Facebook CTO jumps ship for new horizons
Bret Taylor moves on after IPO
Posted in Management, 16th June 2012 02:24 GMT
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Bret Taylor, the CTO of Facebook, is leaving the company to start a new business venture in Silicon Valley.
"I've learned more than I ever imagined in my time at Facebook. I'm also extremely grateful for my relationship with all of the amazing people I've worked with here," he said on his Facebook page. "I want to give a special thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. You've not only been my boss for the past three years, but my mentor and one of my closest friends."
Taylor joined Facebook in 2009 after starting an earlier social network, called FriendFeed (not Friendface).
He is setting up business with his friend Kevin Gibbs, one of Google's chief engineers. Taylor, a former Google employee who left the search giant just after its IPO, didn't say what the new start-up will do.
Now that Facebook has finished the IPO process the company can expect some high-profile departures as staff cash out their stock options. Taylor is the biggest name to go so far, but others are likely to follow.
Nonetheless, the timing of Taylor's announcement comes as something of a surprise, given that he took to the stage this week at Apple Worldwide Developer Conference to enthuse about how Facebook will integrate with iOS.
He highlighted the integration as one of the things he is most proud of at Facebook, along with the site's Open Graph and App Center integration.
Meanwhile Facebook's stock price appears to have stabilized at $30 after falling considerably. ®
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COMMENTS
I agree, a challenge to Facebook would be a similar platform but one that cuts out the ads and the crap that users are forced to put up with.
The problem is something like this has to make money to stay alive,
Advertising is not the way to go, the return on Facebook ads are so small to be almost worthless. Once the advertisers see this less investment will go into Facebook, then we will see how financially solid the thing really is. I doubt that it's future worth is anything near what has been forecast.
We've seen this happen befor when the .com bubble burst.
Facebook is going the way of Bebo in it's later years.
Can't wait til a new platform less advert riddled and 1984-ish is launched.
Fingers crossed...
Re: Hmm
It won't change much. Taylor strikes me as guy who is well on his way to becoming a serial entrepreneur. Don't forget he left the GOOG shortly after their IPO, surely with a reasonable pile of cash, and started that FriendFeed thing which sold to FB and he came along for the ride. Naturally with the FB IPO he wants to spin off with a second pile of cash and start something else like FoneFeed or some such which will have its own IPO or will be sold and he gets another cash pile to repeat the cycle.
This is the kind of guy I can respect. Planting the seeds of a company, employ a bunch of people, nurture it as far as he can and when he reaches his limit of ability sets it in more capable hands. The beauty is that each time he does it he pushes his limit a bit further so the companies he starts have a better chance of survival each time and maybe one day the most capable hands will be his.
Re: Hmm
If he had a billion dollar idea, that needed 100 million in seed capital, and his stock options were suddenly cashable for that, I'd say he had a great reason...
But there is another.
Post IPO company = cash cow. You deliver a reliable return to investors, rather than taking big risks to big produce growth. The emthasis is on stability. The people you need to do that are different.
As a company changes, or when could see it was going to change, maybe he felt like he wouldn't fit in anymore.
You can always hope
You can always hope that Zuckerberg does the same thing soon.
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