Snap; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
- Snap has weathered a revolving door of executives in the past two years.
- A new guard has now been put in place.
- From Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman, to Chief Strategy Officer Jared Grusd, below is the who’s who of Snap’s new leadership team.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Snap has had a bumpy ride as a public company, weathering blowback from a botched redesign, increased competition, a plateauing user base, and a revolving door of executives in the past two years.
But things are starting to look up once again.
The stock is starting to bounce back, investors are optimistic about the company’s latest moves, and CEO Evan Spiegel has installed a new leadership team of seasoned deputies to support him through the company’s next phase.
These deputies oversee everything from the company’s evolving ad business and engineering foundation, to its relationship with investors and Wall Street. Here is the new crop of Snap executives who help Spiegel run Snap:
As Snap Inc.’s cofounder and CEO, Evan Spiegel wields the most influence and calls the shots on all product decisions.
Snap
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel founded Snapchat with Bobby Murphy while both were undergraduate students at Stanford.
The 28-year-old entrepreneur’s salary (minus stock awards) may be only $1, but he still maintains ultimate control over the company, with 50.8% total voting power due to its atypical ownership structure.
Spiegel is a hands-on CEO who not only led the company through its much-anticipated IPO in 2017, but also an unpopular redesign of its app last year that caused user backlash, investor panic, and executive departures.
Still, he is deemed by many to be a product genius, and is credited with some of Snapchat’s most revolutionary ideas, like ephemeral messages, Stories, and the vertical video format.
In recent months, Spiegel has been taking more of a backseat and delegating more responsibility, insiders say, as well as making more of an effort to open up. He led the keynote at the company’s first-ever Partner Summit earlier this month and mingled freely with attendees. The company too has been more open than ever before.
Bobby Murphy cofounded Snapchat with Evan Spiegel and has been the CTO since 2012.
Snap
Bobby Murphy is Snapchat’s cofounder and has served as its Chief Technology Officer since 2012, but has largely steered clear of the spotlight — until very recently.
Murphy, who leads engineering and research at the company, took the stage immediately after Spiegel at the company’s inaugural Partner Summit, announcing all the major updates relating to Snap’s camera and AR efforts, including its new Landmarker Lenses and AR Bar.
He has known Spiegel since they were in the same fraternity at Stanford, and is credited with building the core technical tenets of Snapchat’s app. He is Snap’s second-largest shareholder with 46.4% total voting power according to the company’s 2018 Annual Report.
The 30-year-old is also a member of Snap’s board of directors.
Jeremi Gorman helped build Amazon’s burgeoning ad business, and is now Snap’s Chief Business Officer.
Snap
With a sales and marketing career spanning 20 years, the former Amazon exec was a star hire for the company in November 2018 after a tumultuous year of executive churn.
As Snap’s Chief Business Officer, Gorman is charged with building out the company’s business strategy, including revenue, and bolstering the performance of its ad business.
Both Wall Street and Madison Avenue are bullish on Gorman, with BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield saying that brands and advertisers viewed her hire "as a meaningful step-up in management quality."
At Amazon, she was the head of global advertising sales, where she oversaw business intelligence and analytics, as well as the international expansion of Amazon’s advertising business.
Her annual base salary as of December 31, 2018 was $500,000, according to Snap’s 2018 Annual Report.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – tdua@businessinsider.com (Tanya Dua)