Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
February 11, 2014 10:20 pm GMT

Groupon Product Chief Jeff Holden To Depart, Is Heading To A Bay Area Tech Company

jeffholden-linkedinGroupon’s SVP, Product Jeff Holden is leaving the company,effective March 18, 2014, according to a new SEC filing. Though the exec been fairly tight-lipped about where he’s headed to next, TechCrunch has learned that Holden will be relocating from Chicago to work with “an early stage Bay Area company,” according to sources inside Groupon. This confirms Crain’s earlier reportthat Holden was leaving for an “unnamed tech company.” Holden joined Groupon in 2011, after his Seattle area startup, Pelago, was acquired. For those unfamiliar, Pelago was best known forits Whrrl product, which was a Foursquare-like location-based services app that allowed people to check-in to places. At the time of his hiring, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason praised Holden, saying “Jeff intimately gets consumer buying behavior and the importance of a great user experience, and his team is this awesome combination of data-driven creatives.” A University of Illinois grad, Holden was also an early hire at Amazon, having worked with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezosat the New York investment-bank D.E. Shaw. At Groupon, he worked alongside several other former Amazon execs on the company’s senior leadership team, includingformer Amazon.com VP CEO Kal Rama, now Groupon COO, and former Amazon.com finance chief Jason Child, now Groupon CFO. In total, four of Groupon’s eight top execs hail from Amazon. Holden is the second high-profile hire to leave the company in recent weeks, Crain’s also points out, referring to the departure of HRhead and Cisco Systems veteran Brian “Skip” Schipper, who left for Twitter. As for Groupon, the company celebrated its fifth birthday not too long ago, but still has a tough road ahead. Though daily deals is still Groupon’s mainstay, the company has made progress in shifting its business intoa wider marketplace for location-based and mobile commerce. In November, itannounced an acquisitionofKorea’s Ticket Monster, for $260 million, to build out its mobile commerce operations in Asia, for example. Earlier in 2013,Groupon reportedthe appointment ofEric Lefkofsky as its CEO,after letting former CEO Andrew Mason go. It also launched Groupon POS (point-of-sale) to target local merchants, and acquired HotelTonight competitor Blink, as well asSideTour to add to its local events businesses. Groupon’s stock has doubled over the last year, getting up to over $10 per share, but word of Holden’s departure has now sent it tumbling down 8% this morning as word got out.

Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BdHJF1od21o/

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Techcrunch

TechCrunch is a leading technology blog, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.

More About this Source Visit Techcrunch