During a critical time for Snapchat’s product, the middle of rolling out a massive redesign to its app, the team is losing a valued member. Snap’s VP of Product, Tom Conrad, is set to leave the company in March. His duties are being taken over by Snap’s director of growth, Jacob Andreou, according to a TechCrunch.com report.
Conrad joined as Snapchat’s VP of product in March of 2016. Before that, he spent a decade at music streaming service Pandora, first as the company’s VP of product, and later as its CTO. Conrad is also on the board of directors of smart speaker maker Sonos.
On Wednesday, Conrad told TechCrunch.com that he wasn’t itching to jump back into the game at another tech company any time soon, and instead was looking to focus on music, art, and some of his other passions. “I started making software when I was 18 years old, and it’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this for 30 years. It’s time for me to put my energy outside of tech, into music, food, photography and things closer to art than entrepreneurship. It’s easy to put these things off forever, but I didn’t want to wake up 10 years from now and not have explored these other passions of mine. Getting to collaborate with Evan has been one of the highlights of my career.”
As for Snapchat, this could mark a possible delay in the new rollout that is currently lined up. The company recently started to an ambitious redesign for the app in order to reinvigorate user growth. The design is supposed to make Snapchat easier to understand for new users and once again put a bigger focus on personal communication. In addition, Snap has also been looking to widen its user base by breaking down the walled garden of its app. The company has started to let some of its users share Stories on the web earlier this week, which could open up more opportunities for the app.
