Press Release

Jason McCabe Calacanis Announces "Entrepreneur in Action" Position at Sequoia Capital

Calacanis Details Life After Netscape at Search Engine Strategies (SES) Chicago Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2006

Chicago, IL - Decemeber 5, 2006 - In his first and only public appearance since stepping down from Netscape, Jason McCabe Calacanis today announced that he will join Sequoia Capital, a West coast venture investment firm that helped back YouTube and Google in the past, as Entrepreneur in Residence. The announcement, made during Calacanis's keynote at Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference & Expo 2006 Chicago (www.searchenginestrategies.com), comes just two and a half weeks after Calacanis announced his departure from AOL.

Calacanis co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of widely read blogs including Engadget, in January of 2004. Weblogs Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL in November of 2005, with Calacanis maintaining editorial supervision over the network. He was appointed a senior vice president of AOL, and in June of 2006, he relaunched Netscape (an AOL Company) as a news and social networking site.

"We had an arrangement that I could leave at any time," said Calacanis of his arrangement with AOL during his discussion with Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Strategies Chicago. "I was there for just over a year."

After building up and selling the Weblogs network to AOL, Calacanis had stepped up to the challenge of revitalizing the Netscape brand by transforming it into a social news site. Detractors called it a "Digg clone" and became irate when he offered to steal away top Digg contributors with cash. Undeterred, Calacanis explains to the packed room of marketers at SES Chicago that spreading the wealth will benefit everyone. That includes rewarding bloggers with links rather than cash for finding stories.

During this morning's candid discussion, Calacanis suggested that consumer-generated content will eventually rule the Web. Calacanis predicts that Wikipedia.org will be the number one Web site within three years.

Calacanis talked openly and often about his love of the Internet, which he referred to as "the beautiful city." He stressed that the Internet is in the middle a constant battle between the forces of evil and the forces of good, as email, blogs, and social media are tainted by spam, splogs, and pay-per-post.

"We built this beautiful city-the Internet." He explained. "If someone tries to pollute this city, we need to do something about it."

During a word association game at the conclusion of the keynote, Calacanis described himself as someone always striving for the next big thing.

"At the end of the day, I'm an entrepreneur. That's what I'm good at; starting companies," explained Calacanis. "Now, I just have to figure out what to build."

For full information on Search Engine Strategies Chicago '06 and other conferences in the series, visit www.searchenginestrategies.com.

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Editorial Contacts
Ann Shannon
PAN Communications
978-474-1900
ses@pancomm.com

Matt McGowan
Incisive Media
212-457-7794
matthew.mcgowan@incisivemedia.com