Global Grind Shake-up, CEO out, on the way to Deadpool?

By Angela | Tue, Mar 17, 2009 9:49 pm

While working on a follow-up story to the Global Grind celebrity mass that they currently perpetrate as content I came across something much more interesting. The CEO of the company Navarrow Wright is no longer listed on the company About Us page suggesting that Wright and the company have parted ways. A cached version of the page from March 17th at 6:28pm still lists him as CEO so the split was more than likely the result of internal disagreement and definitely abrupt.

This is no surprise especially if you take a look at the direction of the product since Russell Simmons has become more involved in his new role as Editor-in-Chief, which said simply means Simmons leveraging his celeb contacts for content. In most cases to the detriment of the product. My bet is the 2, Wright and Simmons, couldn’t see eye to eye on the direction of the product and what is actually is. I’m calling this more than a hunch since it was clear tension between the 2 when they were featured in a video while at NPR studios for an interview in November of last year:

Russell’s need to constantly over talk the CEO and wrongly correct what the prodcut is a number times is more than enough to prove the working relationship of the 2. The bigger question though is now that Wright seems to be out what will Global Grind become, is it on its way to the deadpool, and will ACCEL lose their $4.5 million investment with media mogul Russell Simmons running this web start-up?

Update: Wright’s LinkedIn profile has been updated to show that his CEO and president postions are no longer current.

Update 2: Just got an email in from someone inside Global Grind confirming (what I already know as fact) Wright is no longer with the company, see below for screenshot, click for fullview:

Update 3: Wow people are coming out of the woodworks, I just got this in my email as an additional update:

You are completely correct in your Black Web 2.0 story on the shake-up, happened on March 6th. It wasn’t pretty. Osman Earlp is the new “interim” CEO & President and Andrea Gouw is the new GM. BTW, Andrea just happens to be the sister of Teresia Gouw Ranzetta who is on the Accel board.
http://www.accel.com/people/bio.php?person_id=3&group_id=1

Category: News, Web 2.0

Tags: accel partners, deadpool, global grind, navarrow wright, Russell Simmons

This post was written by:

Angela - who has written 229 posts on Black Web 2.0.

Angela Benton is the Founder and Publisher of BlackWeb20.com. Her experience spans a variety of industries including consultative relationships with companies such as UPS, Bizjournals.com, Realestate.com, and Lendingtree.com.

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Unknown

Speaking as someone who knows a little bit about how it works behind the scenes at global grind, they generally have no idea what they're doing. I'm surprised the site has made it this long, and I don't expect it to still be here a year from now unless huge strides are made.

Kim Osorio's exit from the company was very abrupt also, but that one seemed to fly under the radar in the blogosphere.

iluvblackwomen

very interesting happenings now only if the RUSH CARD could self destruct :)

jake

what's wrong with the RUSH card? I thought it was a pretty successful product?

TA

Been using a RUSH CARD for nearly 3 years now.
Have friends that have one also.

Monica

Did anyone email Global Grind? Phone them to confirm this? Conclusions based upon what you see as opposed to what you actually know as fact are two different things. I only say this because the language says "seems," but with no indication that you actually spoke to a representative of the company to either confirm or deny what you believe to be truth. In reporting what is going on the black digital world, please give us the absolute facts that have been vetted so we can take all posts seriously. I say this with the utmost respect and concern for the integrity of the site.

Angela Benton

Thanks for the concern Monica. This is fact from an undisclosed source, we don't report things that we know aren't true.

russell simmons

what's going on with T.I.'s street cred by the way? they shut down the site "temporarily" in.....november.

Angela Benton

My guess is it is in the deadpool, especially since T.I. will be incarcerated soon. We'll reach out to Rocky.

Elbert McQuiller

Was Navarrow on the "Digital Urbanites" panel at SXSW on Monday? Just trying to understand the timeline. Thanks.

Angela Benton

Yes just so happens that he was.