Volpi Out at Joost, Still Advising Ooyala

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, September 11. 2009 at 12:45 PM EDT Post a comment

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Former Joost CEO Mike Volpi has stepped down from his chairman role at the beleaguered online video company. But that won't stop him from advising video management startup Ooyala Inc.

In June, Volpi stepped down from his job as CEO as part of a restructuring that reduced headcount dramatically, but stayed on as chairman of the company. He has since relinquished that role, according to a report in Silicon Alley Insider.

The news comes just two months after Volpi announced plans to join Index Ventures as a partner in the firm. Due to Index's recent investment in voice-over-IP (VOIP) firm Skype Ltd. , some speculate that Volpi could soon be involved in running the company, either as an executive or as a member of the board.

(Volpi served on Skype's board while an executive at Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO). Hhad invested in Skype before it was acquired by eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) in 2006.)

While Volpi has stepped down as chairman of Joost, he will remain on the board of advisers of online video management startup Ooyala. (According to one source, Volpi was scheduled to speak with Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher and founder Bismarck Lepe yesterday... but we couldn't get confirmation that the meeting actually happened.)

Volpi joined Ooyala's board of advisers in February. But after Joost announced it was shifting focus from running an ad-supported online video site to selling its technology as a white-label video platform, there were some questions about whether it was a conflict of interest for him to serve on the boards of both companies.

Because both companies would essentially become competitors, some even suggested that Volpi had a fiduciary responsibility to step down from one of the boards. But with Volpi no longer at Joost, that issue has apparently been resolved.