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Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

bloomberg.com

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Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#61

Post by sonnyblarney »

nwsm wrote: post #52
sonnyblarney wrote: post #33

It's obviously inappropriate, but not beyond what a young executive might do. Startups need to move quickly, changing your mind after 2 days is normal, it's just the politics (and optics) that are affected. It's kind of a rookie move ... but in a way, maybe it's the rookies advantage. Evan can get away with doing this because he's young. Consider that an older exec would have not changed his mind out of fear of 'look…

It's not about being young, it's about being inexperienced. You can make a parallel to Trump, whose supporters give him a lot of leeway on "inappropriate" decisions because he's not a politician. Being inexperienced isn't a good excuse for being a bad CEO (please give any evidence you have of him being an effective one). Realizing two days after you make an important public decision that you should have made a differ…

Yes I agree with all of that, but founding a company does give you incredible impetus.

Because Snap is a consumer facing company - we hear about this all the time.

Tons of startups do stuff like this - we just don't hear about it.

AirBnB, Stripe etc. are all making clumsy decisions daily, even some occasional big ones - but it's just not newsworthy. Neither is this item frankly, it's just kind of fluff. Nice to know but not news.

This kind of mistake is well within the entitlements of a Founder/CEO for example, I'd imagine the board won't have much to say about it. He knows he kinda screwed this up surely.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#62

Post by walshemj »

sseveran wrote: post #21
hendzen wrote: post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

S&P is now excluding such share structures from companies it considers for the S&P 500, so I would anticipate that this will get much rarer among public companies.

As does the FTSE - and I am not sure if London even allows new listings with this dual class set up any more.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#63

Post by filmgirlcw »

EpicEng wrote: post #47
whoisjuan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but my core argument wasn't trying to say Jeremi Gorman is better than Kristen O' Hara for this job. I don't have enough information to factually check that. I was defending Spiegel's decision (hence my devil's advocate opener) and why something that seems wrong for the general public may be what's best for a company like Snap at this point.

>I was defending Spiegel's decision (hence my devil's advocate opener) and why something that seems wrong for the general public may be what's best for a company like Snap at this point. And the entire basis of your presumption was that O'Hara wasn't exactly what she is ("a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for its operational excellence" who is also a new employee.) Even if you were right f…

Even worse, imagine if you're one of the direct reports or the teams below those reports, how confident do those employees feel?

I know that if it were me and I had a boss for two months -- someone I liked working with -- and we had a game plan and then my boss was promoted, that would make me feel relatively secure in where things were headed. But if two days later, my boss is no longer promoted, an outside hire is brought in (who doesn't know the team or the job -- and two months or not, that matters), and my boss has now left the company -- well, I'd feel a lot less secure in my job and in the company as a whole.

And honestly I feel for the new person coming in -- because if there is loyalty to O'Hara -- no matter how qualified Gorman might be -- that's an awkward staff meeting.

This isn't a situation where you had a few candidates in the running and one candidate thought they had the job and then didn't get it -- that happens a lot and that is uncomfortable too.

This is your CEO made an offer, told the staff, and then changed his mind. It's not speculated in the Bloomberg piece -- and this is total conjecture on my part -- but perhaps Gorman turned down the role or hadn't responded by the deadline -- then did, and Spiegel felt he had to undo his mistake. Even then, I don't know if that kind of about-face is helpful from an optics perspective or from a team morale perspective.

Even if this was the right move from a personnel perspective, it just makes Spiegel look out of his depth as a leader and manager. And in the case of Snap -- Evan is the face of the company and his perceived competency matters as much as anything else.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#64

Post by variable11 »

harryh wrote: post #24
superfrank wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't have a clue what the company needs. - He continued backing the redesign long after it was clear the public hated it - He continued to push spectacles and insist they were a "camera" company, long after the market showed there was no demand from it. - In the last 5 years he's gone from insisting that snap is a "social media company", to "a c…

just bouncing from one idea to another hoping to get lucky again. Welcome to the world of social software! I'm not convinced that anyone really knows what people want in this market.

