Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

In the Vault: Former Yahoo Exec Hilary Schneider Set to Join IPO-Bound LifeLock as President

According to sources, former top Yahoo exec Hilary Schneider will be named president of LifeLock, which offers theft and fraud protection services to individual consumers and businesses.

The move — which is set to be announced soon, said sources — is an interesting one on a lot of levels.

First, the Tempe, Arizona-based LifeLock has just filed to go public at the end of August on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “LOCK.” The company — which is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins — seeks to raise $175 million in its IPO.

Obviously, bringing in Schneider adds an experienced public company exec to the team, which is headed by CEO and Chairman Todd Davis.

Perhaps more interestingly, it that it is a major shift in focus for Schneider — who left Yahoo in 2010 and has since been doing consulting work with TPG Capital on a wide range of digital companies.

She has largely been focused on online advertising in her career and was much recruited for a range of such opportunities after departing Yahoo. Instead, she chose to work at TPG, where she actually helped the powerful private equity firm think through a possible bid for Yahoo at one point.

Schneider left Yahoo after clashing with then-CEO Carol Bartz — Bartz was later fired — over a range of issues at the Silicon Valley Internet giant. Schneider had headed media and advertising sales there for its key U.S. division.

Before Yahoo, Schneider was a top exec at media giant Knight Ridder and, earlier, was CEO of Red Herring Communications and also CEO of Times Mirror Interactive. The Harvard Business School grad started her media career at the Baltimore Sun.

I am awaiting comment from LifeLock on the pending appointment.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work