A Bell Rings and Another Yahoo Gets His VC Wings

Yet another departed Yahoo executive has landed at a well-known venture capital firm–this time with its former music head David Goldberg’s new stint as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital. Earlier this week, Andrew Braccia, Yahoo’s vice president for consumer Web search, left the company to become a principal at Accel Partners.

The warm embrace of a plush VC office has always been an attractive option for entrepreneurs, either permanently or in the kind of deal Goldberg has, where he can ruminate on his next move in comfort. In an email he sent around yesterday, he wrote, “I will be looking at opportunities in consumer media and assisting Benchmark portfolio companies.”

Goldberg, 39, announced he was leaving Yahoo in February, but actually left this past week. He came to Yahoo six years ago, when it bought the online music site he co-founded in 1994 called Launch Media, which became Yahoo Music, one of the biggest music destinations on the Web. Goldberg and his Launch execs also started Yahoo’s subscription service two years ago.

Goldberg said he left to “get back to his entrepreneurial roots” and was excited about all the activity he sees percolating in the digital media space. “I am going to start a new company or I am going to buy one,” he said. “I have a bunch of different ideas and I want to think about them for a bit.”

He might not restrict himself to the music space this time, because he said the entire consumer media space is being impacted by digital technologies as never before. “A lot of traditional media businesses still need to be transformed … because a lot of them cannot get out of their own way even now,” said Goldberg. “But they have great assets, even if they are being underutilized, and that’s a real opportunity.”