Jeremy Wright has stepped down as CEO of b5media, the blog network he helped co-found, mostly for unspecified personal reasons.
While Wright will remain a board member and shareholder of the venture-backed startup, he already has a replacement: Elaine Kunda will take over the reins as CEO from this point forward.
The decision apparently stems from the beginning of this year, when Wright took a short vacation and went offline for about 10 days. He writes:
I did it because I was tired, burnt out and recognized that my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I was working too much, unhappy at home, unhappy at work and just felt completely blah. Basically I did it because a friend asked me what I wanted my life to be… It was then that I realized not only was I unhappy, but that I had no idea what I wanted my life to be.
Wright’s soul-searching follows some shifts at b5media itself, which saw massive pay cuts for bloggers as the economy tumbled last fall. It hasn’t been fun since then.
But at least the network as a whole is holding up, with comScore estimating 5.8 million worldwide unique visitors in May, 2009, up from 2.7 million last August. I had a brief chat with Wright, and he assured me revenues and traffic are holding steady, though he refused to detail either one.
CrunchBase tells us b5media has raised $2 million in venture funding to date, but since he mentions “millions and millions of dollars” in his blog post I wanted to find out if it was actually more than that. Wright confirmed that the total amount of capital invested in the company is in fact higher than the listed $2 million, but refused to disclose any new investors, let alone any amounts.
Wright is moving on to new things, and in the meantime will run a consultancy agency of sorts along with some other people. The name of the short-term venture he will be shifting most of his attention to from now on is netmobs.
Yeah, “personal reasons” does sound pretty vague, eh? Lol. Call it “seeking balance”, cause that’s what it’s really about. And as CEO of a startup, balance is a myth. I’m hoping it’s not a myth outside of a startup!
Good luck Jeremy! It’s been great working with you, and balance isn’t a myth, but it’s definitely not a destination, enjoy the journey
Which, if I’m guessing correctly, has a much better future than your old company.
BTW: Cute names are going out of style. Not to single you out, but the cutesy name stuff is out.
I still think of you as just another guy on the SitePoint forums trying to create a successful website.
I am just another guy trying to make stuff work
Jeremy is one of the most awesome guys I have ever met (aka “standup guy”).
Best of luck to jeremy in whatever he does next.
Thanks Alden, means a lot coming from you. And, clearly, “ditto”
This kind of decision takes guts and few would do it. The truth is that not everyone is cut out for the CEO role and the toll it takes on your life.
It’s been great working with you Jeremy. Over 2 years and 1000 redbull later! Best of luck with your future endevours.
Seriously:
There are so few of us left…
Best wishes to you Jeremy and congrats on a startup well built. Look forward to working together more!
Agree Alden. Jeremy is a total “standup guy” Good luck in whatever direction you take!
Good riddance. Jeremy’s cowardice was a sickening blight upon the entire online media industry.
I love you too mate. I’ll send you the cheque I promised for posting this everywhere you go. $5/mention cool?
LOL! Wait, can I get in on that?
Keep the money, Jeremy. Use it to buy yourself a pair of balls.
Is the going rate on balls $5/pair? If so, that seems like a real steal!
I never saw Mike’s post before but it kinda made me laugh. It’s sort of like being called a weasel.
Best of Luck Jeremy, b5 wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for you.
Not sure what these 5 million and 10 million unique visitor numbers come from. Pretty baffling.
Their biggest site is problogger.net, which is directly measured on quantcast as having 247k uniques.
The rest are just estimates, but Quantcast is never that far off.
http://www.quan...aphy-school.com
http://www.quan....com/bizzia.com
http://www.quan...om/everyjoe.com
http://www.quan...m/blisstree.com
http://www.quan...splendicity.com
Even if you double the quantcast estimates (very generous) you end up with 1.1 million uniques. And that does not take into account the overlap between the sites, which would obviously exist due to cross promotion.
Furthermore, aside from problogger, these sites seem to be borderline splog quality. Why is this company even worthy of coverage on this site?
I just noticed b5 has another 80 ‘entertainment blogs’ …. like lohangroupie.com and others. I thought b5 rolled all its sites up into 5-6 blogs, but i guess these ones still exist. That said, these 80 sites don’t seem to really have any traffic. Most of them come up as n/a for monthly uniques on Quantcast.
Those 80 sites are definitely what I would call splogs. Moreover, they seem to just take paparazzi photos from real sites, like Splash News. Jeremy: Do you pay to license these photos or are you just infringing the copyright?
