PeerIndex Hires Former Klout VP To Scale Up, And Cash In On Influencer Boom

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Thursday, July 19th, 2012
garthhead

PeerIndex, the Klout-like influencer ranking startup which this year picked up a $3 Million Series A round, is beefing up its team and scaling up operations. Specifically, it’s hired Garth Holsinger, Klout’s ex-VP of Sales and Business Development, to help accelerate their marketing and partnerships. This makes for a significant move, especially since they’ve lured him away from the very agency he set up after he left Klout.

They’re also bringing on David Galbraith (former co-founder of Moreover and co-founder of Yelp) and Rikk Carey (ex-Napster and co-founder of Plaxo) as advisers. These are pretty heavyweight names. And tonight they also go live with a campaign with on-demand limo service Uber. Busy busy.

Garth told us he left Klout 5-6 months ago to start his own agency in NYC focused on influencer marketing. However he joined PeerINdex because he “realised the analytics were rock solid, and climate in UK is ripe for this,” he told us by phone tonight. “Agencies are pouncing on Influencer Marketing and major brands are now ready to act. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm.”

Founder and CEO Azeem Azhar says that while Klout concentrates on the U.S., PeerIndex plans to scale outside and win the ROW market (Rest Of World). The startup is now running influencer campaigns in multiple languages in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Germany and India.


Garth Holsinger is currently CEO/ Founder of The Global Startup Project (http://theglobalstartupproject.com) and startupsforgood.org. He also consults, through his agency Working Man, connecting startups with major brands and organisations. He is a partner in a co-working space in New York City, Internet Media Labs. For the past three years, he was Sr. Vice President, Global Sales & Business Development at Klout (http://klout.com). He is a writer/ producer with six original television series including Wake Up Call on ABC, Moral...

→ Learn more
Company: PeerIndex
Website: peerindex.com
Launch Date: July 7, 2009
Funding: $3M

PeerIndex is the standard for evaluating and understanding the social capital a person has built online.

→ Learn more