Five leading execs from the team behind the million-selling Slingbox device are quitting EchoStar, the firm which bought them out in late 2007. The mass departure raises the possibility they’ll be working on new projects, or even starting a new company.

Those leaving include Blake and Jason Krikorian, the co-founders of Sling Media and the creators of the Slingbox. Also quitting are the current president, chief creative officer and vice president of sales of Sling Media.

Paidcontent.org, which broke the story, speculates that there’s a cultural divide between the creative upstarts who came from Sling and the more formal corporate style of EchoStar, which is best known for handling the satellites used by Dish Network.

The Krikorians invented the Slingbox to solve the problem of missing televised baseball games when away from home. The device plugs into a TV source at home and then outputs a feed to a broadband connection; users can then watch and control the picture from any Internet-connected computer worldwide.

Echostar bought out Sling Media for around $380 million in September 2007. As part of the deal, senior executives agreed to stay in their jobs for at least one year.

Since the takeover, the firm has launched the Slingcatcher, a portable device which lets you watch content from a Slingbox without needing a computer. The firm also now has an online video Web site, sling.com, and has an iPhone edition of the Slingbox service on the way.

Jason Hirschhorn, one of the execs departing, said they had decided to leave only after making sure the transition to EchoMedia had gone smoothly and then they’d had the chance to oversee Sling Media’s appearance at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

The execs aren’t saying specifically why they quit, or whether they’ll work together in the future, though Blake Krikorian says “I have not quite decided I will do next, except that I want to chill out and bounce some ideas around.”

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 2:32 pm under Technology.

Read more entries by John Lister.
Stumble It!