Tech Industry Moves: January 2023

With 2022 proving to be a challenging year for many technology and games companies, 2023 is showing signs of increased confidence in the market with a number of interesting candidate moves;

 

Internet and Fintech

US-based exercise equipment company Peloton appointed Leslie Berland as CMO. Berland is a former CMO at Twitter.

Spotify appointed Ed Couchman as its new Head of Advertising Sales for Northern Europe. Couchman most recently worked for Snapchat as regional General Manager of DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), the Netherlands, Nordics and the UK.

British fundraising platform Crowdcube announced Co-Founder and CEO Darren Westlake has stepped down and COO Bill Simmons and CCO Matt Cooper became co-CEOs. They both have held C-level roles for more than 8 years in the company.

Meri Williams became Chief Technology Officer at Pleo, a fintech business that helps companies to manage their expenses. Williams served Monzo Bank as CTO until 2020.

UK-based electric van startup Arrival appointed Igor Torgov as its new CEO. Igor held has held leadership positions in companies like Microsoft and Bitfury earlier in his career.

Vista, a company providing printing, design and marketing services and ERP software for SMEs, appointed Florian Baumgartner as its CEO. Before joining Vista, Baumgartner was Director Consumables at Amazon.UK-based money management app company HyperJar named Rob Rooney as CEO. Rooney had previously worked for Morgan Stanley for 32 years.

Crypto platforms provider Kraken announced Dan Ciporin as an Independent Director. Ciporin was the CEO of Shopping.com and is a well known investor in technology companies.

Performance marketing platform provider Moloco appointed Ben Jeger as Vice President of EMEA. Jeger is a former Managing Director of AppsFlyer.

Vehicle marketplace Carwow hired Ben Carter as CMO. Carter has held marketing leadership roles at Betfair, Just Eat, and Purplebricks earlier in his career.

Mollie, online payment service provider for merchants, appointed Koen Köppen as CEO. Köppen was previously CTO of Klarna for five years and joined Mollie in the same position last year.

UK-based business banking platform provider Tide appointed Vinay Ramani as the new role of Chief Product Officer. Ramani had served Meta as Director of AR Development Tools and Ecosystems most recently.

PrimaryBid, a technology platform company connecting public companies and investors, appointed Fiona Richards as COO. Richards worked at companies like HSBC and Deutsche Bank earlier in her career.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba appointed Wu Zeming as its CTO. Zeming joined Alibaba in 2002 and has worked on its mega shopping festival, 11.11.

European payments solutions provider for marketplaces, Mangopay appointed Ronen Benchetrit as its CTO. Benchetrit had served dating app Bumble and Zopa, both as CTO.

Investment app company Freetrade appointed Shahid Naveed as its new CTO. Naveed was Vice President of Engineering EU at ATG (Auction Technology Group) before joining Freetrade.

Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters became Co-CEOs of Netflix. Ted Sarandos has worked there for 23 years and held Chief Content Officer, whereas Greg Peters was COO and Chief Product Officer most recently.

Lingokids, developers of an app that teaches kids English, appointed Ric Gravina as Director of User Experience. Gravina is a former Head of Design at Gymshark.
 

Games

Developer of online casino games Hero Gaming promoted Sarah Stellini to become its new CEO. Stellini was Head of New Business at Betsson Group and joined Hero Gaming as Commercial Director last year.

Plarium, the Israeli-based game developer known for Raid: Shadow Legends, appointed Schraga Mor as CEO. Mor was formerly MD within gambling giant William Hill.

Snowprint Studios, a mobile games company best known for Legends of Solgard, appointed Jonathan Winters as CMO. Winters is a former Director of Performance Marketing at Miniclip.

SYBO, a Danish mobile game company best known for Subway Surfers, appointed Philip Hickey as CMO. Most recently, Hickey had served EVP Brand & Marketing at Seriously Digital Entertainment and VP Marketing at Rovio Entertainment.

Gaming Realms, a B2B developer of gambling software, appointed Mark Segal as its new CEO. Segal had served as CFO for almost a decade at the company.

888holdings, a gambling company owning several brands including William Hill, appointed Anna Barsby as Chief Product and Technology Officer. Barsby held technology leadership roles in companies such as Morrisons and TUI.

Josh Yguado was promoted from COO to CEO at Jam City, a mobile free-to-play games company. Yguado is a Co-Founder of the company and has worked there for 13 years.

Roblox hired Tian Lim as VP Product and Creator. Lim joined the company after five years at Google, where he led product and UX at Google Play and had served technology and product leadership roles at Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Hulu.

Mobile app developer MWM appointed Charles Jacquet as Chief Revenue Officer. Most recently, he served as Monetization Director at Pretty Simple.

Focus Entertainment appointed Sean Brennan as new CEO. Brennan is a former Managing Director of Bethesda, which was acquired by Microsoft.

Sports betting media group Better Collective appointed Petra Zackrisson as SVP of Growth. Zackrisson is a Non-Executive Board Member of Casumo and was Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Kaizen Gaming.
 

Software

Mobile adtech company Ogury named Geoffroy Martin as its new CEO. Before joining Ogury, he served as GM and EVP Growth Portfolio at Criteo.

SaaS finance and payroll software company Workday appointed Carl Eschenbach as Co-CEO. Eschenbach was President and COO at VMware before and has held several board member roles since then.

Logic Monitor, a company creating a SaaS-based unified observability platform for enterprises, hired Taggart Matthiesen as Chief Product Officer. Prior to Logic Monitor, Matthiesen spent more than 7 years at Lyft as VP of Product.

Accounting software provider Xero appointed Sukhinder Singh Cassidy as its new CEO. Cassidy has held numerous board member roles in corporates like TripAdvisor and Ericsson.

Asana, the project management software provider, appointed Sanj Bhayro as the new GM of EMEA. Bhayro had served as EMEA Vice President of Operations and Customer Growth of Google Cloud and had spent more than 14 years at Salesforce.

Orgvue, an organizational design and workforce planning software company, appointed Oliver Shaw as CEO. Shaw held the Chief Executive position at Kalibrate for the last three years.

Mobysoft, an ROI analytics software provider to the social housing sector, promoted Paul Evans to CEO. Prior to this, Evans had served as COO and CCO at the company.

NetApp, a cloud data storage provider, appointed Gabrielle Boko as CMO. Boko joined the company as VP Portfolio Marketing last year and served as Global VP Digital at Hewlett Packard before NetApp.

Backbase, a company providing omni-channel banking software for financial institutions, appointed Mark Appel as CMO. Appel is a former CMO of CM.com, a cloud software company for telecom operators or payment providers.