Entertainment is made up of 80 blogs which actually add up to significant traffic collectively. The other channels were rolled up into individual brands (Splendicity, Blisstree, EveryJoe, Bizzia).
We pay for the privilege to use celebrity photos, thanks. I’m pretty sure the 50 writers on staff for these blogs would disagree with your definition of ’splog’.
Nick, if you have issues with b5, bring them up with the team. However, those blogs combined have more traffic than TechCrunch. And the images are all paid for and licensed.
Then why don’t you plug in to quantcast and prove it? You had to cut writers’ pay and fire people because you weren’t able to keep your own internal statistics accurately. Why should anyone believe the numbers you claim?
He may be a good guy, but I don’t think they really know the best ways to make money over there. They have tons of very narrow celeb and entertainment blogs. Entertainment blogs just don’t pay the bills when you try to run them like this. Look at ProBlogger’s job board, they are still bringing on bloggers for these sites and have rigorous standards yet are offering peanuts. There is really no incentive for talented bloggers to join up.
It always looked to me like they were trying to duplicate what Darren Rowse did with two blogs and scale it across a vast number of sites. There is no way they can accomplish that by attacking multitudes of narrow niches and then trying to monetize by slapping a few banner ads on them.
No wonder he was burned out. They are trying to manage hundreds of crappy blogs and they keep on adding more! All those little blogs are the poor man’s way to scale, and it just won’t work. Seems to me that B5 would have a better go if they just decided to become an AD NETWORK. I really think they could pull that off. It’s do-able. The current course is the downward spiral. They are all in a broke and unhappy collective. That’s just my outside view.
Oh, and do you use MTV’s name and logo under license? http://www.mtvr...alityworld.com/
I can’t imagine they would want their trademark used for some random crummy blog. I don’t even see a notice at the bottom stating the name and logo are copyright Viacom.
Jeremy is one of the brightest points in the Toronto startup scene. It’s a sad day for b5 (although Elaine is a great catch!), but a happy day for the rest of us. Excited to see where netmobs goes!
Hey Jeremy,
Very proud of you for making this decision. God knows it must be very difficult to have to step away from a business that you have helped create from scratch. But after reading your blog post I totally understand why it is the right thing to do.
One thing I know for sure is that guys with the knowledge, experience and reputation that you have are a very hot commodity. At the end of the day there is no harm in taking some time off and getting that balance you are seeking.
Can’t wait till you next big adventure.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Jeremy is a good man and a good friend. Thanks to him and the strong leadership at the top of b5media, I’m still able to put food on our dinner table. Techcrunch readers are well aware of the many companies from this marketplace that are no longer here. Not all strategies work, even complicated ones like “toughing it out”. I’m very thankful for Jeremy’s leadership skills, and I wish him all best with NetMobs!
Good luck to you Jeremy. Can’t wait to see what you do with netmobs. I love the direction of b5media with Splendicity/Blisstree, etc and can’t wait to see where it goes next.
Oh.. and Nick, I wouldn’t be so crazy about quantcast. I have a site that gets 2 million unique a month and it lists it around 14K instead. LOL
No, no you don’t.
It’s OK to fail.
The first step in admitting failure is to say “I tried, but I failed.”
Who needs a hug?
You do, Jeremy.
You do.
Seriously, dude. It will be OK.
Maybe not. Who’s to say?
Comments here (well, most of them…) are proof enough that Jeremy is a very special part of the Toronto tech/startup community. Smart guy, great guy, loved guy. We all wish him the best of luck!
Quite frankly, it’s about time. Jeremy Wright has done more than anyone else to run this company into the ground, and is one of those idiotic CEO’s who talk a lot about being “passionate” with one hand and with the other hand takes away more and more money from the bloggers who make up the network. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And yes, I’m anonymous, because if you say something that’s not nauseatingly positive about b5, you get fired, and I need the money (as little as it is).
Good group, good people, good guy.. Good luck Jeremy.
Good group, good people, good guy.. Good luck Jeremy.
Best of Luck Jeremy. I know that must have been a tough decision.
Jeremy has been a great leader and successful in establishing b5media as a top-tier blog network when most of the other networks were closing down shops day and night.
I have great respect for Jeremy and wish him all success in whatever he pursue.
Best of luck Jeremy…-jitendra
Jeremy you go boy when they say you cant you proof them wrong!!