Fred Krueger, executive chairman and co-founder of Minds + Machines (LON:MMX) is stepping down according to a press release by the company today.

Fred Krueger will be succeeded as chairman by Keith Teare, with the role now being a non-executive one.

“”The changing of the guard marks the evolution of Minds + Machines from a company set up to take advantage of the liberalisation of generic top level domains (gTLDs) to one that offers both registry services – maintaining the database of all registered domain names in a certain top level domain (TLD), such as .london – and registrar services, where it helps users to register their domain names.””

New chairman Keith Teare said Krueger is leaving the business at a point “when its operational infrastructure and senior management are fully in place, its balance sheet is strong, 20 of its current 34 portfolio of uncontested gTLDs now launched and, most importantly, when there is a clear strategy in place for driving the business through to sustainable profitability in the near to mid-term.”

Fred Krueger is quoted as saying:

He would be focusing on Mozart, the website building, hosting and management service he founded:

“I don’t have the bandwidth to do both companies”.

“I plan to give Mozart my full attention. I’m pleased to say that it is integrated into Minds + Machines. It’s launching at the end of this week for all customers who buy a name at mindsandmachines.com,”.

Krueger said he is a “long-term believer” in the Minds + Machines business and he plans to keep “the vast majority” of his shares in the company.

Shares of Mind + Machines shares are down over 11% to 9.1p on the news.

Minds + Machines operates may new gTLD extensions including .London.

Fred Krueger maybe best known in the domainer community for predicting on a panel I was a member of at Namescon, that .Com would be dead in 10 years.

That prediction was made in January 2014.

According to the most recent information at Minds + Machines Fred Krueger owns over 15% of the issued and outstanding  shares of the company