Snap loses CFO Tim Stone after less than a year
The loss comes amidst a string of key executive departures
TL;DR
- After 20 years at Amazon, and overseeing the acquisition and integration of Whole Foods, VP of Finance Tim Stone joined Snapchat’s parent company as its CFO in May 2018
- Stone is now leaving the company after only eight months
- He leaves behind much of his $20 million signing bonus, which was to be vested over 48 months, and his tenure was well below the average for tech firm CFOs
- Stone’s departure follows those of the company’s other notable executives including Jason Halpert (head of HR), Imran Khan (head of strategy) and Nick Bell (head of content)
$0.02
Snap was once a darling of the media industry and helped propel it forward through some key innovations. From vertical video, to bitmojis, the company was making its mark and leading the mobile revolution.
However, inexperienced leadership and a series of terrible investment decisions began to materialize. From the outright, Snap never had any real intellectual property. Disappearing video was something that any platform could accommodate, really, and that’s exactly what happened.
After Snap thwarted an acquisition offer by Facebook, the latter’s rival service Instagram began to relentlessly and shamelessly copy Snapchat’s features and wiped out any real competitive advantage (see above). Instagram had a larger and more loyal userbase, a seasoned product and leadership team and the foresight to capitalize on a rising trend.
Although Snap continued to innovate, nothing really stuck. Spectacles, Snap Map, complete app redesigns and a flurry of media partner content were not enough to solidify the company’s importance and, since Q1 2018, the company’s active user base has been on the decline (see below).
While the company has been poaching a handful of powerful tech leaders from across the industry with large sums of money, the latter clearly found that Snap is a sinking ship whose course can’t seem to be corrected. The company has pushed into e-commerce, cozied up to advertisers, released a set of APIs to encourage developer activity and much more, but no one seems to care. And it doesn’t help that a single tweet from Kylie Jenner wiped out over a billion dollars in the company’s valuation.
Snap has largely become the archetypal horror story of the starry-eyed, cocky tech unicorn. But what could they have done differently?
Early in its growth, the company should have carved out some tangible IP. They should have also been less blasé toward media companies and fostered some deep relationships to increase adoption and engagement. Further, they needed a deeper, more diverse and experienced leadership team to help guide their strategic decisions more effectively. And the list goes on…
I honestly don’t see a way for Snap to pull out of this downward spiral but the whole story is rich with lessons learned.
