[Foundation-l] New board members and officers

[Gregory Kohs]

Geni said:

" Omidyar Network? They were involved with a 4 million funding round for
wikia back in 2006 no?

http://web.archive.org/web/20060422054638/http://www.americanventuremagazine.com/news.php?newsid=941

Appointing yet another person with wikia links looks kinda dicey no?

-- 
geni "

++++++++++++++++++++++++


Matt Halprin only joined the Omidyar Network in July 2008, long after the
Omidyar money was shuttled off to Wikia, Inc.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/matt-halprin/4/791/490

So, it's doubtful that Matt Halprin had any close ties personally to having
made the decision to fund Wikia, Inc.; however, he is now a Partner at
Omidyar, charged with a team that "pursues investments in Social Media" (
http://www.omidyar.com/team/matt-halprin )... so, he's almost undoubtedly on
top of the Wikia return on investment, since Wikia is a Top 100 social media
website.  Being that we're all friends here, maybe Halprin could let us know
if Omidyar has yet recouped its capital outlay in Wikia?

Still, I have to agree with Geni -- it does indeed look very fishy to have a
new WMF board member who's a partner at a firm that invested some portion of
$4 million into the $14 million privately-held firm of the "Emeritus Chair"
of the WMF.  In fact, you'd be hard pressed to explain how this is just a
"coincidence", being that there were probably more than a thousand other
equally-qualified stars of social media who could have been selected, who
have not a single tie back to funding Wikia, Inc.

-- 
Gregory Kohs