My friend from B-school and BCG, Al Warms, recently sold his firm, BuzzTracker to Yahoo. Al created a viral approach to linking news stories with leading blogs to determine the importance of a given article. You have seen the VC channel of BuzzTracker in my left rail for nearly a year now. Creating channels is pretty straight forward in that the channel sponsor & BuzzTracker (often the same) define the influential blogs in a given space as well as the key news feeds. BuzzTracker does the rest. Now, Al is not only part of BuzzTracker but is taking over as GM of News. This is another great win for Chicago and for Al. He previously sold his stake in RealClearPolitics for a nice win last year. Definitely a rising star to watch…time to buy Yahoo stock!
Here is Al’s commentary on the acquisition: Joining Yahoo!
I think you can say he is no longer a rising star, but a star. Yahoo doesn’t just buy any company. He built a great company and he will forever be considered one of the Internet greats (maybe not Jim Clark or Andresseen status yet, but good enough).
Very true!