Powerset Looking for a New CEO

is it because they have not delivered any real product?

If powerset wants, they can call us. We’re focusing on search now. We have something that they could release right now that would make them money.

I have experience being an exec, but they are looking for that “So, do you wanna sell sugar water for the rest of your life” type guy who will do nothing and bring in the deals, all the while piliging the company of resources.

I am not that guy. I am a good coder though, and I wouldn’t mind licensing our tech to powerset if they wanna see it. I guarantee they do not have what we have, and that’s in a good way, not in the they would never want it anyway way.

I’ve got some spare time!
What’s the pay and package?

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Fake Steve, they may have a tough time finding a name brand CEO. You’re supposed to wait until you have revenue before you go out and shop for one. At least that’s the norm. They could quasi beg somebody like Steve Jobs did, but you saw what happened with that. Then they’ll be all like “I didn’t wanna work here anyway so wth”.
I wish I could show powerset what we have.

He ’stepped down’ because PowerSet is still vaporware while his competitors are ’shipping’ real products today:

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybi.....kiped.html

step one to the hype bubble popping on this

why does powerset need a new ceo? they are in build mode. this is exactly the time when the most technically-minded people should be in charge.

the notion that a visionary/technologist/builder must step aside for a “seasoned” ceo has been debunked so many times in reality (netscape, yahoo, excite, apple, etc etc etc) one must wonder why it is even engaged at this point.

my guess is if anything, powerset has just turned into a garage sale

“He ’stepped down’ because PowerSet is still vaporware while his competitors are ’shipping’ real products today:”

You have to realize the complexity of producing a search engine compared to some CSS based MySQL site where you expose user created content via XML with a little SMS salted in.

It’s not the same thing. It’s not even close.

It took the 2 guys at Google over 10 years. Techcrunch is making it seem like an eternity because they are jumping the gun with tech that is in beta and alpha stages.

They do so much press on it that when it does finally come out, people are already sick of it and let down.

1) Yakov, you act like you have shipped a real product. A tag cloud on top of a yahoo XML search feed is not a real product.

2) Erick Schonfeld, is your new job to go around ripping off venture beat articles. They posted this yesterday, and you are posting it here like your found it, even including the links to this dudes blog.

3…2…1…and Deadpool.

I realize that this is a complex product, no one is doubting that, but come on, it’s getting ridiculous that they are getting this amount of press for nothing.

Please check a Quintura search cloud for site search in thr sidebar at AltSearchEngines http//www.altsearchengines.com

You would be suprised should you know the other websites that are implementing Quintura for site search

I’ve said this numerous time. This is a BS company. They haven’t even launched a product yet. Add them to the deadpool.

wow Pell’s blog post is a huge load of BS…

“steve was so awesome, he’s such a huge part of the company, man was steve great, holy cow we love steve, we had such rapid growth with steve, our progress was great with steve, steve had to go.” makes perfect sense.

so what’s the real story here? can’t you guys dig up the dirt? or do they have vapordirt, too?

this doesn’t seem like a positive thing to me, Erick, despite how you and Barney are trying to spin it. when a founder leaves, that’s a bad sign. get the real story.

Well. A CEO change alot of things. Look what Eric did to Google.

Thinker

Steve Newcomb is gone forever. maybe 2007 isn’t good year. I guess he delete some good stuff inside powerset.

Here’s the dirt of the VC world, every so often, when a startup’s founder step down as CEO, made by the decision of boards (VCs and Founders), the intend is to bring in an external CEO ( good friend of VC ) with promise to bring the company to the next level. This CEO more than often will hold a board seat and thus strengthens the decision making power of the VCs, since CEO more than often has to suck up to the VC since he got the job through who? of course no other than the VC. Pell, this is the first signs of erosion of your company, take charge! before it’s too late.

“Bringing in a new world-class CEO will help the company grow and take advantage of the great opportunity ahead of us”

Looking forward to seeing who the world-class CEO is..

How about a round of speculative guesses on the comment thread…

LOL… man, this is so full of dirt.. I’ll go with

My guess… EIR at Foundation Cap
Steve Waterhouse

Ron Kaplan - “Chief Science Officer” - what kind of job is that? isn’t he kind of redundant since Pell’s taken over his job? Probably should change that title to Director of Engineering, don’t you think, Pell?

Right or wrong, I think it is pretty ballsy to step down and not let your pride and egotism get in the way of your venture. As with a lot of things, product or not, time will tell.

Good first step. Don’t stop now!

While it’s not a big deal that the founding CEO, a technical guy, moves over to CTO to bring in new management blood, it’s never a good sign when a brand new startup has a CEO, COO, CTO, /and/ product architect. There is just no way all those chiefs can positively contribute. Everyone should be working only on the product, they can’t all be chief.

