Up in Smoke-Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick out

In one of the stranger stories around the online video space today, Jakob Lodwick, one of the Vimeo founders, was fired yesterday from IACInteractive, the parent company of his video sharing community website.

This is how he put it over on his blog yesterday:

As of an hour ago, I am no longer affiliated with IAC/InterActiveCorp/Connected Ventures/Vimeo.

Goodbye to everyone at CV.

And now, I will turn off my cell phone for the evening and catch up with everyone later!


Seems a bit abrupt. Even Jakob's girlfriend, Julia, was shocked that he had left Vimeo or at least played it up. Julia wrote on her blog that she couldn't believe she found out about Jakob leaving his job from his blog. Just a few days before she described Vimeo as "Jakob's baby" on her blog. Sounds like he might need Brittany's lawyers if he wants to get that baby back ;-)

I don't know the details of his departure but it's been a really weird story so far and pictures of Jakob with a bong in hand probably don't make the IACI guys feel bad about the departure. Here is some press he got at TechCrunch which shows him holding his bong on his goodbye post over at his blog which he has since removed.

Jakob was a partner of Connected Ventures, whose members Josh, Zach and Ricky started three successful companies CollegeHumor, Busted Tees and Vimeo, all of which are now owned by IACI who bought CV last year. Co-founder Zach also recently left company.

A bit weird but to each their own. I am sure Jakob will do very well regardless and best of luck.