Archive for June 4th, 2008

I’m very pleased to announce that Ellen Siminoff is joining the Mozilla Corporation board of directors. She joins John Lilly, Reid Hoffman and me on this board. Ellen brings a deep understanding of the consumer Internet, experience at growing and operating organizations of around our size, an entrepreneurial spirit, experience with Board-level responsibilities and a commitment to using these talents in the service of Mozilla’s mission.

I’ve been impressed with Ellen’s ability to figure out what a traditional profit-oriented start-up would be likely to do in a given situation, and then to recognize when those actions might be modified to reflect Mozilla DNA and to move forward in a Mozilla-like way. Those of us who live with Mozilla are used to doing this. It’s not so easy to find people with deep experience in the Internet industry who take to this so quickly. I’m looking forward to having Ellen’s perceptiveness and experience on the MoCo board.

Ellen’s CV is below. We’ll schedule an Air Mozilla broadcast with Ellen before too long so you can talk to her directly.

Ellen Siminoff is President and CEO of Shmoop University, an educational website. She is also Chairman of Efficient Frontier, a pioneer of dynamic search engine marketing management services. She worked with the founders to evolve Efficient Frontier from a groundbreaking idea into the leading Search Engine Marketing agency in the world with business in the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Latin America.Prior to Efficient Frontier, Mrs. Siminoff had six adventurous years s a founding executive at Yahoo!. During her tenure, she led business development (VP, Business Development and Planning), corporate development (SVP, Corporate Development) and eventually ran the small business and entertainment business units, representing approximately 25% of Yahoo’s revenue (SVP, Entertainment and Small Business). Before Yahoo!, Mrs. Siminoff worked for the Los Angeles Times as electronic classifieds manager, where she developed strategy and implemented the newspaper’s own on-line businesses as well as a joint venture of Career Path with 5 newspaper companies.With her husband, David, Mrs. Siminoff founded EastNet, a global syndicate barter company distributing television programming to 14 emerging market countries in exchange for advertising time. She graduated Stanford’s Graduate School of Business with an MBA in 1993 after having completed a summer in corporate finance at Salomon Brothers. Mrs. Siminoff worked as a human resources management consultant in New York after graduating from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in Economics.Currently, she serves on the board of directors for US Auto Parts, an Internet retailer with more than 550,000 top-rated discount car parts; Journal Communications, a diversified media and communications company operating businesses in newspaper publishing, radio and television broadcasting, telecommunications, and printing services; and glu mobile, a leading global publisher of mobile games. In 2005 she was one of eight industry professionals named “Masters of Information” by Forbes magazine. In addition, she is on the boards of directors and advisors of a number of private companies including 4info.net, the leader in mobile SMS marketing. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including Ad-Tech, Search Engine Strategies, and Supernova.

The Mozilla Corporation is welcoming a new board member. I’ll introduce her in a moment. First I’ll describe the role of a board member, and what we looked for.

Role

The board of directors is generally responsible for the conduct and the management of affairs of a company. More specifically, they have fiduciary and ethical responsibility and accountability for what a company does. There are many opinions about specifically what these means as a couple of Wikipedia entries make clear. The main point for this discussion is that a Board is really not like the operational groups. To use more traditional terms, the Board is not like the “management team.” The Board asserts authority in the areas of governance and accountability; it provides assistance, guidance and support in strategic decisions and tactical activities. There’s no one better equipped to understand our world than the people building it every day. We look to the Board to support and improve those efforts, rather than try to micro-manage those efforts.

As in all roles related to Mozilla, we’re looking for individuals who are fundamentally excited about the Mozilla mission and what makes us different, and are highly attuned to MoCo’s role as part of a much larger community. For a board member we’re also looking for someone who can execute the fiduciary and accountability responsibilities required of a board, and is likely to work well with the existing members of the board and the people with whom the board works most closely. We’re also looking for people who understand the consumer and developer Internet world where MoCo lives, and can help MoCo perform better against our mission within this world. Operational experience in running an organization the size or scope of MoCo is very helpful. Experience in working with other organizations and companies in the consumer Internet is also a plus.

All Mozilla directors — those of MoCo, those of the Mozilla Foundation, and those of Mozilla Messaging — are volunteers. There is no compensation for being a board member. This is true of many non-profits but a difference from board membership in many private and public companies.

History

When the Mozilla Corporation was created we had three board members. Chris Blizzard left the Mozilla Foundation board and joined the Mozilla Corporation. At the time Chris worked at Red Hat. I remained on the Foundation board and also joined the MoCo board. I was (and still am) the only person to be part of both boards. Reid Hoffman joined the MoCo board to bring his insight into the consumer Internet space to moving the Mozilla mission forward. That gave us a board of three, two of whom were “outside” directors. “Outside” here means not part of the management team and employed by MoCo. When John Lilly became COO (“Chief Operating Officer”) in late 2006 he joined the Board as well, and we had a board of four.

Last fall Chris Blizzard changed jobs, moved to the Mozilla Corporation as an employee and resigned from the Board. (We’ve been extremely lucky to have Chris’ contributions in many roles over the years.) We began a search for at least one and perhaps two additional outside directors. We talked to people who have solid experience with what a board does and how good boards interact with the people making things happen on a day to day basis. This is normally called the “management team” or the “executive team.” At Mozilla we don’t use those terms as much, but the concept is the same: a good Board is not trying to manage the operations of the organization, it is providing support and guidance and governance to the group that is. In our case, that’s the Steering Committee.

Legally, Mozilla Corporation board members are responsible to the Mozilla Foundation as the sole shareholder. The Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors is the group responsible for electing board members. We talked to a bunch of people; always looking for people with a good sense for the Internet and a fundamental understanding that MoCo is a mission-driven organization dedicated to building the Mozilla vision. This is key — MoCo must provide consumer offerings that excel — that’s the way we move our mission forward. And yet we do it for a public benefit mission; not for the reasons companies usually create software.

Eventually a few people appeared whom had great expertise and we thought might fit well. John and I asked them to talk with a bunch of Mozilla folks. From there the person with the best fit spent time with the Mozilla Foundation directors. We did some due diligence, talking with people who’ve worked with her before. When everything lined up, the Mozilla Foundation board of directors formally took action to elect a new board member to the MoCo board of directors.