Kathy Savitt, a longtime PR and marketing executive who founded the well-financed “social commerce” website Lockerz, has left her CEO post at the startup to take the job of chief marketing officer at Yahoo.
She’s being replaced by former Amazon and Pepsi executive Mark Stabingas, who had been serving as the startup’s operations chief.
Yahoo announced the hire this afternoon, with new CEO Marissa Mayer praising Savitt’s experience at “well-loved consumer brands like Amazon, American Eagle Outfitters and Lockerz.” Savitt will report directly to the high-profile new CEO, who fled Google for the reeling Web 1.0 company last month.
It’s clearly not a great thing when a founder and CEO takes another job, although in this case Savitt is leaving for a pretty huge gig. Lockerz says Savitt will become board chairman of the startup, and has made a personal investment in the company.
Lockerz has been trying to build a social networking/shopping destination for young people that gives members a virtual currency called “PTZ” when they upload images and otherwise interact with the site. The points are used to claim discounts on merchandise.
The Yahoo announcement says Lockerz currently counts “more than 45 million unique users.”
Lockerz has raised a ton of venture capital in the past few years—certainly more than $60 million, perhaps around $75 million according to Tricia Duryee’s count at AllThingsD. The startup’s backers include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Liberty Media.
Lockerz has used that money to snap up some other small companies, including Seattle’s Off & Away, video startup VodPod, social sharing startup AddToAny, and photo-sharing service Plixi.
