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November witnessed a large number of high profile hires in tech being made around the world. The boardrooms of many of the most influential businesses in the industry have been shaken up with new faces, as 2014 draws to a close.
Companies appear to be thinking around their marketing and technology strategies with a high proportion of hires in those areas. The most active company was HotelTonight, the leading mobile-only hotel booking app, which made three of the most high profile hires in tech this month. Another active player was Uber, which can’t keep out of the news at the moment. The business followed up its smart partnership with Spotify with an interesting group hire. In corporate world, the biggest news comes from SAP, which made an important C-level appointment. We expand on all of these below, in addition to completing the list of the 10 most high profile hires in tech throughout November.
HotelTonight announced that Mark Phillips, former CMO of Beats Music, has joined the company as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Phillips joins the HotelTonight team with nearly 20 years experience building and developing global consumer and technology brands. Prior to Beats, Phillips was VP of Brand Marketing at King.com, where he helped underpin Candy Crush’s rocketship growth and build King’s brand before the company’s IPO in April 2014.
HotelTonight also appointed Amy Bohutinsky, CMO at Zillow, to its Board of Directors. Bohutinsky joined Zillow pre-launch in 2005, and built the brand and marketing team from the ground up. Today, Zillow is the largest online and mobile real estate brand, with around 90 million unique users per month. Before Zillow, Bohutinsky ran communications at Hotwire, and began her career as a broadcast journalist for various ABC and NBC affiliates.
The third appointment, which undoubtedly ranks within the most high profile hires in tech in November, was the move to bring on board Oliver Jung to oversee international operations. Jung was most recently in charge of launching and leading the global expansions of Houzz and Airbnb.
Uber is hiring the team responsible for building the recently announced integration with music-streaming service Spotify. The team in question has been advising Uber since 2009 and is part of a set of Amsterdam based developers and designers named Moop.me. The team of 10 will become Uber employees and will set up a mobile development-focused office in Amsterdam, led by Uber’s first engineer Conrad Whelan. The new office will also server as the company’s international headquarters. This is not an aqui-hire by Uber, the business is just hiring those particular developers.
SAP has hired Microsoft’s Quentin Clark as its new CTO. Clark replaces Vishal Sikka, who was appointed Infosys CEO last year. Clark will be responsible for the future direction of SAP’s technology, and will report to executive board member Bernd Leukert.
Online advertising platform Adroll has hired Silicon Valley veteran Patrick Mee as its new vice president of engineering. Mee most recently held a similar role at Inadco and prior to that at Ning, the company co-founded by Marc Andreessen.
Another CMO appointment which ranks as one of the most high profile hires in tech in November was made by Slack, the group communication app for business. After raisingraising $120 million at a $1.1 billion valuation last month, the company has hired Bill Macaitis as its first chief marketing officer. Macaitis was most recently the CMO at Zendesk, and SVP of online marketing and operations at Salesforce.com before that.
500 Startups has been growing rapidly in recent months and the latest new partner to join the ranks is Edith Yeung, who will be heading up the firm’s latest micro-fund, a $10 million fund it’s calling the 500 Startups Mobile Collective. Yeung has spent the last three years in business development focused roles at Dolphin Browser and is also a Founding Parter at RightVentures, focused on making investments in cloud and mobile start ups.
Leading US mobile operator, Sprint, announced the appointment of Douglas Michelman as its Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility. Michelman joins the company’s leadership team having most recently spent 10 years as Chief Communications Officer at Visa, where he oversaw global media relations, public affairs, industry analyst relations and financial and communication strategies.
Social marketing company Unified is announcing that it has hired Shawn Douglass as its first chief technology officer. Douglass previously held a number of senior roles at enterprise technology company EMC, including founding and running EMC Ventures. More recently, he was CTO at cloud management company ServiceMesh, which was acquired last autumn by CSC.
