New chief for Boards.ie

Boards.ie, the online forum that deals with, well, just about anything and everything, has a new chief executive.

The website, owned by Distilled Media, the company that runs the Daft property website, has hired Sean Coughlan, the founder and current boss of the charity Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI).

Coughlan, who has a degree in theoretical physics, surely won’t need to draw upon the works of Stephen Hawking to figure out it is high time Boards.ie fulfilled its obvious commercial potential.

The Daft brothers, Eamonn and Brian Fallon, first bought into Boards in 2008. So far, they have failed to light its financial fire.

The site has 70,000 active daily users, making it one of the most popular websites in the country.

Its latest accounts, however, which cover the year to the end of 2012, show it had accumulated losses of €445,000 and rising, dropping more than €100,000 in those 12 months alone.

It also had a hole of €65,000 in its balance sheet, a full four years after the Daft boys first got involved.

That’s quite surprising, considering they are among the sharpest web entrepreneurs in the State.

Perhaps Boards.ie is about to crank up its commercial engine?