Online video hosting, distribution, and advertising network of choice for thousands of creators of original web series blip.tv will soon be operating under new management.
Peter Kafka at AllThingsD broke the news late last week that Mike Hudack, one of five of the company’s co-founders and its CEO with a six-and-a-half-year tenure, has been on an indefinite medical leave since at least mid-October. In his absence, entertainment industry alum and blip.tv COO Steve Brookstein has taken over day-to-day CEO responsibilities while the company’s board of directors spearheads a search for an individual with extensive new media experience to fill the role full-time.
Dina Kaplan, another of blip.tv’s five co-founders, is making her way out of the company, too. “I’m so excited for blip.tv and all that’s ahead as the company continues to scale,” Kaplan told me over e-mail. “I will be transitioning on from the company, which is in great hands now. I look forward to focusing on a new project and passion I’ve been incubating. After a respite on a bamboo hammock, I’m looking forward to fully diving into what’s next.”
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Kaplan and Hudack follow Charles Hope, one more of blip.tv’s co-founders who left the company in early September of this year to focus on personal projects, including the potluck organizing website Please Pass the Gravy. Blip.tv’s remaining two co-founders, CTO Justin Day and Cheif Engineer Jared Klett remain on board.
Brookstein explained to me over the phone how this movement among the company’s upper echelons of management is nothing more than business as usual. “As a startup becomes a mid-stage company and moves into being more of a growth business, some of the entrepreneurs and founders who put so much effort into getting the company off the ground move on to do other new and exciting things.”
While those new and exciting things from some of blip.tv’s co-founders have yet to be revealed, Brookstein was a little more forthcoming about the future of blip.tv.
A lot has changed since the company’s inception in 2005, when the online video world was watching shows like the Captain Humphrey’s Project, YouTube was not yet acquired by Google, and new media studios, talent incubators, and possible competitors and collaborators like My Damn Channel, Maker Studios, and The Collective did not yet exist. Not that the company needs to, but if blip were going to reassess its position in the market and reorient itself to pursue its goals of building a big online video business, but in a different way, now would be a good time to do so. Brookstein tells me, however, that’s definitely not the case.
“I would not consider us pivoting in any new direction. We just continue to work on blip’s original business plan,” Brookstein said. “We’re growing every year in terms of revenue, we’re serving the community for independent web producers, and we’re growing the brand.”
blip.tv photo by Laughing Squid.
