Brian Roberts, the CFO of nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, is the latest high-profile Web3 executive to leave their job because of the current bear market. He left after only 10 months.
In a LinkedIn post on October 7, the former CFO of ride-sharing app Lyft and OpenSea said that it was time for him to “come ashore” from the “open seas,” but he didn’t say why. He did say, though, that he would still be a consultant for the company in the future.
After working for Lyft for seven years, Roberts became OpenSea’s CFO in December 2021. He has also worked for Walmart, which is a big store, and Microsoft, which is a tech company.
Roberts was one of a long line of tech veterans who joined Web3 in recent years. Others include Surojit Chatterjee, a former vice president at Google who became Coinbase’s chief product officer in 2020, and Pravjit Tiwana, a former vice president at Amazon who became Gemini’s chief technology officer in January 2022.
At OpenSea, one of his main jobs was to make the finance team bigger. In a Linkedin post, Roberts wrote the following:
“I had the rare opportunity to build a team literally from the ground up and handpicked game changers.”
According to his statement, he has been working closely with CEO Devin Finzer and vice president of strategic finance Justin Jow to ensure a “smooth transition.” This may mean that Jow will take over the empty executive position.
Even though Roberts quit his job as CFO, he is still “extremely optimistic” about web3. Roberts’s resignation was notable because it happened on the same day as another OpenSea executive’s.
Ryan Foutty, vice president of business development at OpenSea, posted on LinkedIn on October 7 that he was leaving the company after 18 months.
Foutty said that the company had come a long way since its humble beginnings in Alex Atallah’s basement and wished his “crewmates” success.
Roberts and Foutty are the most recent crypto executives to leave their jobs because of the market drop. The amount of NFT trading has decreased by 98%, from $6.2 billion at the end of January to $114.4 million now.
The NFT marketplace has also had problems, like when 20% of its staff lost their jobs in July and the number of daily trades dropped by a lot. When the crypto bear market started in May, the whole market fell off a cliff quickly.
Brett Harrison, who is the president of FTX US, Jesse Powell, who is the chief executive officer of Kraken, Michael Saylor, who is the chief executive officer of MicroStrategy, and Michael Moro, who is the chief executive officer of Genesis Trading, are among the other high-level executives who have recently said they are leaving their companies.
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