Kanye West to acquire Parler, parent company says
Kanye West is going to take over the company he co-founded, Parler, a few days after the new CEO says he plans to make a move to become the new CEO of the company as well as its music label Redefine.
Parler cofounder and CEO Daniel Lanois, a Canadian and the former lead singer of Montreal’s hip-hop group The Dudes, was in New York on Saturday to meet with his old partner West.
Lanois was in a meeting yesterday with potential buyers who would purchase the company for “a few hundred,” Lanois told Reuters.
He said West will buy Parler and then will try to find investors to help sell.
“For the first time, Kanye West is going to buy out Parler,” Lanois said.
West is also expected to take control of Redefine Records, which he founded, with his other partner, Jay-Z, and has yet to decide if he will change the name to simply Kanye West Entertainment.
Lanois said he is preparing to leave the company, which he co-founded, and is preparing to be a part investor in other companies.
“I’m done with Parler but I’m committed to Redefine,” he said. “I want to be involved in other projects but I will be leaving Parler entirely.”
Lanois said he was in New York to meet with West and that West had said he was interested in buying Parler.
Parler is an online platform that helps people make professional photographs by connecting them with “professional photographers,” and Lanois said Parler would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if West were to acquire it.
In addition to the Parler and Redefine businesses, Lanois also founded a business called Jotform, a photo-sharing service for social media and email.
Parler was founded in 2010 by Lanois and former Parler employee and CEO Chris Cook. It has raised more than $10 million in venture capital and has created a software that helps users make professional photographs by joining people who have photos they want to share.
Parler was sold to West and Redefine in 2012 for $10 million. The transaction was