On Monday, Snapchat’s chief strategy officer Imran Khan announced his plan to leave the company, according to CNN Tech. The company said in the SEC filing that Khan was not leaving because of conflicts or disagreements with the other executives, and will stay in the company for an interim period. “There is never a perfect time to say goodbye,” Mr. Khan said in the filing, “but we have a stellar leadership team in place to guide Snap through the next chapter, and I plan to stay on to ensure a very smooth transition.” There has been a growing case of management turnover at Snapchat in around the past year.
Tim Stone, a former Amazon executive replaced Chief Financial officer Drew Vollero, who left in May. Tom Conrad, the Vice President of Product said in January that he was leaving too. Stuart Bowers, an engineer, resigned to join Tesla Motors. Also since Emily Whites’ leaving in 2015, Snapchat did not have a chief operating officer. Khan formerly worked as head of internet banking at Credit Suisse Group AG.
His last day at Snap has not yet been determined. He joined Snap in 2015 and helped turn the company’s popular free app into a moneymaker, eventually directing the company through the initial public offering. His role was analogous to that of Sheryl Sandberg in Facebook or Google’s Eric Schmidt.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Khan is leaving to create a Los Angeles-based investment company. Recently, the company reported its first quarterly decline in daily users. The decline was the result of poor reception of a recent redesign of the company’s app. The goal of the redesign was to separate user content from that of the big media companies such as Facebook and Instagram. This also hampered Snap’s bid to convince advertisers to spend more dollars on the platform.
The stock price of Snap Inc (SNAP) fell more than two percent on Monday. “When you can’t distinguish yourself operationally or financially, it’s no surprise that people can get discouraged,” said Fredric Russell, who runs the Fredric E. Russell Investment Management Co. and opted not to invest in Snap’s IPO. Last week, it was at an all time low; it fell more than 40% from last year’s initial public offering of $17 per share. But similar signs of slowing growth were observed at Facebook and Twitter as well.
The three firms took a round of hits especially during the time when Facebook and Twitter testified before Congress about their efforts to address bad actors on their platforms. It currently trades in the single digits. “Khan has been a great partner building our business”, says Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO and co-founder.
“We appreciate all of his hard work and wish him the best,” he added. According to the Wall Street Journal, an email to Snap employees from Khan said that he had achieved scaling up an ad system and increasing revenue to a 1 billion dollar annualized run rate. He also added that he wanted to build his own business and that now is the time.
