Outside.in Gets Money, New CEO

Mark Josephson, who was President of Seevast Corp. (formerly Kanoodle) and General Manager of About.com, has now become the new CEO. Co-founder Steven Berlin Johnson moves into the role of “Executive Chairman.” The company also gained another round of investment from Union Square Ventures, Milestone Venture Partners, Betaworks, and some angels.

I spoke to Mark yesterday and we discussed the company’s evolution and its strategy going forward (as they say). Mark’s job now is to turn some terrific thinking about local and hard work to realize an early vision into a sustainable economic model. That involves both a syndication and a destination strategy. He indicated there will be partner announcements forthcoming. The company has an existing deal with the Washington Post.

Josephson’s experience at About.com may be particularly relevant to the company’s future strategy (hint, hint). There’s a lot of terrific information that the site is capturing and organizing. One question, from a user-experience perspective, is how to make it simpler to get to and get into, how to sift through what I’m interested in and what I’m not interested in.

The site was almost unusable when it launched and has made great strides, but still needs refinement to make it truly useful. There’s a ton of valuable “hyper-local” information there. And Steven Berlin Johnson has been particularly thoughtful about the issues surrounding local relevance.

Bringing in Josephson is also an example of a business that had a very strong founding vision but was at a point that it needed another person with a different skill set to “take it to the next level.”