Rosalind Resnick, CEO of NetCreations, will retire at the end of the year from the e-mail company she founded.
Michael Mayor, NetCreations’ president and COO, will continue to manage the company’s day-to-day operations. Resnick will advise the New York company as a consultant.
“I feel proud that the company I built from the ground up is ready to move on without me,” she said.
Resnick is an Internet pioneer, who started NetCreations in 1995 with programmer Ryan Scott Druckenmiller. She insisted on a double opt-in process that required list members to confirm their subscriptions to NetCreations’ PostMasterDirect service.
Resnick said she’s looking for other business opportunities. She is pursuing an interest in acquiring residential real estate, but said, “I’m really looking for another small company to run. I’m an entrepreneur and I’m a lot happier doing that then being an executive in a big company.”
NetCreations was acquired last February by SEAT Pagine Gialle, a Yellow Pages company based in Italy.
Saying she felt “bittersweet,” Resnick added, “NetCreations has always been the bar where everybody knew my name. On the other hand, I feel a little sad, because [this time in the life of the] Internet and NetCreations was very special. I first went online in 1983. I don’t know if I will have a chance to create another industry.”
Resnick, a former business writer at the Miami Herald, co-authored “The Internet Business Guide” in 1994. From 1994 to 1997, she was editor and publisher of “Interactive Publishing Alert,” a semi-monthly newsletter tracking trends and developments in online publishing and advertising. In 1995, Resnick created America Online’s NetGirl Forum, an online dating and relationships area, and hosted it until 1996.
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