![\"danr\"](\"http:\/\/kara.allthingsd.com\/files\/2009\/03\/danr.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nLongtime Silicon Valley exec Dan Rosensweig (pictured here) is stepping down as CEO and president of the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to take a new job as CEO of Chegg, the top online textbook rental startup.<\/p>\n
Both companies confirmed the move, which is somewhat unexpected, given the former Yahoo (YHOO) COO landed the job running the top gaming franchise in March<\/a> of last year.<\/p>\n It has been an eventful, but also a particularly tough year at Guitar Hero, in the face of yet another withering downturn in the gaming market.<\/p>\n While Activision introduced a new version of its flagship Guitar Hero game, as well as a new DJ Hero, Band Hero and a Guitar Hero: Van Halen version, sales were weaker overall, even though DJ Hero was the the No. 1 new game in both the U.S. and Europe.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, according to a recent report of the research firm NPD Group, sales in the videogame space were down eight percent in 2009 from 2008.<\/p>\n And while Guitar Hero gained market share as the most popular such game in its genre, Guitar Hero 5 sold slightly less than 996,000 units from September through December, according to NPD. Guitar Hero: World Tour, in comparison, sold 3.4 million units the year earlier.<\/p>\n In contrast, Rosensweig will be take over a much faster-growing business at Chegg, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif. and has become the dominant front-runner in the increasingly competitive online textbook rental space.<\/p>\n To help it maintain that lead, Chegg has garnered a huge $144 million investment kitty.<\/p>\n Top venture firms, such as Kleiner Perkins, Foundation Capital and, most recently, Insight Venture Partners, have presumably handed over that money to Co-founders Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra in the hopes of big returns.<\/p>\n The pair first started Chegg in 2005 at Iowa State University as a classified rental service, where books were the dominant item, but evolved its business to focus on actually doing the textbook rentals.<\/p>\n Its unusual name, Chegg, is a mashup of chicken and egg and its model is similar to that of innovative video rental outfit, Netflix (NFLX).<\/p>\n Chegg now serves close to 7,000 schools across the U.S. and has a cute practice of planting a tree for every textbook rented, bought or sold.<\/p>\n With 120 employees in Silicon Valley, as well as more at a warehouse operation in Louisville, Kentucky, Chegg claims it has grown over 600 percent year over year since its founding, although the startup would not provide more specifics on financials.<\/p>\n A spokeswoman said that company rented more books in January of this year than all of last year and has saved students more than $137 million.<\/p>\n Typically, a rental costs a fraction of what buying a book outright does.<\/p>\n All this activity has attracted a lot of interest from both big and small players, especially given the $10 billion college textbook business.<\/p>\n The Barnes & Noble (BKS) College division recently began testing a textbook rental program and is rolling it out to 25 U.S. colleges. And BookRenter is a smaller competitor. <\/p>\n But with Chegg, Rosensweig is getting to ride the lead horse in the space, taking over for its current CEO and Co-founder Rashid.<\/p>\n In an interview a year ago<\/a>, in fact, Rashid said: “I do not want to be a long-term CEO. My passion is solving the problem and getting the company to a place where it can be taken to the next step.”<\/p>\n While he will remain chairman, the entrepreneur has also recently closed a $7.5 million funding for a new stealth startup called Kakai. Sources have said it is focused on the even more crowded e-reader space.<\/p>\n The replacement for Rosensweig–who has been working in private equity since his departure from Yahoo (YHOO) in late 2006, has also worked at CNET Networks and Ziff-Davis–will be the Guitar Hero division’s current COO.<\/p>\n And, until he has something to say about Chegg, here is a video interview I did with Rosensweig<\/a> in September, when the new version of GH5, as well as Band Hero and DJ Hero, were launching:<\/p>\n Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n