Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is stepping down from his position effective Monday and will be replaced by board member Tom Conrad while an external firm searches for a formal replacement, according to an 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Spence will remain at Sonos in an advisory capacity until June 30 to help with the transition and will be paid $7,500 a month until that date. After that point, he will get a cash severance payment of over $1.8 million and other benefits, including a year of COBRA health coverage and accelerated vesting of stock options, the filing says.
Conrad was previously the CEO of Zero Longevity Science, which made the Zero health app. Before that, he worked at Snap and the now-defunct Quibi. Conrad will get a base salary of $175,000 a month and stock worth $2.65 million for serving as interim CEO.
Spence’s resignation comes roughly eight months after Sonos released a buggy new version of its app that caused “significant problems” with things like sleep timers and alarms, adding songs to a queue, managing Wi-Fi connectivity, and more. In August, the company delayed launching two new products to tackle the “app situation” and later said that it wouldn’t be bringing back the old, unbroken app.
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In October, Spence vowed to fix the app’s problems by focusing on customer experience, increasing pre-launch testing, approaching major changes gradually, and adding a new “Quality Ombudsperson” role to address quality concerns. Since then, the app has continued to frustrate some users, with at least half a dozen writing within the past day that they’ve been facing ongoing problems with the app.
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About Kate Irwin
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