Joost Loses CTO, Names Zeleski To Head Up Engineering
written by W. David Gardner, courtesy of InformationWeek A few months ago Joost, the aspiring free online TV service, had it all: it had the brilliant founders of Kazaa and Skype, it had millions of dollars in financing from blue-ribbon investors, it had the support of powerful men in the telecommunications and entertainment industries, and it had a hotshot chief technology officer in the person of Dirk-Willem van Gulik. It was preparing to give YouTube a run for its money. Now it doesn't have Gulik and the YouTube people aren't much worried either. Founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom in 2006, Joost seemed destined to succeed quickly like their two previous start-up successes -- Kazaa and Skype. Gulik has jumped over to the BBC where he will be chief technical architect of the BBC's Future Media and Technology Group. Gulik, a long-time member of the open source Apache Software Foundation, will be responsible for designing and constructing the BBC's back-end infrastructure that supports the BBC's interactive services. "I am excited to join the world's largest broadcasting corporation and hope to play a significant role in influencing how consumers find, play and share our world-class content," Gulik said in a statement. In his place, Joost said it has hired Matt Zelesko, former vice president of engineering for Comcast Interactive Media, to be responsible for all engineering operations at Joost. Zelesko, whose title will be senior vice president of engineering, will be based in New York where he will "build a second engineering hub for the company," the company said. Joost chief executive Mike Volpi noted that he had worked with Zelesko in the past. "I'm confident that he is the ideal person to lead Joost's engineering organization," Volpi said in a statement. |
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