Ryan Block to leave AOL Alpha for new venture, Drew Lesicko to head unit in his place
As of this week I'm no longer at Aol … Tweets: Drew Lesicko / @drewtodd01 : Can't thank you enough for your mentoring and leadership over the past year. Best of luck in your new adventure! https://twitter.com/... Ryan Block / @ryan : Hey, SF startup friends! Does anyone have a few spare desks for me + a couple people to work? Thanks in advance! (Email on my site.)
Context & Ripple Effects
The departure lands mid-retrenchment at AOL. In January the company restructured its ad sales staff in response to programmatic advertising, and on this same day sources reported AOL plans to spin out CrunchBase with $5M-$7M from Emergence Capital. Ryan Block — who previously co-founded GDGT with fellow ex-Engadget editor Peter Rojas — now leaves the Alpha unit for a new venture, tweeting for spare desks for himself plus a couple of colleagues.
AOL Alpha continuity falls to Drew Lesicko, whose public thanks to Block for a year of mentoring confirms an internal promotion rather than an external hire.
First-order effects
- Drew Lesicko takes charge of AOL Alpha immediately, while Ryan Block exits with at least a couple of team members to scout workspace in San Francisco for his unnamed startup.
Second-order effects
- Block's move adds to a measurable AOL-alumni founder pipeline — GameAnalytics had already installed an ex-AOL European MD as CEO after its $5.5M Series A — making former AOL operators a recruiting target for venture-backed startups.
- Coming alongside the reported CrunchBase spinout, the exit signals AOL's non-core product units are increasingly being handed to successors or spun loose rather than expanded.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, legacy media-internet companies shed product talent to the startup ecosystem while their own centers of gravity shift toward automated, programmatic revenue operations — a structural hollowing-out of internal product teams.
The trend: AOL's product leadership is churning toward founder roles even as the company itself consolidates around programmatic-advertising economics.