Nokia loses top executive too, Mike Baker wants to seed startups instead
Written on July 24, 2008 – 5:18 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook are not the only high-profile businesses losing key executives these days. Mike Baker, who became VP and head of Nokia Interactive Advertising after the acquisition of mobile advertising company Enpocket (where he was CEO), has decided to leave the Finnish mobile giant to get his kicks elsewhere.
August 8 will be his final day with the global handset manufacturer. Baker had been busy expanding Nokia Media Network’s reach from parts of Europe and Asia to a more global audience extending to the United States, South America, and more of Europe. The network brought in marquee publishers such as Hearst, Reuters, Discovery, and AccuWeather. Nokia has named a new head of its ad unit: longtime Nokia exec Tom Henricksson will most probably replace Baker.
Baker says he learned a lot during his year at Nokia, but that deep down he’s an entrepreneur who loves building companies from scratch.
“There’s so much going on in the digital advertising space, and it’s a great time to be doing that,” he said. “I’ve long been a personal investor in companies in the space. I’m going to do a little bit of consulting, and do some investing. That will keep me busy for a bit anyhow,” Baker told ClickZ.
On a sidenote: Venturebeat will be less thrilled with the news. The blog recently added Baker to its speaker list for its first MobileBeat conference, which is about to kick off as I’m writing this.
(Via mocoNews)
I hope you like that post!
Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
