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Co-Founder of Genius says “The CEO of my company must be Black”

Rap Genius founders Tom Lehman, left, Mahbod Moghadam, center, and Ilan Zechory, right

Social media sites have been caught in a stir when Mahbod Moghadam, co-founder of Genius and Everipedia broke his silence. He published an article requesting his Genius co-founders to step down from their positions in the company and get a “black CEO”. He sat down with us for a short time to discuss the reasoning behind this article. 

What Exactly Happened?

Mahbod says in his article that his co-founders, Ilan Zechory and Tom Lehman, should immediately step down from their positions. When we asked him what’s the reason behind it he said: 

“It no longer made sense for my cofounders Tom and Ilan to be CEO and President of Genius once we switched back to focusing on rap lyrics and when the site became more about the “Verified” videos and less about the community annotations. It’s not a tech company anymore, it’s a hip-hop media company. It is THE hip-hop media company – the biggest one! Why would two guys who don’t even listen to hip-hop be running it?”

Mahbod Moghadam

He also calls Ilan a “lowkey” racist following the resignation of the Genius president’s wife from her company “The Wing”. Employees of the company have notably gone on a virtual strike for massive reforms when their CEO, Audrey Gelman was found out to make racist claims against her black employees. Mahbod adds 

“Ilan needs to step down the most! As I discussed in my article, Ilan contributed nothing to Genius. The only reason he is President is because Tom has a crush on him cause he’s tall. Also his awful racist wife just resigned as CEO of her company – that’s what inspired me to write the article. I was like “wait… if SHE is too racist to run The Wing, then doesn’t her racist husband have to stop running my company too?”

Mahbod reiterates that of all people, Ilan should step down from his position. According to him “He contributed nothing to Genius”. He recalls that in the beginning of Genius, Ilan refused to quit his day job until his other co-founders secured funding. The president’s wife also further encouraged Mahbod to break his silence. He said “ Also his awful racist wife just resigned as CEO of her company – that’s what inspired me to write the article. I was like “wait… if SHE is too racist to run The Wing, then doesn’t her racist husband have to stop running my company too?”

Mahbod’s Recommendation

The Genius co-founder said that publishing the article actually pains him. He said that he feels bad for “talking sh*t”, but he feels the need to do it. He feels the need for the platform’s white leaders to “bounce”. In his article, he said that they should put Genius on sale, perhaps to big players like Apple. He also reiterated that the CEO should be black, with strong ties with the hip hop community. 

The Ideal CEO

When we asked him to name a few people who would best fit as the company’s CEO, he told us two names: Kanye West and Rob Markman. He believes that Kanye may be a longshot but he still believes that he might actually be fit for it. 

 “…He [Kanye] designed the homepage of the app for us and we ended up using his redesign without giving him equity, that’s pretty effed up. Maybe he would be down! He always seemed very passionate about Genius. Could you imagine how much the value of Genius would increase if Kanye was in charge? It would automatically be worth billions, no question. That would be insane.”

For the Rob Markman, he explained:

“Rob is the guy who replaced me at Genius. He came from MTV and knows lots of famous rappers, so he got all of them to do the Verified interviews and made it huge. He is the de facto leader already, I think he hired most of the staff – the staff he hired probably cringe whenever Tom or Ilan give company speeches since Tom/Ilan don’t know shit about hip-hop. Put Rob in charge and give him the CEO title and more equity! He can do a much better job.”

What can you say about Mahbods stance? Is it time for Genius to go back to its hip hop roots?

Opinions expressed by AsianBlurb contributors are their own.

AsianBlurb Staff
Written By

The editorial team for AsianBlurb.

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