So eliminating the COO role is a good move. But CTOs are always borderline unnecessary too. It’s a glamor title, but often the guy in that role ends up spouting ideas and never being held accountable for product, schedule, and quality, which falls on the vp of engineering.

And WTF is a chief science officer? what do you do? teach physics? How’s that for burning half a million bucks a year?

Here’s my recommendation for Powerset: Don’t stop here. Cut some more chiefs. Don’t hire a CEO until just before revenue starts. Then find one that’s sales focused. Leave one of the two guys accountable for the product until then. Any other position that isn’t direct-line responsible for delivering the 1.0 product, coding the product, or testing the product should be immediately eliminated. You get to have one guy who sits on the side and works out the tricky algrithmic problems that crop up, but he ain’t a chief of anything.

btw - I’m not voting for the deadpool on this one. I just expect them to develop some obscure niche over 8 or 10 years where they can apply the technology for some income. It won’t be sexy like consumer search, but it’ll eventually pay the bills. PurpleYogi just had an exit on that schedule.

Powerset fails. Let’s continue discussing this when it launched.

This seems an odd move to come so soon after they tweaked the hype machine. Contrast with Google where Schmidt was “added” to the dynamic duo to give the company a respectability they would not have had otherwise. Powerset is not really even on any Wall Street radar screens yet, let alone needing a shakeup to prepare them for IPO.

So, why would this happen? It seems pretty obvious to the extent you can know anything about companies these days - their semantic technology is not scaling to the full web. The early “great results” are going to be reproducible when they are taking millions of queries per minute. IBM Webfountain has given better results than Google for years - but it has never been scalable.

Please take notice: These guys haven’t even launched their product yet. Why does a founder step aside *before* the product launches? Does this make any sense on any level? So what if he’s a tech guy. Launch the tech product then step aside after the successful launch. This guy got crushed because they *can’t* launch their product and he’s taking the fall.

Is Powerset available at Ace Hardware or Home Depot?

@8, I found out about this independently and posted it as soon as Pell put up his blog post, which was this morning. I don’t know when VentureBeat wrote its story, its current post is dated 11-2 (i.e., today).

When these things happen it is not unusual for more than one outlet to report about it. In any case, I did not read the Venturebeat story until after i posted mine. But thank you for the vote of confidence.

@25

I agree with you 100%. I’ve got your back on this one. Let me translate your diplomatic message to @8.

It goes something like this..

@8 listen you turd. This is the internet. Updates and developments in the market travel quickly. Do you think that a AP release is exclusive to the first group that picks it up? Do you think that a post on a blog is only intended for one reader? Thank you for your feedback and for reading my post. In the future my distinguished turd please be nice.
Happy Holidays!
Erick

http://www.powerset.com/search.....0new%20CEO
%20who%20can%20save%20powserset%20from%20the%20deadpool

Results: Internal Error

“Damn it, can some one get this thing to work, we need it!”

@27

One more time:

http://www.powerset.com/search.....20deadpool

The link actually works

“Damn it, can some one get this thing to work, we need it!”

Too bad, i was in S.F when they demo test to public about 3-4 months ago ? although i’m not impressed with it but it’s interesting to see it…tsk

Nat
http://www.workersinc.com

Finding the right person for that job will probably be a challenge. I was impressed with a CEO who actually has a school to train CEO’s for the enormous role they must fill. http://www.youareaceo.com The founder is CEO Michael E. Parker and he covers the basics but then some: organization management, relationships skills, and business fundamentals ie financial organization.

Erik,

Can you please add these guys to the deadpool???

Rationale:

(1) No product shipped yet
(2) CEO gets whacked
(3) All Hype no substance

Someone tell me I’m wrong!

@27 thanks for links…

My visionary… I think Steve newcomb need money to support himself. He overwork and accidentally delete powerset source code. Maybe he was fired by Anti-Google CEO.

http://www.powerset.com/team

Steve newcomb photo is gone. He was co-founder of powerset.

Not a great start for them and at the end of the day they don’t have a product. Ultimately from what I’ve seen this company doesn’t really have anything worth shouting about so I think they will find it difficult to find someone who is “world class” to fill this void. Strange things I must admit.

On a second point though, creating a search engine isn’t easy. Someone I know has been building one for two years, but there’s serious knowledge needed these days just in the sheer scale of creating both the crawler, but also processing and accessing the results.

There was this rumor that Pell and Newcomb had a falling out because one slept with the other’s wife. which one is the one?

Powerset can no longer get VC arounds. Here’s why… Delay, taking too long, and losing co-founder. You need 20-39 year old in order to get VC.

Can you imagine failing before ever launching your product? This person, Barney Pell, must be feeling pretty crappy right about now.

As countless previous commenters remarked, Powerset badly needs to ship something to the people.

But, considering that they even stopped sending out their newsletters, I think that ‘better search’ is R.I.P.

politicians who died in office. Maybe purple dinosaur “Barney Pell”