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Founders Who Joined Microsoft, Spotify, Coinbase and Twitter

Several founders who took positions at the bigger tech companies that bought their startups recently lost their jobs when layoffs rolled through Silicon Valley. In this latest publication of Free Agents, we profile four such founders, including Esther Crawford, who joined Spotify, Coinbase, Microsoft and others when they sold their startups. They have either recently found themselves out of a job or are planning to leave their role. We also profile one, a co-founder of delivery startup Gorillas, who is similarly on the market after a rival bought the startup.

Esther Crawford is a self-taught learner who learned a lot of things along the way and on the fly versus having had the background in school or in her family. Her biggest accomplishment was selling her startup, Squad, to Twitter in December 2020. Crawford failed to keep product management as its function in Musk's revamped Twitter, and was laid off at the end of February. She is now traveling in Asia and angel investing. She could be hired as a product leader at another social media network, such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms or Snap, or join a payments-focused company.

Mark Hammond is a cognitive entrepreneur who founded Bonsai, a machine-learning startup that enabled mechanical and aerospace engineers to automate industrial equipment functions without having any software development experience. Microsoft made Bonsai the centerpiece of an internal group it formed last October, Industrial Metaverse Core, and promoted Hammond to lead it as corporate vice president. Hammond is on a personal sabbatical at the moment. Hammond's future plans are unknown, but his track record as a founder and the potential of the industrial metaverse software market make it likely he will launch a company similar to Bonsai in the near future.

Julie Bornstein became Pinterest's chief shopping officer after Pinterest acquired The Yes, an artificial intelligence-powered shopping app she co-founded with Microsoft and Google veteran Amit Aggarwal, in June 2022. Bornstein is an expert shopper and has worked to help brands get online for the first time and increase the number of products shoppers could buy online. Bornstein's biggest accomplishment was her work at The Yes, an app that suggested fashion, bags and footwear to customers based on their style, budget and previously liked products. Her biggest disappointment was that Pinterest appointed PayPal and Google alum Bill Ready as its new CEO. Bornstein's strategy diverged with Ready's, who emphasized embedding more shopping features into the app's existing interface and growing existing features like shopping ads. Bornstein has assumed an advisory role at Pinterest, where she will "coach the team" focused on shopping as needed and share her insights.

Max Cutler is a vice president and head of talk creator content and partnerships at Spotify, overseeing exclusive deals and partnerships with major podcast creators. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 2013 and founded Parcast, a digital media firm and podcast network specializing in scripted podcasts and audio dramas. Spotify bought Parcast in 2019 for $56 million, and Cutler stayed, serving as managing director of Parcast Studios. He was instrumental in building Spotify's podcast business, overseeing several exclusive partnerships with influential creators. He's transitioning out of his role at Spotify ahead of his planned departure on May 1. He plans to start a new business but has not yet released details on the new venture.

Goran Sümer co-founded Gorillas in Berlin in May 2020 and quickly expanded across Europe and into New York. In December 2022, fast-delivery rival Getir acquired Gorillas in a deal valuing Sümer's startup at around $1.2 billion, well below its peak of $3 billion. Sümer left the company following the acquisition. His biggest accomplishment was creating and running Gorillas, which created 15,000 jobs. His biggest disappointment was his rapid and expensive growth, driven by his sky-high ambitions and fueled by free-flowing investor cash. He became a father last month and is taking time to reconnect with friends he didn't spend enough time with while running Gorillas. He is interested in doing something in healthcare soon and has found a problem in healthcare he wants to solve.

Lallouz and Henshaw are co-founders and partners at Ambush Capital, an angel investment fund in New York. They co-founded Grand St., an online marketplace for electronics, in 2012 and later co-founded Bison Trails, a blockchain technology startup that helped banks and other firms connect to blockchains. They left the company voluntarily to spend more time with their families and pursue other opportunities. Their biggest accomplishment is co-founding two startups that big-name firms, Etsy and Coinbase, later acquired. Their biggest disappointment is that they cannot spend as much time working with their portfolio companies.

Netflix’s Ad-supported Tier Is Gathering Momentum In The US, Play Games On Every Device

Around one million accounts are now signed up to Netflix's ad-supported tier in the US, according to internal figures seen by Bloomberg. This suggests that Netflix is finding its footing with the new revenue stream, after having been overwhelmingly reliant on subscriber revenue for most of its history. However, ad-supported users represent a tiny portion of Netflix's US 74 million-strong US base, and could change in the months ahead as the company's crackdown on password sharing rolls out.

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Netflix is working on its cloud gaming service, which could make its games lineup easier to play and available across more devices. Leanne Loombe, Netflix's VP of external games, said the project is "underway" and that Netflix is being "super thoughtful" about how it builds the service. Currently, Netflix's mobile games can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play, but it is clunky and not as smooth as just starting a show with a tap in-app. Netflix is committed to making its titles easier to play on mobile and elsewhere, and wants them to be playable on every Netflix device.

Netflix will be adding two of the most revered mobile titles of all time, Monument Valley and its sequel, to its gaming service in 2024. The announcement was part of a bigger reveal of upcoming titles from Netflix, including Mighty Quest: Rogue Palace and Terra Nil. Netflix has released 55 games on the service since it launched in 2021, with another 40 due to launch sometime in 2023. The most popular game so far is Too Hot to Handle: Love is a Game, based on the reality dating show.

Layoffs and Hiring Freezes In The Tech Industry, Amazon's Latest Layoffs

Investors have changed how they evaluate tech companies, leading to mass layoffs and hiring freezes. Amazon is the biggest, with 18,000 layoffs, followed by Google with 12,000 and Microsoft with 10,000. Elizabeth Lopatto spoke to experts to explain why so many layoffs are happening.

Amazon is laying off 9,000 workers, including those in AWS, Twitch, advertising, and human resources roles. CEO Andy Jassy cites the "uncertain economy" as the reason for the cuts and says the company has "chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount." This comes just days after Twitch CEO Emmett Shear resigned from his position, and 400 people were affected by the cuts. The current macroeconomic environment has impacted Twitch's business, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with expectations. Amazon has made the difficult decision to shrink the size of its workforce, announcing all of the layoffs at the same time. Affected employees will receive severance pay, transitional health insurance, and external job placement support.

The company's goal is to make these decisions by mid-to-late April and notify employees from there. Amazon has made a number of cost-cutting moves in recent months, including suspending the construction of its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, shuttering some of its physical Go stores, and halting the expansion of its Fresh stores. Jassy remains optimistic about the future and the company's myriad of opportunities.