Yahoo Refugee Tim Cadogan Lands at OpenX As CEO
Erick Schonfeld
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Executive recruiters are still loving Yahoo. Another former Yahoo executive has landed as the CEO of a startup. This time it is Tim Cadogan, an advertising senior vice president who left Yahoo in February. He is taking the helm at OpenX, a startup which distributes an increasingly popular open-source ad server. More details from TechCrunch UK:
London-based open-source ad server startup OpenX is biting the bullet and moving to Los Angeles. In addition, former Yahoo senior vice president Tim Cadogan will take the CEO job at the startup funded by Index Ventures, Accel Partners and others, reports Kara Swisher. OpenX has about 30 employees, including 10 developers in Poland, but not all will head to the US. This is probably a necessary strategic move for the ad company, heading to the capital of media and entertainment, but it’s a shame to see it move out of London.Cadogan was with Yahoo for five years in its search unit and was later SVP for ad products. OpenX (which recently and controversially changed its name from OpenAds) serves about 30,000 Web publishers on 100,000 Web sites in more than 100 countries. OpenX has raised about $21 million in funding since 2007. Besides Index and Accel, other investors include First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Former AOL head Jon Miller also recently joined its board as chairman.
Current CEO James Bilefield, another former Yahoo exec and British national, will stay with them “through the transition and as an adviser to the company” - which doesn’t exactly sound like a long term arrangement.
His first act should be to change the name back to OpenAds. OpenX is simply too vague and awful (although it does signal that the company may try to expand beyond simply serving ads).
