Angie’s List names former Best Buy executive Scott Durchslag as CEO

Scott Durchslag, who led the turnaround in Best Buy’s digital fortunes, was named president/CEO of Angie’s List.

He will be replacing Bill Oesterle, the company’s co-founder, and first and only CEO.

The company, known for letting its members review local businesses, has recorded only a handful of profitable quarters and its shares have lagged below the price of its initial public offering in 2011. That background should help Angie’s as it finds itself facing new competition from tech giants Amazon and Google, which are both setting up online consumer review sites for home services. It generates the bulk of its revenue by taking a cut of these transactions and from advertising.

“I am thrilled to be joining Angie’s List“, Mr. Durchslag said.

He sees partnerships as one area for expansion.

“The company has set the bar for delivering a great local services experience for consumers and service providers alike”. These differentiators have enabled Angie’s List to grow quickly and establish a sizable, loyal base of customers and service providers. Chuang heads the Boston investment company TRI Investments, which is Angie’s largest shareholder with 20 percent of its stock.

“There’s a massive learning curve that goes into this kind of thing”, he said.

Until a year ago, Durchslag was an executive at Best Buy Co.

Before working at Skype, Durchslag was on the management team at Motorola’s mobile devices business. The Harvard link is nearly to be expected.