We’ve just learned that ChoiceVendor founder and CEO Yan-David Erlich has left LinkedIn, just under two months after his startup was acquired by the professional social network. Erlich was a formerly a product manager at Google, Battery Ventures EIR and founder of Mogad/Social.IM.
He sold the latter to iSkoot before he founded ChoiceVendor, which he then sold to LinkedIn for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the $5 million rage.
Sources say that Erlich, who must be walking away from a large amount of equity, is leaving the company for personal reasons. We’ve also heard that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner is not particularly thrilled about this latest development — Weiner himself admitted that ChoiceVendor was primarily a talent acquisition on LinkedIn’s part.
ChoiceVendor provided realtime ratings and reviews for B2B service providers before it was folded into LinkedIn on September 23rd. In addition to former Google product manager Erlich, the company hired ChoiceVendor co-founder and former Googler Rama Ranganath, who will be staying on staff.
Update: LinkedIn representative Mario Sundar tells TechCrunch,”We support Yan-David’s decision to leave for personal reasons and wish him all the best.”
ChoiceVendor provides real-world ratings and reviews of business-to-business service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States. The company is based in San Francisco and was founded by chief executive officer Yan-David Erlich and vice president of engineering Rama Ranganath. Prior to founding ChoiceVendor, Yan-David was an entrepreneur in residence at Battery Ventures and the founder and CEO of Mogad/Social.IM which was acquired by iSkoot in 2008. Previously, he also held software engineering and product management roles at Microsoft...
With over 100 million users representing over 200 countries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients. Individuals have the ability to create their own professional profile that can be viewed by others in their network, and also view the profiles of their own contacts. Competitors to LinkedIn include sites such as XING, Doostang and Ecademy. Of note, LinkedIn won...
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