People want an easy way to text chat and share pictures/video without getting bombarded by ads or having their private lives harvested and sold off by soulless mercenary corporations. Not that hard to understand.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#65

Post by sseveran »

hendzen wrote: post #43
stanleydrew wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Not saying I don't believe you, but I'm interested in what a company might perceive to be the value of being part of the S&P 500. Is it just a reputation boost? Or is there something concrete?

There is a massive value. It means that all SP500 tracking ETFs ($SPY, $VOO etc) have to buy your shares. It's a huge boost to your share price, especially with the rise of passive investing.

As more money has gone into passive strategies this is becoming more important.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#66

Post by antpol »

partiallypro wrote: post #40
capkutay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like every wanna be Steve Jobs completely misses the point of what made Steve Jobs great, but then use all the bad parts about his personality to justify doing horrible, stupid, crazy things.

Jobs was a genius late in life (sans on his own health,) but he also helped run Apple into the ground after early success. People tend to forget that.

Jobs never changed his vision - build stylish easy to use appliances of the future. What drove Next down was the same philosophy that made Mac lineup so popular mid 00s when the technology finally caught up to Jobs vision

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#67

Post by pcmoney »

I sort of feel like this is par for the course with SNAP. It seems to me to be a rather scummy company that got lucky despite its original intentions of encouraging people to send nudes (which is pretty sleazy IMO). The CEO as far as I can tell has never said or done anything that I would consider noble or respect worthy. His emails before he was in the public eye really show his true character. Obviously his word is worth less than nothing. Can’t wait for the company to die, just bummed that little snot got rich from it.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#68

Post by gammateam »

steve19 wrote: post #7
whoisjuan wrote: post #5

I'm going to be devil's advocate here but the CEO (especially of a troubled company like Snap) needs to take the best decisions for the company and stretch solvency and viability for as long as possible. Of course, it's unpopular to promote someone, then rescind that offer and hire someone else. But in this case, the tradeoff seems reasonable. Hiring a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for i…

That's a charitable way to look at it. A less charitable way would be the CEO is shooting from the hip and doesn't have a clue what the company needs.

he knows what the company needs: a story that last long enough for his equity sales program to complete.

and that is exactly what he is doing.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#69

Post by EpicEng »

whoisjuan wrote: post #50
EpicEng wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was defending Spiegel's decision (hence my devil's advocate opener) and why something that seems wrong for the general public may be what's best for a company like Snap at this point. And the entire basis of your presumption was that O'Hara wasn't exactly what she is ("a well connected, veteran exec who comes from a company known for its operational excellence" who is also a new employee.) Even if you were right f…

I don't think you have any facts to validate that either. I'm just going by their resumes. One is a former executive at Time Warner, the other is a former executive at Amazon. This is likely another vapid and factless analysis but it seems that Snap could benefit more from the latter. Either way my original point was that it's hard to understand decisions like this when the company's future is at stake.

>I don't think you have any facts to validate that either.

You're right; I don't have facts to fight your non-facts aside from the facts which have already been stated which show that your facts were non-facts to begin with.

As an aside, you have no facts to disprove the existence of the abominable snowman.

Re: Snap CEO Named a Chief Business Officer, Then Changed His Mind

#70

Post by georgeecollins »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #6
hendzen wrote: post #4

SNAP IPO should herald the death of dual share class listings. They sold billions in equity to the public, but gave the shares 0 voting rights. So now investors have no recourse to push for changes at the board level.

How about Buyer Beware? There's nothing illegitimate about raising money without selling voting rights. You want voting rights, want to play active investor? Buy another stock.

There are all sorts of rules you have to comply with to be listed on a public exchange. One of them used to be equal voting rights. I am fine with buyer beware, but it is really important to understand that "buyer beware" is not the philosophy that the NYSE / NASDAQ was built on.
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