was perceived to be higher, but only because of the size of Bob’s ideas. We are not building a better hubcap here, we’re building the whole dang highway. I have never met anyone who can operate with such profound strategic thought. Actually, it was Richard Treadway who came up with the best analogy we have for what PubSub is doing, and it goes as follows: The internet is evolving into a complex organism. In that growing entity, retrospective search (e.g. Google, Technorati, Feedster, etc) are the memory. If you want to know what happened yesterday or a week ago, you need a memory. PubSub, or prospective search, is the nervous system. This is required when you step on a nail and your brain needs to know mucho fast. A memory does not help you with that - they are two distinct and different functions.

   A true nervous system requires instant awareness and instant notification. That’s what we’ve built at PubSub. Bob’s genius is to have architected this real-time awareness at internet scale.

   And not to be diminutive, but because RSS is based on a request/response architecture, it’s basically a memory trying to simulate a nervous system.

   All that is happening is that PubSub is going through puberty. Having successfully handed all responsibilities over, it’s time for me to take a holiday. And a long-deserved one at that!

   See my blog post for more details…

2. David Evans
   

   March 8th, 2006 at 12:57 pm

   Nice memory/ CNS analogy, most people think of PubSub and Technorati and BlogPulse as blog ranking systems, albeit with some search and neuron ganglia built in. Wish it was as stable as the much maligned Alexa rankings, too much wiggle room in the stats between the different services.

3. Michael Arrington
   

   March 8th, 2006 at 5:09 pm

   Salim, you say a lot without really saying much - I look forward to the off the record conversation that I suspect we’ll have soon. Good luck with your next move.

4. Kevin
   

   June 6th, 2006 at 6:49 pm

   Ohhhhh No Mr.Mike Arrington ,Why you want it to be off the record ?
   you guys should have the conversation here
   (( we all need to know ))

5. Jon Davis
   

   June 7th, 2006 at 9:35 am

   “Salim, you say a lot without really saying much”

   LOL. Well said Michael. I finished reading his mini-essay/comment and all I got out of it was… nothing.

   The summary of his post so others don’t have to waste their time:
   “I’m a great CEO. Bob and me were buddies but we had our tense moments. Something about nervous systems with a couple of business buzzwords thrown in. Be sure to see my blog!”

   If your blog is as ‘well-written’ as your comment here, I think I’ll pass.