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Away Fires CEO Steph Korey After Months-Long Search for Her Replacement (daringfireball.net) 84

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Away, an online seller of luggage that investors valued at $1.4 billion earlier this year, said late Monday its chief executive Steph Korey is stepping down. Korey will become executive chairman of the New York City-based startup. Stuart Haselden, who is departing as chief operating officer at Lululemon Athletica, will succeed her as CEO, according to the company. Away co-founder Jen Rubio will remain president and chief brand officer. The news comes after an article in the Verge last week criticized Korey's management style as harsh, citing several former employees unhappy with the work environment. Korey apologized in a statement on Twitter last week, saying she has worked with an executive coach to "improve as a leader." John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: It surely is not spin that Away's board -- led by Rubio, Korey's fellow co-founder -- had been searching to replace Korey for months. You can't hire the COO of Lululemon in three days in light of a PR crisis. So I think it's pretty clear that The Verge inadvertently got played. They got fed the story and ran with it in a way that pinned all of the company's purported cultural problems on Korey.

All six sources were anonymous former employees (and, coincidentally or not, women). There was a lot about that Verge story that struck me as weird. Why shouldn't the CEO be furious that the company somehow sent customers suitcases that had been used in a beach photo shoot and were covered with sand and other debris? But one of the strangest things was that while it was ostensibly a story about the company, the actual story felt almost entirely like a hit on Korey, personally. No other executive's Slack messages were quoted as evidence of the perceived cultural problems. So now the narrative is not "Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man." Instead, the narrative is "Away fires CEO who created 'toxic culture,' brings in fresh leadership" -- a narrative that wouldn't be possible without The Verge's story last Thursday. Hiring Haselden to run Away is an interesting choice...
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Away Fires CEO Steph Korey After Months-Long Search for Her Replacement More

Away Fires CEO Steph Korey After Months-Long Search for Her Replacement

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  • I recently valued my car at $86,000, but CarMax only gave me $12,000 for it. What is up with that? I valued it at $86,000!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      The investors value the object by handing over that amount of cash for the object. Your car was valued by a potential investor to be worth 12k.

      The only thing you valued was the car when you bought it.

      • So the investors (THAT OWN THE OBJECT) handed over more cash for the object to keep running and thus the total valuation is determined? I invested over $12,000 in that car. That is how I came up with my $86,000 valuation.

        • No, investors bought part of the object for cash. If they buy 10% of a company at 100,000$, then the valuation of the company is 1,000,000 at the time of that investment. If 6 months later, someone else buys 20% of the company for 100,000$, the valuation of the company based on that investment is only 500,000$. Valuation is based solely on what you can get someone to pay for someone, not what an owner thinks it could be worth.

          • "If they buy 10% of a company at 100,000$, then the valuation of the company is 1,000,000 at the time of that investment"
             
            What? I have an apple that a buddy took a bite out of and paid me $1 for. I will sell you the rest of the apple for $10. I figure there are 12 bites left so you are getting a really good deal here. Wow people really are that dumb to believe that stuff. I know how the valuation model works, but my point is that it is complete bullsht.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

              Bullshit is the fact that people believe "valuation" is relevant for anything else beside gambling on the stock exchanges.

              It's like when they say Musk lost 770 Million over night because Tesla's stock took a bow.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gl4ss ( 559668 )

            the key is buying your car by partial payments. that values it much higher!

            anyhow when an investor is selling a piece to himself they can value the company at whatever value they want. the problems always just come when you try to find other people who would agree with your valuation...

            also the stock that was bought at 1.4bil might just as well have had other ties tied to it, we don't know. like maybe it's just a loan in practice. who the f knows though and if their now former ceo was talking about "leade

    • If you wanted the $86k from CarMax, you should have valued the car at $616,333. Algorithms, man!

