Sonos Ceo Patrick Spence Steps Down After Disastrous App Launch

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is resigning from nan institution today, effective immediately, pinch committee unit Tom Conrad filling nan domiciled of interim CEO. It’s nan astir melodramatic betterment yet successful an eight-month saga that has proven to beryllium nan astir challenging clip successful Sonos’ history.

The company’s determination to prematurely merchandise a buggy, wholly overhauled caller app backmost successful May — pinch important features missing astatine motorboat — outraged customers and kicked disconnected a months-long domino effect that included layoffs, a crisp diminution successful worker morale, and a nationalist apology tour. The Sonos Ace headphones, rumored to beryllium nan afloat logic down nan hurried app, were instantly overshadowed by nan controversy, and my sources show maine that income numbers enactment dismal. Sonos’ statement forums and subreddit personification been dominated by complaints and an overwhelmingly antagonistic sentiment since nan spring.

In October, Sonos tried to get a grip connected nan situation, which by past had spiraled into a full-on PR disaster, by outlining a turnaround plan. The institution vowed to fortify merchandise betterment principles, summation transparency internally, and return different steps that it said would forestall immoderate correction of this magnitude from ever happening again. I tin too study for nan first clip that Sonos hired a business guidance nationalist relations diligent to thief navigate nan ordeal.

But 3 months later, Sonos’ committee of committee and Spence personification concluded that those steps weren’t enough: nan app debacle has officially costs Spence his job. No different changes are being made today, however. So for now, main merchandise serviceman Maxime Bouvat-Merlin, who immoderate labour personification privately told maine deserves a adjacent banal of nan blasted for caller missteps, will enactment successful his role.

“We’re going to initiate a hunt for nan adjacent CEO, and we’ll activity connected uncovering a leader who’s going to proceed to build connected our bequest and activity pinch nan squad to move nan institution forward,” Sonos spokesperson Erin Pategas told maine by telephone connected Sunday afternoon. She described nan activity alteration arsenic “turning a page connected nan conception that we’re successful and forging a measurement up that gets america successful nan guidance that we want to beryllium going for ourselves and our customers.”

In suit you were wondering, that guidance will not spot a return to nan aged Sonos app; Pategas said nan institution remains afloat committed to nan caller software, which has received a slew of bug fixes and gradually added backmost erstwhile features complete nan past respective months. It’s gotten better, but moreover this acold along, complaints stay astir speakers randomly vanishing from nan app and different problems.

Patrick Spence joined Sonos successful 2012 arsenic main commercialized officer. As CEO, he oversaw a wide scope of successful hardware products; Sonos released respective awesome soundbars (including nan still-new Arc Ultra), pushed into portable audio pinch nan Move and Roam, and debuted nan forward-looking Era 300 spatial audio speaker. But nan app stumbles — and Spence’s nonaccomplishment to apologize successful nan contiguous aftermath — yet soured his estimation pinch nan company’s astir loyal customers. There was nary overcoming that.

Spence will technically enactment pinch Sonos until June 30th of this year, during which he’ll personification a guidelines nett of $7,500 per play for providing nan institution pinch “strategic advisory services.” And erstwhile that extremity time does rotation around, he’ll beryllium granted a severance of $1,875,000. Those numbers recreation from an 8K filing that Sonos made pinch nan SEC regarding today’s news.

It now falls connected Tom Conrad, who joined nan Sonos committee successful 2017, to rally disenchanted labour and make bully connected winning backmost personification trust. Conrad’s occupation includes a 10-year tenure arsenic main exertion serviceman astatine Pandora and 2 years arsenic VP of merchandise astatine Snapchat. He worked connected Apple’s Finder package during nan ‘90s. Most recently, Conrad served arsenic main merchandise serviceman for nan ill-fated Quibi streaming service. Pategas believes he’s a awesome caller for nan interim CEO position because he’s keenly alert of nan company’s existent predicament; Conrad and main invention serviceman Nick Millington personification already been spearheading Sonos’ fix-the-app effort for months.

Despite this seismic displacement astatine nan top, Sonos’ early merchandise pipeline remains “full steam ahead,” Pategas told me. The company’s adjacent awesome caller merchandise is rumored to beryllium a streaming video player, which would pit it against nan likes of Apple, Roku, Amazon, and Google successful nan surviving room.