One of Yahoo’s key chief technologists, Sam Pullara, is leaving the company to become an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital. Pullara was the technologist who headed up the development of the the Yahoo! Open Application Platform, the Yahoo! Query Language and Yahoo! Pipes. His departure follows that of veteran Yahoo senior executive Ash Patel earlier this week.

Back in 2008, Yahoo was making a big push to open itself up to developers, and Pullara was one of the champions of that strategy. He was also Yahoo’s representative on the OpenSocial Foundation, which sought to create a counterweight to Facebook.

Pullara has been an EIR before. In 2004, he held that position at Accel Partners and created a startup called Gauntlet Systems, which he sold to Borland in 2006. At Benchmark, he will be looking for new startup opportunities. He will also be working again with Benchmark partner Peter Fenton, who was at Accel when Pullara was there. Pullara’s last day at Yahoo will be on April 1. Yahoo has no plans to hire a replacement.

Today, another Benchmark EIR, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, was named CEO of Eucalyptus Systems.

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• SAM PULLARA
• YAHOO!

Person: Sam Pullara

Website: sampullara.com

Companies: Yahoo!, Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Twitter, Bagcheck

Sam Pullara is an engineer at Twitter. He joined when the company acquired Bagcheck, a startup he co-founded. Previously, Sam was an EIR at Benchmark, an angel investor, and the former Chief Technologist at Yahoo!. Before that, he worked as the Head of Application Platform at Yahoo!, where he focused primarily on grid computing, virtualization, large scale reliable data systems and the implementation of Yahoo’s open platform strategy. Before joining Yahoo, Sam worked as CEO of Gauntlet Systems, which...

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Company: Yahoo!

Website: yahoo.com

Launch Date: January 1, 1994

IPO: December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services. Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...

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