Famous venture capitalist firm, Khosla Ventures, announced on Thursday, May 23rd that it has acquired the services of Benjamin Ling, who earlier served YouTube, Google and Facebook as an executive. Prior to Joining Khosla Ventures, Ling was associated with Badoo, as the chief operating officer of the company, where he used to look after engineering, marketing, product, corporate development, operations and business development, but he left the company just six months after joining on May 2012. Now Ling will take his position in Khosal Ventures sometime during May 2013 and take the firm to next level with his operations experience. On this occasion Founder of Khosla Ventures, Vinod Khosla said, “We are thrilled to have Ben join us as he has shown himself to be an effective product executive, as well as a hands-on leader. Our belief in bringing the best venture assistance to our companies is why we’re very excited about the newest addition to the Khosla Ventures team.”
Ling on the other hand said that, “I love the Khosla Ventures approach of backing and assisting entrepreneurs who want to make big, impactful, long-term bets – who are not afraid to risk failure in an attempt to change the world. And the breadth of network and knowledge, along with the uncompromising work ethic of the Khosla team, helps entrepreneurs get the best possible assistance.”
Old friend and former colleague of Ling, Marissa Mayer, who is the current CEO of Yahoo said that “Ben is an amazing entrepreneurial leader and has a great eye as an investor for both talent and ideas. I’m excited to see him join Khosla Ventures to find and foster the next set of entrepreneurs who will define the technology world.”
Before joining Badoo, Ben worked for several years at Google, where being the senior director of search products and local business products his responsibility was to take care of videos, books, overseeing images, finance and news. At YouTube, Ben served in the capacity of senior director of partnerships and platform and he was accountable for movies, music, news, sports along with mobile, API and TV partnerships.
Then, Ling took up the role of Director at Facebook, where he used to work on developer relations. During his stay at Facebook, he help the social website develop Facebook Connect. Apart from working as an executive in high profile companies, Ling has also worked as an advisor to startups and active angel investor. His latest investments are Palantir, Fab.com, Quora, PracticeFusion and Square. Ben has also worked on the advisory position at Pulse and Pinterest.
Source: TechCrunch, MarketWatch
Photo: Badoo
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