Larry Aidem, after more than three years at the helm of indie movie-streaming service Fandor, is departing to serve as managing partner of Reverb Advisors, a boutique technology investment and consulting firm.
Aidem will continue to serve on Fandor’s board. The company has not named a replacement CEO for Aidem, who informed staff Monday that he would be leaving. While at Fandor, Aidem expanded the company’s distribution footprint; inked new licensing deals for its 4,000-title subscription VOD offering; and launched an ad-supported short-form content business.
“As he transitions to his new position, we want to acknowledge Larry’s contributions to Fandor over the past three and a half years as CEO and to thank him for all that he has done,“ Fandor chairman Chris Kelly said in a statement. ”Larry is continuing to contribute to Fandor’s growth strategy on Fandor’s board of directors as we expand our service beyond the current users and members for whom we are already a source of quality curated entertainment.”
At Boston-based Reverb Advisors, Aidem will work to identify and develop new clients for the company as co-founders and partners Chris Lynch and Cort Johnson take a leave of absence to run AtScale, a data-federation and analytics startup based in San Mateo, Calif. Reverb provides operational guidance and fundraising advisory to data-science, cybersecurity and enterprise-technology companies — and, increasingly, will be looking at content-oriented startups.
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“No one would call me a data scientist,” Aidem said. “But where we see great opportunity is with creators, more often than not tied to either pop culture or music, who want to reach a much bigger audience and don’t have knowledge of the [entertainment] ecosystem from whence I come.”
Aidem, who will formally depart Fandor at the end of September, said his move also was “about stepping off the CEO elevator. I love the idea of being an adviser to and collaborator with other CEOs rather than being one.” He has split his time roughly 50-50 between New York and San Francisco as Fandor’s CEO; in working for Reverb, he’ll remain based in NYC.
Reverb’s Lynch first met Aidem while serving on the board of RayV, an early player in over-the-top streaming video where Aidem was CEO. Aidem later served as a strategic adviser to Azuki Systems, a multiplatform video-delivery vendor acquired by Ericsson in 2014.
“Larry and I share a passion for helping entrepreneurs build companies in the sweet spot where tech and entertainment converge,” Lynch said. “There’s an opportunity for a new generation of content, democratized through new technology platforms.”
Prior to joining Fandor, Aidem was co-founder, president and CEO of IconicTV, which launched YouTube-funded premium digital channels including Jay Z’s Life+Times and Potato, an electronic dance music channel from Skrillex, Diplo and A-Trak. Before that, he spent nearly 11 years as president and CEO of Sundance Channel and held senior positions at Showtime Networks, HBO, and MCA/Universal.
Aidem currently is a member of the supervisory board of Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, one of the largest broadcasters in Europe. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and political science from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.