Second Life founder Rosedale to step down as CEO

By Adam Pasick

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Linden Lab, the company that runs the popular virtual world Second Life, said on Friday it has begun a search to replace founder Philip Rosedale with a chief executive who has more management expertise, following a time-honored start-up tradition.

Rosedale will become chairman of the Linden Lab board when his successor is found, replacing Mitch Kapor, who will remain a board member and the company's largest investor alongside Benchmark Capital. Rosedale said he will also keep a full-time role at the company working on product development and strategy.

"This is my life's work," he told Reuters in a phone interview. "I'm not going anywhere, and I'm still full-time on this, probably for the rest of my life."

Second Life is an online community with its own currency and a growing economy, where users teleport and fly around the virtual world as characters called "avatars."

The virtual world's growth has slowed after a period of rapid expansion. Rosedale's replacement will be tasked with regaining that momentum, working within Linden Lab's idiosyncratic corporate culture and winning over Second Life's impassioned users.

The shift from a visionary founder to an operations-focused CEO is typical for technology start-ups. Kapor himself went through a similar experience as the founder of spreadsheet pioneer Lotus Development Corp, stepping down as CEO in 1986.

"This little company turned into this enormous thing with thousands of employees making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And it was awful," he said in a 1990 interview with Wired magazine. "So I left. I just walked away one day."

Rosedale, a former chief technology officer at RealNetworks Inc (RNWK.O: Quote, Profile, Research), has been CEO since founding Linden Lab in 1999.