More Changes at B5Media: Chad Randall Fired? [Updated]
In an unconfirmed lead Duncan Riley, Blog Herald founder and b5media co-founder, reports that Chad Randall and B5Media have parted company and Randall went MIA.
Chad Randall, Vice President (Sales) for b5media is no longer with the company, The Inquisitr has learned and confirmed through an online source.
The circumstances behind his departure though have not been disclosed. What we do know is that at the time of writing Randall has not been replaced, and we are unable to find the position advertised online either at the b5media blog, or through an extensive Google search.
Without 100% certainty, the evidence points to Randall being put off unexpectedly. He’s removed b5media as his current job on LinkedIn, he hasn’t replaced it with a new job. He’s also disappeared online, not updating his Twitter account or blogs since he left the company; that’s more significant than it sounds because one of Randall’s blogs is dedicated to Twitter marketing, and he’s a heavy Twitter user. If he was leaving the company for another position or on happy terms, he would have likely mentioned it somewhere publicly, but instead there is silence.
The unconfirmed news follows shortly after Jeremy Wrigth’s step down as CEO and seems to be the result of cost-cutting management and the (unconfirmed) news that the blog network might be selling off its business blogs.
Although still bound to a NDA for the ‘early b5media days’, Duncan recently went as far as speculating that VCs, who have invested more than $2m in b5media, are looking to sell the blog network.
I’m still legally restrained on talking about the early days, but there’s nothing in that paperwork that says that I can’t speculate on the company today. I don’t know the new CEO at all, but I’ve done some reasonable background reading, and I can come to only one conclusion: she was parachuted in by the VC’s to prep the company for sale. Whether she’s up to the task I don’t know, but with the three year anniversary of the first funding round coming up, both investors will undoubetedly be starting to look for an exit in the next 12-24 months.
Update: Duncan RIley has updated his post, reporting that Randall left the company to take a 1 year long break.
Edit: If you’re looking for awesome ‘Pop Corn material’ read this entry from January 2009, especially the comments.
