Allen Hurff, the former SVP of Engineering at MySpace who left the company earlier this Summer, will apparently be launching a startup incubator as his next venture. An anonymous tipster points us to the man’s LinkedIn profile, where his current activity is listed as ‘Facilitator of the WebSquared Era at SoCal Incubator (Name Not Disclosed)’.
So all we know at this point is that the incubator is or will be based in Southern California and that there’s no name for it yet. It might be called WebSquared actually, because as Trendslate correctly points out Hurff also reserved a Twitter account named @websquared. In case you don’t know, ‘Web Squared’ is a name that’s being kicked around as the (in my opinion just as ridiculous) successor to the late ‘Web 2.0′ term.
Hurff spent four years working for MySpace, where he and former SVP Operations Jim Benedetto were largely reponsible for building up the company’s technology team (Benedetto left the company last March). Hurff also played an integral role in MySpace’s adoption of OpenSocial, serving as Chairman of the foundation.
We’re contacting Hurff for more information and will update when we hear back.
I think people all over the world shouldn’t be founder
Thanks TechCrunch for the attribution, but to be clear we broke the story and tweeted to you our link:
http://twitter....uses/3748276234
Here is our story:
http://www.tren...ased-incubator/
Yes, I linked to your story in this post, but I wrote it because an anonymous tipster sent a link to his LinkedIn profile.
Nice writeup Robin and thanks for the link. Although, that 2nd paragraph does look a little familiar.
Looks like the race is on for the follow-up story. Best of luck to you and the TC team.
wow, what babies. lol
This is the web. Who cares?
These guys never produce squat. Oh I’m a Myspace former whatever? Are you kidding?
the innovation opportunity pool is shrinking. the major players are already in place. hopefully he is a good scout. i wish allen the best of skill. luck is out the window in todays market.
lol websquared… I realllly hope that doesn’t catch on
I cannot wait to see what happens.
quite a coincidence his last day at myspace was the same as the last day of all those those laid off.
Yea, can’t say my hopes are up. You were part of the engineering team that let MySpace become the site it is today? Wonderful.
He didn’t “jump ship”…he was tossed overboard.
Good luck.
No, “clueless Dodger” Allen left on his own terms. If you’re going to try and slander someone you might want to check your facts first.
I have it on high authority that he was “Asked to Leave” by the Executive Management. you know…like most VPs and up “leave on their own terms”.
So, my facts are more accurate than you can imagine.
Wait – you mean the beverly hills based company that bet on a Microsoft tech stack lost out to a valley-based one using linux & open source? How could that be?
So, a guy that has never ever worked for a start-up is now going to incubate them?
Um, anyone else see an issue here?