In the wake of the recently announced “reset” at Unity that resulted in first the closing of Weta Digital followed by the announcement that 25% of Unity’s staff will be let go there is another massive disruption at Unity, and one I think many Unity developers will be happy to hear about! Several high ranking executives from IronSource, including founders Tomer Bar-Zeev, Omer Kaplan, Eyal Milrad, Arnon Harish, Tamir Carmi and Assaf Ben Ami, are all departing Unity.
Details from MobileGames.biz:
All of IronSource’s founders are leaving Unity in the next six months after a reshuffle at the top of the company.
According to an internal email obtained by mobilegamer.biz, IronSource founders Tomer Bar-Zeev, Omer Kaplan, Eyal Milrad, Arnon Harish, Tamir Carmi and Assaf Ben Ami are leaving after a six month transition period.
That means new roles for Marc Whitten, Felix Thé, Nadav Ashkenazy and Giancarlo Fasolo.
Whitten will now be chief product and technology officer for Unity’s Create business. Thé will be appointed SVP product and technology for Grow, Nadav Ashkenazy will be promoted to SVP and chief revenue officer for Grow, and Giancarlo Fasolo will be promoted to SVP of Aura, which will be run independently from Grow. Jules Shumaker will continue in her role as SVP and chief revenue officer.
A company-wide email sent by Unity interim president and CEO Jim Whitehurst earlier today states that the changes are designed to help the company “bring legacy Unity and legacy IronSource people and culture much closer”.
The changes are also intended to “reduce management layers and improve coordination in the organisation”, the email says.
Whitehurst continues: “We believe that we have a tremendous opportunity to drive even greater success for our customers by eliminating the GM layer and moving to a flatter, more functional structure.”
The email concludes: “A change like this is not only structural, it’s cultural. Across the entire organization, we will need to come together and intentionally think through what type of team we want to be in order to reach our full potential.
To that end, we will soon kick off an initiative to redefine our mission, values, and the behaviors that will bring them to life. This process will give us all the opportunity to shape the culture we want as a company together.
I know this has been a particularly difficult week and a lot to take in. While changes like these are challenging to move through, I believe this reset is essential for us to do now and it’s setting us up to succeed for many years to come. I will continue to keep you updated.”
In addition to the recently announced departure of CEO John Riccitiello, this is about as much of an executive level purge as you could ever expect at a company. We discuss the leadership change in more detail in the video below.
EDIT – The SEC filing of the leadership change is now public and available here.