James M. Woods officially joins Names@Work today as its Chief Operating Officer. He’s been semi-moonlighting with us for a while, but now it’s official. That means I get to go out to dinner more, but have less money to do it with.

Here’s the press release, which was sent out on the free services PR Web and Open PR)

######################################
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Kate Zimmermann
Names@Work
(212) 254-5961
kate at namesatwork dot com

James M. Woods joins Names@Work as Chief Operating Officer

New York, NY, February 15, 2006 — Names@Work, the company that wants to change marketing on the Internet, today welcomed James M. Woods as its Chief Operating Officer. He will assume overall responsibility for making sure that the company actually delivers what the sales team promised in order to close the deal.

James, who uses his middle initial to distinguish himself from “that actor guy”, comes to Names@Work fresh from his tenure at Tucows, Inc., the world’s largest domain name wholesaler, where most recently he was responsible for their just-released Expired Domain Auction Service and Parked Pages Service.

“James brings a great combination of talents: entrepreneurial zeal, technical smarts, a thorough knowledge of the domain and blog spaces, and a long rolodex,” said Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Names@Work. “Any of these qualities by itself is rare, and when you find them all in one person it usually means some Type-A jerk. But amazingly, people like him. He’s forthright and honest. I can even put him in front of customers.”

“I am thrilled to join the Names@Work team,” said James, without a trace of sarcasm. “They’ve got a great offering in a space that’s poised to take off. Antony says we have to have ‘proprietary algorithms’ if we want to get anywhere, so I’m really the tech guy who has to dream that stuff up. But I hate the CTO title and since I’ve actually managed teams of people before without any of them quitting, we decided on COO. I don’t do financial stuff though.”

Since Names@Work is a startup and would rather take money from a loan shark than a VC firm, James isn’t making a ton of money. But he does get some as-yet-worthless equity and the chance to work from home and fly down to New York a few times a month. And with some high-profile customers already signed, that “target salary” might come through sooner than expected.

Names@Work uses a mix of search marketing, domain names, and social networks to help its clients speak the language of their customers on the Internet. Names@Work is based in New York City, with associate offices in London, Toronto, and Seattle.

######################################

Posted by Antony in: General, News