I am thrilled to announce an amazing new addition to our leadership team: Karen Levy Joining VentureBeat as our new Managing Editor. Today is his first day.
Many of you may know Crane from his most recent role as deputy managing editor at TechCrunch, but his career is a highlight reel of veteran tech journalism. His resume includes leading roles Protocol, NerdWallet, Business Insider, and CNETgiving him a deep understanding of the industry from every angle.
Hiring Crane is an important step for VentureBeat. As we shift our focus to serving you—enterprise technical decision-makers navigating the complexities of AI and data—I’m looking for a special kind of leader.
"The organizer’s dopamine hit"
In the past, a managing editor was often the last backstop for copy. Today, in a modern, data-driven media company like ours, that role is infinitely more dynamic. It is the central hub of the entire content operation.
During my search, I found myself talking a lot about two types "The dopamine hit" In our business, the author has a hit – seeing your name on a great story. And then there’s the organizer’s hit—the satisfaction that comes from building, tuning, and running a complex machine that allows a dozen different parts of a company to move in a single, powerful direction.
We were looking for an organizer.
When I spoke with Karen, I explained the vision: a leader who thrives on creating workflows, who loves to be. Liaison between editorial, our data and survey team, our programs, and our marketing functions.
Her response confirmed that she was the one: "What you said just hit my dopamine hit."
Karen’s passion is making the whole operation our own. He has a proven track record of managing people, running the newsroom, and interfacing with all parts of the business to ensure everyone is engaged. This operational rigor is exactly what we need for our next chapter.
Why it matters to our strategy (and to you)
As I’ve written before, VentureBeat is on a mission to develop. In an age where experts and companies can publish directly, it is not enough to be a secondary source. Our goal is to become one Primary source for you
How? Leveraging our relationships with our community of millions of technology leaders. We’re surveying you directly to create proprietary insights you can’t find anywhere else. We want to be the first to tell you which one Vector stores are your partner Actually implementation, what Governance challenges are most pressing for data scientists, or how Your counterparts are budgeting for productive AI.
This is an ambitious strategy. This requires a tight-knit team where our editorial content, our research surveys and reports, our newsletters, and our VB Transform events are all working from the same playbook.
Karen is the leader who will help us realize this vision. Her experience in Protocol, which was also dedicated to serving technical and business decision makers, means she fundamentally understands our audience. He is ideally suited to manage our newsroom and ensure that every piece of content we produce helps you do your job better. She will work closely with our executive editor, Carl Franzen, who continues to make news decisions.
This is a fantastic hire for a venture beat. This is another sign of our commitment to build the most focused, expert team in enterprise AI and data.
Please join me in welcoming Karin to the team.