Three Recently Acquired Seattle Startups, and How Their Founders Are Faring

looking for ways to take advantage of its relationships with CitySearch (an IAC property). “They’ve got a parallel audience talking about restaurants,” he says. “There could be interesting opportunities that come from that.”

Jordan Mitchell, Others Online (acquired by the Rubicon Project in June 2009, announced in September)

I reached Mitchell last weekend to ask him how being Rubicon’s vice president of data intelligence was working out, and what the Seattle team from Others Online is focusing on now. He gave me a quick update.

“I’m happy to say that the integration process (and things overall) are going extremely well,” Mitchell said in an e-mail. “We actually couldn’t be happier. The acquisition was part of an aggressive and strategic effort by the Rubicon Project to build out its platform, and deliver more value to premium Web publishers. So that’s pretty much what the Seattle team is focused on. We’ve been incredibly busy working with all of the folks in Los Angeles, New York and London, and find them to be a very gifted and capable team. And the Others Online technology was an integral feature of the recent REVV for Publishers product launch!”

Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi, iLike (acquired by MySpace in August 2009)

MySpace’s purchase of Seattle-based iLike (for a rumored $20 million) left a lot of people wondering what would happen to the popular music service. It sounds like iLike’s founders are being taken care of, at least.

Last week, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta wrote on his company blog that MySpace’s founders are being promoted to senior executive roles. Ali Partovi, iLike’s former CEO, will serve as senior vice president of business development based in San Francisco. “Ali’s deep understanding of the industry landscape will enable him to develop strategic relationships and widen our partner network,” Van Natta said. And Hadi Partovi, iLike’s former president, will be senior vice president of technology based in Seattle. “Hadi will bolster our Seattle-based development team, unify the MySpace and iLike teams under one roof, and grow the Seattle-based team behind some of our most popular products like Mail and IM,” Van Natta wrote.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.