Jeremy Allaire, a founder of the Boston online media hosting company Brightcove, is stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by the company’s head of operations.
Brightcove announced the change today in its quarterly earnings report, albeit buried beneath the usual recitations about its financial performance. Allaire will remain as chairman of the publicly traded company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BCOV]]) after the end of the first quarter.
Brightcove raised a hefty $103 million from venture investors like Accel Partners and General Catalyst, and went public in February 2012, raising some $55 million. The stock price peaked in the spring, but has been slowly receding since then.
The company made about $88 million in revenue for 2012, a 38 percent increase from the year before. It lost about $14 million for the year, with heavy spending on sales and marketing.
In its statement, Brightcove said Allaire would remain “involved in the company’s strategic planning, product development and key customer relationships.” He’s being replaced as CEO by David Mendels, an Adobe and Macromedia alum who has been serving as Brightcove’s president and COO. Allaire also was a veteran of Macromedia, creators of the Flash video format.
As we reported last summer, Brightcove has been looking to expand beyond its roots in online video—in a world increasingly dominated by mobile computing, the company was getting into several different kinds of digital content and services, including apps for brand marketing.
As it continues to make a transition, Brightcove will now have a new leader at the helm. There are still a lot of ties to Allaire, and the company (as do most in this situation) is positioning the change as smoothly as possible.
But the change didn’t appear to soothe Wall Street right away: Brightcove stock was trading down slightly after-hours.
