SoundCloud avoids death with late investment, but CEO steps down
- Monday, August 14th, 2017
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SoundCloud has lived to fight another day, after investors accepted a ‘do-or-die’ proposal and, as a result, the music streaming service received a cash injection of $169.5m – the largest financing round in its history.
Following the investment from The Raine Group and Temasek, company co-founder Alex Ljung has stepped down as CEO, but he will continue as chairman. He has been replaced as CEO by Kerry Trainor, while Mike Weissman will join the company as COO. Both Trainor and Weissman are Vimeo alumni.
“After a decade of balancing the roles of founder, CEO and chairman I’m excited to hand the CEO reins over to Kerry to allow me to fully focus on the role of the Chairman and the long-term,” said Ljung in a blog post. “This, I know, sets us up as an even greater team for the decade(s) to come.”
Reports initially surfaced last month that SoundCloud was rapidly running out of money, despite laying off over 40 per cent of its workforce and shutting down two offices in an attempt to cut costs. These last-ditch efforts by the company to stay afloat very much confirm just how much trouble it was in, though Ljung, and Chance the Rapper, had been adamant throughout that SoundCloud would not close its doors.
“This financing means SoundCloud remains strong & independent,” said Ljung. “As I said, SoundCloud is here to stay.”
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