My new role at WHERE…

I have been happy to be a board director of WHERE for the past several years. Now I am very excited to be taking on an additional role as Executive Chairman as announced today.

WHERE is the leading location media company and provides a hugely useful mobile service that helps you find and share your favorite places, at home or on the road. My view is such mobile, location-aware services are at the forefront of the next-generation of consumer and business marketing, media, advertising and technology. Innovating a breakneck pace, WHERE sits at the crossroads of the local, social, mobile and technology ecosystem.

WHERE’s latest product release reflects all that. I’ve commented before about the usefulness of features that help you store, manage and share the places you like. With the current release (updated last week for Android and iPhone) WHERE now is starting to recommend local places that you and your friends are likely to find most alluring, based on algorithmic analysis of you and your friends’ preferences. It’s very cool.

And the company is on a tear! In addition to reaching four million mobile customers monthly, WHERE is also the biggest location-aware advertising network — (that hasn’t been snapped up by Apple or Google) — serving more than two billion monthly mobile advertising impressions. Although a private company that doesn’t release its financials, WHERE is both growing revenues fast (in the double-digit millions) and has been profitable for the past six consecutive quarters. That kind of performance reflects the fact the company is a great team, led at its top by a terrific CEO – Walt Doyle.

What does an executive chairman do? I’ll be working on corporate development and strategy with the team, who are doing great things in the relationships with carriers, handset manufacturers and other important partners. Mostly, I will try to be helpful to the WHERE team and its stakeholders, just as WHERE tries to be helpful to its customers. And I’ll continue with my board roles at several other private companies I am equally enthusiastic about.

I am excited to be off on the next phase of the WHERE ride!