Well known engineer and product guy Daniel Raffel returned to Yahoo a year ago to help work on whatever it is that Yahoo intends to be. Fast forward to today and he’s out of there, teaming with Googler Steve Krulewitz on a new startup. The two worked together at Pioneers of the Inevitable on the Songbird media player.
What’s the new startup about? Raffel says it’s too early to tell, and I’m not even sure they’ve fully baked the idea. But they’ve already got the venture capitalists knocking on their door. I’ve had two different ones ask me for introductions in the last several weeks.
I’d say this is yet another bad sign for Yahoo (and Google?). But this is how the startup ecosystem works. People leave big companies to start new ones. Whatever these two are up to, it’ll be interesting.