As many of you know, this has been a year of change for me on the professional front. I took a sabbatical to plot the next move and ended up leaving Brightcove shortly after the IPO. To cut to the chase, I've joined RollUp Media (RUM), a new media publishing startup. We are building a platform to help independent publishers build digital content businesses via tools and services to help them optimize content, grow traffic and generate revenue.

I was initially enamored with Ben's vision, the team that he'd been putting together and the approach of being capital efficient in the first phase. As I got to know more and to the team, it seemed like a great fit. In fact, looking back on my last two gigs, Brightcove & Live365, there is a clear theme that almost makes RUM the logical next step.  This despite the great deal of serendipity involved in landing each of the three gigs!  Let me elaborate:

Live365's vision was to be a platform on which hobbyist DJs and broadcasters could express themselves and, ultimately, build a business. Brightcove's was similar but applying it to those wishing to express themselves via video and create an online TV channel. In the event, the path for each company led in different directions and business models but clearly being an enabling platform for others resonates in me at some level.

While at Brightcove, I met countless publishers, large and small, that struggled to build a profitable content business online. They were expert at generating quality content but often fell short when it came to figuring out the new distribution outlets, new media business models and the technologies that enable them. As the digital media tech industry has evolved, it has become that much harder to keep up with the state of the art. If ostensible 'experts' like myself had trouble making sense of it all, what of the independent publishers out there? And that's where the RUM value proposition and vision so neatly fit with my background and passion.

Who knows where this path will lead but it is indeed time to RUMble on…