Marc Bodnick, the cofounder of Silicon Valley private-equity firm Elevation Partners, is leaving to join Quora, according to multiple reports. (VentureBeat first reported his pending departure yesterday.)
Quora is a hotly watched, much-discussed question-and-answer service that won buzz from the Silicon Valley crowd early on &8212' including from Bodnick, who proudly notes that he&'s the service&'s 137th user. It also stirred talk of a startup bubble when it raised $11 million at an $86 million valuation last March, in a round led by Benchmark Capital.
What exactly is Bodnick going to do there It&'s our understanding that he&'s agreed to join Quora, but without any set title. Fortune.com first suggested he was going to become Quora&'s chief financial officer but then backed away after hearing from a source that he might have another role. Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch speculates he might become president or CEO, which seems like a big stretch for someone whose career has been as an investor, not an operating executive.
It&'s true that Quora desperately needs a public face. Founders Charlie Cheever and Adam D&'Angelo, both former Facebook engineers, are painfully shy, as evidenced by their awkward turn accepting an award at last week&'s Crunchies, an event cohosted by VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and GigaOm, which celebrates the best products and startups in the tech industry.
Bodnick did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Benchmark partner and Quora board member Matt Cohler. We did, however, ask Bodnick, Cohler, Cheever, and D&'Angelo to answer a question on Quora about how Bodnick was recruited. (Stories about how key employees were recruited to startups are a popular subject on Quora.)
In a way, Bodnick&'s leap to Quora is a plus for Elevation Partners, which is in the process of raising a second fund. The remaining partners can spin his departure for a high-profile new job as a positive personal development for Bodnick rather than a negative for the firm. Bodnick was, nevertheless, a key partner who helped secure its investment in Yelp, the local-reviews site, and establish Elevation as a player in the highly valued world of social media after its troubled investment in Palm, the smartphone maker.
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Companies: Benchmark Capital, Elevation Partners, quora
People: adam dangelo, charlie cheever, Marc Bodnick, Matt Cohler
Companies: Benchmark Capital, Elevation Partners, quora
People: adam dangelo, charlie cheever, Marc Bodnick, Matt Cohler
Owen Thomas is the executive editor of VentureBeat.
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