THK's Leadership Resignations to Usher in Stronger THK Integrations?
I heard about the changes in THK leadership this morning in an IM from an old friend who used to work here at MarketSmart Interactive.

The meat of the situation is this: “Think Partnerships [parent company to MSI] today announced that Chief Executive Officer Gerard M. Jacobs and Chairman T. Benjamin Jennings have tendered proposed resignations as officers and directors of the Company.”

I've been with MSI for almost 2 years now and watched with excitement as THK acquired companies with whom MSI had clear synergies. From my position in the MSI rank and file - I'm not privy to THK info - I've yet to see lasting and significant relations between our sister companies.

From my limited understanding this has largely to do with the fact that each company within THK is responsible for its own revenue and there is NO WAY for recognizing revenues that we pass off to a sibling company.

So when Ben Jennings and Gerry Jacobs wrote: "the Company has now reached an inflection point where we believe the vast majority of its management time and attention will likely be devoted to internal operations and capturing integration synergies among the Company's operating units," I about jumped out of my seat.

The key reason for my jubilation? As Ben and Gerry step down it appears that Scott Mitchell will take the reins: "Scott Mitchell will continue to serve as the Company's president."

To understand why this is exciting to me, read Scott Mitchell's autobiography:

"...after skipping high school and going straight to college I earned two Bachelor degrees and three Masters degrees before the age of 21.

I began my career working for Arthur Anderson as a technology consultant. And after six years I became the youngest partner in the firm's history. Two weeks after making partner I left the firm to become co-Founder of (tunes.com) where I launched what was then the largest music network online and included sites like rollingstone.com, thesource.com and downbeatjazz.com.

The company raised $48 million of venture capital and was successfully sold to a public company for $180 million after just two years of operations.

After that I worked for Barry Diller and launched hsn.com for an interactive corporation's Home Shopping Network and served as their Chief Technology Officer for two years, during which time I grew their business - their online business into a $250 million revenue and $25 million EBITDA business.

I then focused my efforts on growing the online dating company formerly known as (Web Capades) which I merged in August 2004 with Think Partnership."

(Originally from here but there's a more accurate PDF of the transcript here.)

Scott Mitchell has proven time and again that he GETS the web. One caveat I have is that he's been strong in ecommerce plays rather than online marketing services.

Still, as my morning counsel pointed out to me, Mitchell's been making the rounds and studying online marketing companies for the past 2 years... for a guy who skipped highschool and got 3 masters degrees that should be plenty of time to have a clear concept for how things should work.

I don't want to speculate too much here - I have no insight into the THK board and whether or not Mitchell's moving into a stronger role there. It's my ardent hope that he does though, as I think he could engineer profitable and happy arrangements between companies.

I think of him as something of a GData for our disparate services. Cause we could seriously use some Litmus syndication over here at MSI ;)

Scott Mitchel Update:
Allan "Phat in Philly" Slider pings me with Scott Mitchell's Wikipedia post. "He has been referred to as being the first “killer Dillers” (people who Barry Diller mentored and who later became media executives in their own right) in the online world."

Update 2:
allan---web: i am not in philly
gfrenchwbs: oops
gfrenchwbs: where are you
allan---web: pittsburgh
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |