We covered the booming business of Ben Lerer’s Thrillist recently, and this week brought two big hires as the company morphs into a more serious enterprise.
News broke last night in The Wall Street Journal that Eric Ashman, Chief Financial Officer at the Huffington Post will leave that post to take up as the first official CFO at Thrillist. It’s a step up from the part time book-keeper Lerer was relying on prior to this.
Thrillist is also looking to get deeper into the world of data mining, something the Huffington Post has mastered with its own audience, and Mr. Ashman will help spearhead that effort.
The other significant hire this week was Richard Blakely, who is leaving Gawker after five years as their video guru. Mr. Lerer tells Betabeat that Blakely will act as a liaison between the advertising and editorial teams and lead the effort to monetize content.
