British entrepreneur Nick Halstead, founder and CEO of IPO candidateDataSift (which has raised $78 million in funding) has decided to step down from his position and leave the company to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions and kickstart a new business.
Chief product officer Tim Barker will take over at the helm of the social data juggernaut.
Halstead writes:
"We have accomplished a lot over the past seven years since I embarked on the journey that has lead DataSift to where we are today. When I founded DataSift, based on our partnership with Twitter, the firehose was little more than a trickle. But we always had a vision to not only serve Twitter but unify, process and deliver insights from this new human-generated data at scale and in real-time. And I feel like we’re on a path to scale this idea into a world class business."
Indeed, DataSift's focus these days seem to be on Facebook, after its relationship with Twitter became somewhat ... complicated a few months ago.
Halstead says he's starting a new company called Cognitive Logic but stopped short of saying what it is and when he plans to launch a new product. We'll keep an eye out!
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