Powerset Looking for a New CEO
At the Web 2.0 conference, Pell gave an impressive demonstration of Powerset’s search technology, although it was restricted to a limited data set. How the search engine will do against the entire Web, which is a much bigger technical challenge, has yet to be seen.
But this shakeup does raise a big question. Why step down as CEO and leave a huge leadership gap (with no COO either) before you find a new CEO to take things over? Perhaps this was done more for internal reasons. Announcing everything all at once sends a signal to employees about the direction of the company, and minimizes future surprises. The CEO search also indicates that Powerset may finally be ready to open up its search engine to the general public sometime next year. Or perhaps Powerset’s board has become impatient with the company’s progress and wants new leadership. You can read Pell’s explanation about the transition here. (You can read our previous coverage here).