Tech-focused blog network NetShelter is announcing four new executive hires today, part of what co-founder and CEO Peyman Nilforoush says is a larger company shift to focus on its InPowered Platform.
NetShelter first announced InPowered back in December, saying the platform was conceived with advertisers like Samsung. The basic idea is that expert opinion has a much bigger impact than brand advertising, so brands should create ads that highlight positive editorial content — and that’s what InPowered enables. Then in May, Netshelter announced the beta of InPowered Sponsored Stories, which allows advertisers to promote these articles underneath a blog post as recommended related reading.
Nilforoush says that with the positive response to InPowered, NetShelter is devoting more and more attention to it, and that the shift is reorienting the company in other ways. Instead of just functioning as a normal ad network (albeit one that, in NetShelter’s case, was focused on infleuntial tech blogs), it’s important for that the company “figure out what is the expert word-of-mouth that is resonating.” That focus gives NetShelter more of a “product and technology mindset,” Nilforoush says.
So when NetShelter made its new hires, it was looking for people with experience in those areas. (All of the positions except for SVP of Sales are new.) Here’s a list of the appointments:
- Michele Slack, former vice president of digital media for SFGate.com, has been promoted from VP of Publisher Networks to SVP of Business Operations.
- Jeff Stephens, former chief financial officer at Hi5, is the new SVP of Finance.
- Colleen Daly, formerly NetShelter’s VP of Sales for Eastern Region and also the former publisher of Computer Shopper, is the new SVP of Sales.
- Suzie Ewing, former leader of organizational development and learning at Hitachi, is the new VP of People and Culture.
With all the talk about NetShelter’s new focus, will we be seeing a changes in its larger workforce as too? Nilforoush says probably not, because the company has been hiring aggressively in product and engineering for a while now. That will continue, he says, but NetShelter will still be hiring the people “we would need support them on the operational side, on the marketing side, the sales side.”
