Former Friendster CEO Kent Lindstrom Joins Ooga Labs
Kent Lindstrom, former CEO of Friendster, joins Ooga Labs, the fast growing consumer technology greenhouse in San Francisco. Lindstrom led the turnaround of Friendster between 2006 and 2008, an effort backed by Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital. During his tenure, Friendster became the #1 social network in Asia, and the 7th largest website in the world. At Ooga, he will oversee the development of a new company targeting the "local" space.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 14, 2009 -- Ooga Labs, a technology greenhouse that has spun out companies such as WonderHill (www.wonderhill.com) and Medpedia (www.medpedia.com), today announced that Kent Lindstrom has joined as an executive overseeing development of a new company targeting the multi-billion dollar "local" space.
Lindstrom led the turnaround of Friendster between 2006 and 2008, an effort backed by Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital. During his tenure, Friendster became the #1 social network in Asia, and the 7th largest website in the world (data provided by ComScore). Friendster pioneered and established the 'social networking' category that now includes sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Hi5.
Lindstrom recruited a world-class Silicon Valley executive team who tripled the size of its audience by re-building the product, solving Friendster's significant technical challenges and refocusing the company on the Asian market. Asia-region advertising revenue grew over 600%, and several new business models were identified. As the company regained traction, Lindstrom raised more than $30 million to fund this growth and expansion and recruited the head of Google Asia-Pacific to be its CEO.
At Ooga Labs, Lindstrom will apply his market and business operations expertise to create a company addressing opportunities in the 'local' space, an area currently targeted by consumer Internet businesses like Craigslist, Yelp and Google Latitude.
"We're very excited to have Kent developing a new business within Ooga Labs. Kent is one of the rare executives with a proven track record in consumer Internet business operations who also has a steady, no-nonsense style that elevates the game of everyone around him. He has seen things running Friendster that few people have seen," said James Currier, who co-founded Ooga Labs in 2007.
"As an advisor to Friendster for over two years, I was able to watch first hand the work Kent did to steer that company back on track. We're pleased and fortunate to have Kent at Ooga," said Stan Chudnovsky, Ooga co-founder.
Based in San Francisco, Ooga Labs is a technology greenhouse building consumer Internet businesses. Each Ooga company benefits from the others by sharing technology, infrastructure, entrepreneurial insights, and operational approaches. Ooga companies include WonderHill (www.wonderhill.com) a casual gaming company backed by Charles River Ventures and Shasta Ventures, and Medpedia (www.medpedia.com), a collaborative model for organizing medical knowledge. To learn more about Ooga Labs, please visit: www.oogalabs.com.
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