SurveyMonkey has appointed a new chief executive officer, Zander Lurie, replacing the former CEO Bill Veghte. Lurie is leaving his previous position as an executive in GoPro to join one of the world's largest online polling companies.
In May 2015, Luri was once the temporary leader in the survey company, when it lost its CEO, Dave Goldberg, who had been in the position since 2009. SurveyMonkey then employed Bill Veghte, the former executive in Hewlett-Packard. Veghte is replaced by Lurie starting this January.
Ben Spero, a SurveyMonkey company director, said, "SurveyMonkey has long benefited from Zander's presence on the board, and we are thrilled for him to become CEO''. He then continued as stated in Bloomberg, "We are confident that Zander's vision, leadership and experience at transformative companies will help SurveyMonkey extend its leading position in the market."
Both Veghte and Lurie will remain near around the previous companies they had served before. Veghte will join the SurveyMonkey's board, and Lurie will still be in the GoPro board while being assigned as a SurveyMonkey director.
Besides announcing Lurie's leave, GoPro also reported their revenue that did not meet the company's target. GoPro also mentioned that the company was reducing its employees until 7%. According to Variety, GoPro only reached around $435 million during the 4th quarter last year, whereas the expectation started from $500 to $550 million for the quarter, and $1.6 billion for the annual revenue.
GoPro had been benefited from Luri through his breakthrough transforming the thrill-seeking video of GoPro users into one more company's revenue resource. This leaves questions on how GoPro will make strategies to develop the segment.
Lurie served as an executive at Guggenheim Digital Media before going to GoPro. He was also an executive at CBS before that, serving as CFO and head of corporate development.
As mentioned in Recode, Veghte is leaving the SurveyMonkey CEO position due to some disagreements with investors, including Spectrum Equity, Google Capital and Social Capital, Tiger Global Management, T. Rowe Price, Baillie Gifford, and Morgan Stanley Asset Management.
He said, "We had a variety of options and, as I worked them through, the investors wanted to pursue a different path. We felt the best way for me to serve was as a board member and I am super excited to help Zander."
Meanwhile, Luri stated that there were no extreme discrepancies there. He was sure that they only needed to have "a different strategic direction", and mentioned that they had what he called as "a core business that is unbelievably healthy". And that becomes his main focus now.
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