Peter Horan is the new CEO of AllBusiness.com, the San Bruno, CA-based online business publisher, paidContent has learned. The company confirmed our information. The announcement is slated for Wednesday, a week after news that Horan was leaving The New York Times Co., where he was president and CEO of About.com.
Richard D. Harroch, the chairman of AllBusiness.com, had been acting CEO.
Horan told me last week that his next endeavor would be a web media start-up. Founded in 1999 with $20 million-plus in VC funds, in web years AllBusiness.com is far from a start-up. The company was sold to a GE subsidary (NBC Internet Inc.) in March 2000 for the internet-bubble sum of $225 million and was sold again in 2002 to a privately held corporation. Last July, it picked up $10 million from VantagePoint Venture Partners so it’s essentially in start-up mode.  At the time, VantagePoint managing director David Carlick said, “We think that AllBusiness.com is poised to become the Yahoo for small business.”
Maybe Horan and AllBusiness execs got the idea during discussions for the About.com-AllBusiness.com deal annnounced last month. (The partnership called AllBusiness.com to provide “a comprehensive Small Business Resource Center.) Stranger things have happened.