Herb Scannell, founder and CEO of online video studio Next New Networks, will move out of his CEO post and full-time into the chairman role, the company announced today in a blog post.
Mr. Scannell will stay on as CEO until his replacement is found.
The company said he will focus on the big pictures, deals and connections in the new role. He founded the company two years ago and has helped raise funding from venture capital firms including Goldman Sachs, Velocity Interactive, Spark Capital and Saban Capital.
“Thus far, we’ve been video-centric, built our network model, and got distribution and advertising up and running,” Mr. Scannell said in the blog post. “Now, I want to see us go beyond video by building up our Web capabilities in key categories, and move the company to make our sites and new offerings even more robust for communities to gather and interact. Hence, I plan on bringing in someone as CEO who has ‘been there, done that’ in building a Web business, and who will work with me as executive chairman.”
Other CEOs of online video companies have stepped out of the CEO position in the past year, such as Dmitry Shapiro of Veoh Networks, now the founder and chief innovation officer. The move typically lets the founding CEO focus on strategy and a replacement concentrate on growing the business.