We’re very happy Kent is here! Here’s the Wall Street Journal coverage. Stan was an Adviser to Friendster while Kent was turning that company around between 2006 and 2008, so we saw Kent’s steady leadership and good judgment up close. During his tenure, Kent recruited a brand new team to rebuild the product, solved Friendster’s significant (and well documented) technical challenges, and refocused the company on the Asian market. In that way, Friendster became the #1 social network in Asia, and the 7th largest website in the world. That turnaround was backed by Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital. As the company regained traction, Lindstrom helped raise more than $30 million to fund growth and recruit the head of Google Asia-Pacific to be Friendster’s new CEO. The chart below says it all.

Kent Lindstrom Friendster Growth

At Ooga, Kent will create a company addressing opportunities in the ‘local’ space, an area currently targeted by consumer Internet businesses like Craigslist, Yelp and Google Latitude.

So welcome to Kent!  And if you’re a CEO or engineer needing a home, and you fit with the Ooga way of doing things, Ooga may be for you.

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