Recently replaced Joost CEO Mike Volpi joins Index Ventures

July 6, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

volpiMike Volpi, who just announced that he’s stepping down after a two-year run as chief executive of online video startup Joost, is joining Joost investor Index Ventures as a partner.

Volpi has spent two decades in the tech industry, starting with HP in 1989, and including 13 years at Cisco, where his roles included chief strategy officer. However, his most recent job, at Joost, hasn’t exactly been a huge success. The web video service has struggled to find an audience (not surprising given that it was competing against giants like YouTube), and said in June that Volpi would step down as CEO (while still serving as chairman), and that it would change its focus from consumer-targeted video to a “white label” video service that businesses can customize with their own branding.

In an interview with BoomTown, Volpi offers some generalities about why it’s a good time to invest, and also digs into what went wrong at Joost: “At the end of the day, the consumer offering we had was not working, a lot because we did not have enough access to content we needed to build traffic.” At Index, Volpi will be based in London and will focus on early-stage investments in the web, networking, and media.Recently replaced Joost CEO Mike Volpi joins Index Ventures

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Merl
    So is this a case of a starry eyed big company executive wanting to jump in at a red hot startup, but lacked the ability to deliver.

    Or was Joost just too far down the wrong path that it couldn't be saved?
  • I'd hesitate to say one way or another, but certainly any startup trying to make a splash in the consumer video market has its work cut out for it.