    • Re:"Investors valued" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @10:11AM (#59504366)

      The business is apparently valued at $1.4b. Sales for the year ended August 2018 look to be around $100m, from the info they've released. I'm sure sales have increased significantly since then, but obviously not enough for them to be touting the numbers anymore. That's probably why they have brought in an experienced retail CEO.

      By way of comparison, Samsonite - you know that luggage brand that everyone in the globe knows about - is worth $3.5b on $3b of annual sales.

      This is just another one of those physical good businesses trying to attach themselves to software business unicorn valuation metrics. It always fails in the end, because to double their revenue they have to deal with the not inconsiderable logistics of shipping and supporting millions more suitcases every year, whereas a software business can easily add a million more customers by spinning up some more AWS instances, if they even have to do that.

      But hey, they walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before, such as WeWork. Eventually the VC industry will figure out how to get one of these unicorns over the finish line and dump the resultant mess into the hands of a bunch of pensioner desperately seeking yield on their dwindling retirement funds.

      • Some guys got together (and all these silicon valley VC guys know each other) and announced that they valued the business at $1.4B because they put money into it and, uh, said it was valued at $1.4B. That is meaningless. The truth is that the company is valued at $0 because it needs loans to survive. VC money are just (very) high interest loans. They can't survive without the loans. I know how it works.

        • It works like an illiquid stock. Early investors buy large fractions and hang on for a long time. There is less of the company up for sale. The next chump comes in and is told theres only a little less, it's going to be more expensive. They buy in. The previous investors fraction is now valued at whatever the last guy paid. Now do it again and again with increasing small fractions, massively increasing the "value" of the company as a multiple of inflated sales price.
        • Your valuation method is a little naive. Most businesses can't survive without loans, even fewer would have been started without one. If spending more borrowed money from VC's than you make in profit means your company is worth $0, then you presumably assume Amazon was worthless for the first 14 years of its existence?

      • I'm sure sales have increased significantly since then,

        Surely.

    • You only did half the work, a true modern businessman will claim the 74,000 difference as depreciation or loss of something or other on their taxes and not owe the IRS a cent.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by epiphani ( 254981 ) <epiphani@dal . n et> on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:20AM (#59504162)

    I generally give a huge amount of leeway to Slashdot to define "stuff that matters" and "news for nerds" even if I don't care about the topic... but this? Executive changes in a retail company I've never heard of?

    • They use Slack and are way overvalued. Millennial garbage made in China.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      Well, I'd assume they do have a website... perhaps that's enough these days?

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

      I think the point is that we should be upset that the female CEO was ousted and replaced by a man. With SJW types you really never can tell exactly what the problem is, because they are never direct and honest. They just obliquely reference things. Why didn't the author (John Gruber) just come out and say: "I think there was a conspiracy to replace the female CEO with a male and they used the media to do it?" Then he can explain who was involved in the conspiracy and why they did it.

      • I think the point is that we should be upset that the female CEO was ousted and replaced by a man. With SJW types you really never can tell exactly what the problem is, because they are never direct and honest. They just obliquely reference things. Why didn't the author (John Gruber) just come out and say: "I think there was a conspiracy to replace the female CEO with a male and they used the media to do it?" Then he can explain who was involved in the conspiracy and why they did it.

        See South Park Season 22, Episode 3 for more insight.
        Quote: Sometimes, PC Babies don't even know what they're crying about.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Wrong. You missed the key detail: "So now the narrative is not "Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man." Instead, the narrative is "Away fires CEO who created 'toxic culture,' brings in fresh leadership". I mean, what?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by poity ( 465672 )

            Yeah I read that part of the summary and thought, "I bet it's a msmash post", scrolled up and sure enough it was.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:35AM (#59504206)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:42AM (#59504240)
      The only reason it's "news" is because it's a woman CEO. I'd think by now that Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman should have been enough evidence that in the modern world women too can now aspire to be shitty CEOs that ruin companies. But Lisa Su (and a fuckload of others that neither you or I have never heard of because they aren't technology companies) have shown that women too can be incredibly successful CEOs. It's almost as though whether you've got tits, a dick, or maybe even both, are completely immaterial to leading a company. Weird.

