Meet Blaise Zerega, VentureBeat’s new editor-in-chief

Hello, VentureBeat readers!

I am thrilled to join your community as editor in chief. My first encounters with VentureBeat date to its infancy in 2006, a time when natural language processing promised to revolutionize search, when Yelp raised its first $10 million in venture capital, and when YouTube’s “two kings” sold their startup to Google for a cool $1.65 billion. I was struck by the site’s concise and objective news reporting. I sat up and took notice at how it covered such provocative issues as how to split a startup’s equity fairly between investors, founders, and employees, and whether the promising tools then heralded as Web 2.0 would amount to anything. Anyone remember picking sides in the MySpace vs. Facebook war?

The person behind VentureBeat was, of course, Matt Marshall, a reporter whose work at the San Jose Mercury News I admired and whose pioneering news site zeroed in on the need to help business leaders make sense of the ways technology was affecting their professional and personal lives. Throughout my career, I’ve shared this sense of purpose in my own work* as writer and editor.

In my new role here, I am delighted to partner with Matt and an amazing team of talented journalists as we report on technological innovation, company formation, and the intersection of private and public capital. There’s no better story going.

In the year ahead we’ll deliver authoritative news and analysis, explaining why hardcore innovation and first-mile technologies matter. We’ll reinvigorate our core areas of coverage: mobile, social and games. For instance, we’ll sharpen our focus on all things mobile: What was once a discrete business category occupied by handset makers and carriers has morphed into a powerful, enabling platform that challenges nearly every business executive. Think about it. There’s commerce (Airbnb, Uber); there’s social (Facebook, Twitter); there’s security (Okta, Onelogin) — and in some ways, all of them can be thought of as “mobile” companies.

Further, our editorial lens will focus on the changes wrought by gaming, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. We’ll dive deep on workplace issues, the economy, the upcoming election (of course), and more — always through a technology lens, always endeavoring to inform, challenge, and delight you. Along the way, we’ll be introducing improvements like easier scrolling and better search to improve your VentureBeat experience.

Please send along your suggestions and comments to me at tips@venturebeat.com and let us know how we’re doing. We look forward to impressing you.

Thank you for reading VentureBeat.

— Blaise Zerega
Editor in Chief
@BeeZee

*I’ve learned from some of the best editors in the business including Jason Pontin, Om Malik, Michael S. Malone, and Chris Anderson. I am indebted to each of them.