The ex-Fridae.com

Towleroad.com reported last evening, “Stuart Koe, the founder of Fridae.com, one of the largest Asian websites for LGBTs, in existence since 2003, has shut its domain after conflicts with its board…”

Read more: CEO of LGBT Asian Website Fridae.com Departs, Shuts Down Domain |Gay News|Gay Blog Towleroad.

Dear Friends,

This past April, I resigned from Fridae, a company I co-founded in 2000 with Mark Henderson and Robert Yeoh with a mission to “Empower Gay Asia”. Much more than just a social networking site, Fridae has made supporting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community across Asia a core focus of our activities: supporting LGBT community groups, pride festivals, LGBT artists and filmmakers, establishing a Community Development Fund which has raised and disbursed $80,000, playing a pivotal role in Singapore’s repeal377a campaign, as well as providing core financial and operational support during the founding phase of PinkDot in 2009.

Leaving Fridae has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make. Having already devoted more than 10 years of my life to Fridae and the community, steering the company through several business cycles, and on the cusp of another phase of innovation and growth, I was prepared to commit another 20.

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle I was faced with was an unsupportive Board, namely Joan Foo Mahony, Peter O’Connor, and Guillaume Levy-Lambert, who did not share the vision I had for Fridae. This made it difficult, if not impossible for me to continue in my role. The last few months of my time at Fridae has left me disappointed and very disillusioned.

For the past 6 months since my departure, I have tried but failed to resolve outstanding disputes with the existing management. Meanwhile, the Directors have exercised a clause to forfeit all the equity that was supposed to be allocated to the management as sweat equity. As it now stands, I no longer own a single share in the company I have invested most of my working life to build.

For all this, and many more reasons, “Fridae.com” is no longer the same company that the founders envisioned. And thus with great regret, I am hereby severing the connection between the domain “fridae.com” from Fridae the company and the service provider. In anticipation of this eventuality, you will have noticed that Fridae has redirected most of its traffic to “fridae.asia” since 1 June 2011.

More will be revealed in this blog in the days and weeks to come.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you, our loyal members and supporters, without whom Fridae could not have been what it was. It has been both an honor and a privilege to serve you.

Stuart Koe
Founder
CEO 2003-2011