Cisco Systems (s CSCO) veteran Tony Bates is taking over as the CEO of Skype. He’ll replace Josh Silverman, who is leaving the company for undisclosed reasons. The news of Silverman’s pending exit was first reported by Erick Schonfeld.
Bates is a well regarded executive who handles Cisco’s Enterprise division, and in the past, handled their carrier-focused operations. As part of my reporting duties, I’ve talked to Bates on many occasions and have found him to be a straight shooter. I first talked to him back in the day when he was working for InternetMCI. He’s a good candidate to replace Silverman, who has done a remarkable job of stabilizing what was an operation on the verge of tipping over.
Silverman restored morale, and more importantly, helped with the spinoff of Skype as a separate company. He had an impossible task of managing a massive board of directors, many of them with big egos and bigger wallets. It can’t be easy to do that job on a daily basis. From what I’ve heard, the Skype board has been very stingy about giving out options to their employees, including folks like Josh.
Bates’ hiring is indicative of three things:
- Skype is dead serious about an initial public offering (IPO).
- The company isn’t looking to sell out anytime soon.
- Skype is about to make a deeper push into carrier and enterprise markets.
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Now maybe they can rein in product management and point them toward small business revenues. It has been painful to watch the scattered approach of the current team.
Silverman did NOT regain moral, have you seen how many folks have left Skype over the last year. Skype is at an all time low moral! Josh is a nice guy but has always been ignorant of what makes a good product that people actually want to use. Everyone is trying to make people pay for services they just don’t want… I hope Tony realises what makes consumers tick and adjusts the strategy accordingly…
good choice – v clueful guy – i think he can take them public.