Exclusive: Start-ups are once again cool, enough for senior executives to leave the safe confines of large companies to take a flier on tiny tots. A couple of days I had reported that Jeff Graham, former CEO of Peribit and a senior executive at Juniper Networks was leaving his gig to take over as CEO of an undisclosed start-up. Now I can tell you, before everyone else that Toni Schneider, a senior executive spear-heading Yahoo’s Developer Network is leaving the company. (He has now posted about this on his blog!)
He is headed to San Francisco-based Automattic, (a company started by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress,) where he will become the chief executive of the company. He will also become a venture partner at True Venture Partners, a new early stage venture fund based in San Francisco. Toni will be joining Phil Black, John Burke, and Jon Callaghan, the general partners of the fund.
I first got to meet Toni, when I was working on a story for Business 2.0, The New Road To Riches. He was the CEO of OddPost, an email company that was doing AJAX when it was still DHTML. Yahoo acquired the company, for close to $29 million, and only recently the product has started showing up as new improved Yahoo Mail!
He helped with the Pixoria (Konfabulator) acquisition for yahoo, and has been a key component of The Flickrization of Yahoo! His thoughtful and measured demeanor made a lasting impression, and we tried to stayed in touch since. I asked him about his plans, but Toni being Toni, politely said “no comment.” The link on True VP kinda gives it away! Regardless, Matt should be pretty stoked. It is the perfect present for Matt 2.2 (Happy Birthday Dude!) Toni knows how to build a business with handful of people.
As I said in the story, build it, flip it, repeat.
Track the story on Tail Rank!
Meanwhile Yahoo has hired Susan Mernit as a Senior Director to overlook Yahoo personals.
I’m psyched for Toni, Matt and Phil – truly a pairing of my favorite people. Three incredibly talented people getting together.
Toni was CEO of Oddpost, an investment I lead in 2004. Through Oddpost, I had a chance to get to know Toni better and form a strong professional and personal relationship. Joining with Automattic and True Ventures is a great move for all involved – congrats!!!
I blogged about Toni’s move here:
http://photomatt.net/2006/01/12/automattic-toni/
thank you for your work
Akismet is a blog comment spamfiltering service, provided by the the Automattic, the company founded by WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg (together with some other core WordPress developers).
Yes and they keep everyone happy!
Akismet’s developer will go far. The reason I am using WP instead of the others.
Big Big People like Toni, Matt and Phil are getting together. Something is cooking under the table. LOL
Through Oddpost, I had a chance to get to know Toni better and form a strong professional and personal relationship
Does anyone know if he is still at Automattic after moving there?
thanks yours verf good yahoo
thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaankssss
Man, I would love to work for Automattic. It’s actually a secret desire of mine. I’m just not that much of a code monkey to really make a difference. Mad kudos to Toni, though.