March 14, 2008 by Nobody Fugazi
Posted in
Update: Philip Linden's official blog entry. See also comments for other articles.
This just in via Reuters - Rosedale to step down as Linden Lab CEO:
SECOND LIFE, March 14 (Reuters) - Linden Lab Chief Executive Philip Rosedale said on Friday the company he founded has begun a search for a new CEO with more operational and management expertise.
Rosedale will become chairman of the Linden Lab board when his successor is found, replacing Mitch Kapor, who will remain a board member and the company’s largest investor. Rosedale said he will also keep a full-time role at the company working on product development and strategy.
“This is my life’s work,” he told Reuters in an interview. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m still full-time on this, probably for the rest of my life.”
Second Life’s growth has slowed after a period of rapid expansion. Rosedale’s replacement will face the difficult task of regaining that momentum, working within Linden Lab’s idiosyncratic corporate culture and winning over Second Life’s impassioned users.
The shift from a visionary founder to an operations-focused CEO is typical for technology start-ups, with eBay and Google as prominent examples. A recent Harvard Business Review study found that 50 percent of founders were no longer CEO by year three, 40 percent remained by year four, and fewer than 25 percent led their companies’ initial public offerings. Rosedale, a former chief technology officer at RealNetworks, has been CEO since founding Linden Lab in 1999...
So who will be the new CEO? As the article ends:
...Linden Lab is using an executive search firm to find a new CEO, a process that Kapor could take “anywhere from soonish to many months.”
“Legally, the board hires and fires CEOs,” he added. “Process-wise, this is going to have be someone Philip is incredibly enthusiastic about.”
Honestly - this looks good. In a way, it is the end of an era - but some say that the era ended a while ago. The truth is that a visionary can plot a course, and it takes a visionary to make something out of nothing. Whatever misgivings I may have about Linden Lab, one thing is readily apparent: Second Life is here.
With the changes in culture apparent at Linden Lab, from being more responsive to user needs or as simple as updating the blog more often, Linden Lab has shown it is consolidating. This appears to be a part of that large process. I fully expect that Philip may be giving a sigh of relief as well - now he might be able to spend more time playing instead of working.
So long Philip. Thanks for all the prims. Come on over and party and enjoy what you helped build. And hire a good replacement, would you? :-)
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Re: Philip Rosedale To Step Down (updated)
Makes me a little uncomfortable to be honest, this will mean changes. Ebay are doing changes too and making a right mess of it . Tiffany Jewelry
Updates...
Rosedale faces “founder’s dilemma” and steps aside (Eric Reuters)
Reactions to the Rosedale announcement (Eric Reuters): And yes, I'm Taran Rampersad.
Second Life Consultant
404 error
Last week LL advertised an Australia-based position. I forwarded the ad to a friend with excellent quals. They emailed me about 10 minutes later. They'd clicked a link on LL's website to get details of the position and received a 404 error. They did not pursue employment with LL further. It's only a little detail. even a silly detail, but the problem is no-one at LL is responsible for ensuring that Is get dotted and Ts get crossed.
You can be a great company if you have a great vision and quality service, but if the vision becomes an all-purpose explanation for lousy service, whether its lousy coding or lousy billing, then the vision itself is failing.
SL needs a drastic review of the data architecture so that changes can be made in a modular and timely fashion, it needs employees who attend to usability, service and the customer base rather than their own coding interests, it needs a changed culture where inquiry and complaint is not invariably answered by 'Didn't happen' which then becomes 'Didn't happen and even if it did it was not our fault' and so on and so on. And every time you log on you get a message about others seeing you normally which has not been true for years.
I suspect this will improve both LL's ROI and SL's user experience, you cannot have one without the other, but it's worth bearing in mind there's a Sculley out there for every Jobs.
THE KING HAS BEEN DETHROWNED (By Himself LOL)
Think about this... It is the best move SL has made yet. New power will be taking over #2 man stepped aside. I think it would be hard to be a CEO of a big company & decide to step down. Just like sports athletes on picking that finial day to retire from the game. Bill Gates needs a new job... He needs a new CEO title..... I'm sure he would like to sit at his 100 Inch flat screen plasma 2020 monitor & play SL while he enjoys life.
This is the best news I've saw on the SL Blog in months. Now they can hire someone that has the time & focus to make Second Life better. Phillip can do what he wants to do & not have to worry about being "THE MAN" anymore. Maybe a bigger company,,, cough Microsoft, Goggle, or IBM take over & make it better.
All the problems we are experiencing in Second Life comes back to their SERVERS. they need better servers to run SL on. Maybe let Amazon start hosting parts of SL infrastructure. We can't continue to grow SL with all this LAG - MONEY BROKEN - GROUP CHATS FAILING - SIMS DIAPERING FOR SEVERAL HOURS & BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.
I've had money stolen from an item I rezzed one day & not one second did LL reply back to my support message about the money. I could care less about what I lost it wasn't too much, just was the fact I wanted to report this guy let LL know what product it was & they couldn't take 5 minutes to respond back to me. It was something I rezzed that worked before never any problems & soon as I rezzed it again after not using it for a few months it started debiting me money every 2.5 seconds.
Right now to help SL get much better they need to get this done soon..
1. NEW SERVERS or MOVE SL to hosting company to host it.
2. Better customer service.
3. When we do have problems let me know ASAP. Not blog it but relay that info to us on our SL Clients. LL acts like people watch their blog 24-7 while enjoying ourself in Second Life.
4. Get rid of all the different clients. WTF you need so many differnt versions, betas test first look windlight. this makes noobs & people get all confused. Make 1 VERSION to Linux, PC, & MAC. Make different logins for BETA HAVOK etc to log in use that service.
5. Get an auto update system. I get tired of installed uninstalling SL every 2-3 days. WTF.. How many other piece of computer software is like this. When installing most software it will ask to remove old software. Maybe some kind of update system.
Just my 2 cents on what Linden Labs really needs to focus on & not worry what we are doing NEXT SATURDAY because of lately we all know those answers..
CRASHING - MONEY BROKEN - GROUP CHAT ERRORS - LAG - LAG & a little more LAG
ThaBiGGDoGG Richez
MONEY-PYRAMID.COM
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Flip
Makes me a little uncomfortable to be honest, this will mean changes. Ebay are doing changes too and making a right mess of it so I hope their neighbours in San Francisco take note that you don't have to be too drastic.
Having said that, I've said before that LL have too many techies and not enough customer service people. Techies like to tinker, customer service likes to ensure that people aren't shouting at them. The balance at LL isn't right and if the new CEO is customer service oritented this has potential, but I'm sure there will be plenty of wailing over some of the changes that are inevitably going to happen.
Makes me a bit uncomfortable
Makes me a bit uncomfortable too. I just hope the next CEO to come along has a real understanding of our culture and has some heart in it, and not just business.