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June 26, 2007

Topix CEO Steps Down; VP Chris Tolles Takes Spot

Michael Arrington

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This is a quick post because I’m getting on a plane to Europe, but fast-growing news site Topix has a new CEO. Rich Skrenta has stepped down, and VP Marketing Chris Tolles has taken his position. See Tolles’ blog post on this here, and everyone’s bios here.

The official explanation is below. The real explanation will come out soon, I’m sure:

Even though we were seeing eye-to-eye on what needed to be done, after the press tour and some initial conversation about where we needed to go, Rich told me that he wasn’t having as much fun right now, and looking at what we needed to do, didn’t see much opportunity for what he really loves to do — architect from the metal on up and put out the 1.0 that is so far ahead of everything else.

See our coverage of the company here. They’ve raised around $20 million in funding.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. SearchEngines Web

    June 26th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

    with such growth, it is unusual for someone to step down who, presumably had a hand in the growth :-?

  2. Jim

    June 26th, 2007 at 4:49 pm

    Wasn’t 3/4 of Topix sold several years ago? These guys have already cashed out…

  3. Who Knows

    June 26th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

    Gannett owns them I believe

  4. David Mackey

    June 26th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Topix is a pretty sweet site. I hope that whatever changes occur they will be for the best. Its better than anything else I’ve found for tracking local news.

  5. Ben Smith

    June 26th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    Congratulations to Mr. Tolles. Chris is going to an incredible job making things happen. He is a marketing machine who knows product, can sell and has more passion to win than 90% of the executives in the valley.

    This is the perfect opportunity to take what he helped create with Skrenta, Markson and others to the next level.

  6. Andy

    June 26th, 2007 at 11:29 pm

    I’ve been trying my darndest to figure out the system by which company names on techcrunch link to the company or to techcrunch article listings about the company. It’s kind of annoying to get a link to the techcrunch coverage of a company in some posts, and a link to the company itself in others. Is the logo/graphic always intended to link to the company?

  7. Michael Camilleri

    June 26th, 2007 at 11:57 pm

    Seconded Andy’s comments.

  8. Concrete Stain

    June 27th, 2007 at 6:45 am

    Yeah they cashed out -

    - and at a hint of “you can’t do what you love” a millionaire will leave.

    - and I don’t blame him; why stay somewhere - with no reason.

  9. profi

    July 5th, 2007 at 4:37 am

    Y3yGNK kak dumaesh, pomozhet?

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