      Let's just get to the end game where women achieve equality and can be as unimportant as men. Gruber is just virtue signaling. The story (notice I didn't call it a narrative) should just be "Away fires CEO" and leave it at that. He just doesn't like that the "toxic culture" bullshit narrative that's been spun has been turned against what we'll just call "his side" for brevity even though it's a lot more complicated than that.

      The lesson for everyone following along at home is to be careful what kinds of swords you pick up in the pursuit of justice. Once you build a guillotine don't be surprised if it's eventually your own head that ends upon it. Hoist!

      • Exactly. This guy gets it.

      • We won't get to this equality panacea you so thoughtfully misrepresent until people like you stop using the term virtue signaling.

      • "Let's just get to the end game where women achieve equality."

        We're obviously not there yet, because a male CEO in a company with a toxic culture would be held accountable for it (and blamed in media, both traditional and "social" for creating it, regardless of the facts), but a female CEO will be (as in this article) be excused from that responsibility.

    • I own two pieces of their luggage. It’s pretty good, if you can deal with hardside stuff (no expansible pockets). No fucking clue why this is here. They have removable battery packs in their carry-on bags; maybe that’s the hook? They’re just fucking luggage. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m also perfectly happy with my 20-year-old carryon, that I don’t give a damn if it’s torn up by ramp monkeys when they make me gate check.

    • I generally give a huge amount of leeway to Slashdot to define "stuff that matters" and "news for nerds" even if I don't care about the topic... but this? Executive changes in a retail company I've never heard of?

      I'm glad you posted this so I don't need to. Luggage company huh? Oh, they sell online. That's makes them special, because nobody sells online.

    • It's here because she got fired for retaliating against employees for stuff they talked about on Slack. Some people believe that Slack would somehow make employee communication immune from management oversight.
    • Away is a new, trendy, overvalued company which sells exclusively online. Luggage isn't a nerdy topic (well, I'm sure that luggage nerds exist somewhere), but neither are taxis and we don't stop hearing about Uber. The company fits the profile of the model which is so ubiquitous in tech nowadays - that is the connection.

  • Explain (Score:3)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:29AM (#59504190)
    So now the narrative is not "Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man."

    Is some law being broken? Or modern policy that CEO's are not allowed to have penises? The narrative still exists it would appear.

    • The point is that there is a conspiracy here. Probably the Russians again.

      • The point is that there is a conspiracy here. Probably the Russians again.

        Or Hillary. And I hear that FDR has been cloned from a cyst on his corpse's butthole. Let's have some fun with this. All politcal parties allowed.

        I'm sort of thinking it's creepy uncle Joe Biden?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Um, no. You didn't even read the summary. Too stupid.

      • You ought to read the The Verge article:
        - "But the higher-ups, who were almost all white and straight"
        - "It was also founded by two women (one a person of color)"
        - "she was relieved to find that she wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable with Away’s purported mission and company culture. “It was a lot of like, ‘This person did this not-woke thing,’ or ‘Those people did something insensitive,’” she recalls. In other words, it was a safe space where margin

        • Re:Explain (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @02:24PM (#59505338)

          You ought to read the The Verge article: - "But the higher-ups, who were almost all white and straight" - "It was also founded by two women (one a person of color)" - "she was relieved to find that she wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable with Away’s purported mission and company culture. “It was a lot of like, ‘This person did this not-woke thing,’ or ‘Those people did something insensitive,’” she recalls. In other words, it was a safe space where marginalized employees could vent." - "Emily, who is a person of color, was shocked. “That was jarring — three white people telling me I was racist,” she says. " It sounds like a toxic workplace all right. A nasty millennial mosh pit of identity politics and hurt feelings. The employees are fully as bad as management. I'm a big proponent of diversity and inclusiveness, but this article makes me glad I work in a conservative environment.

          I would love to hear Emily explain how a "person of color" cannot be racist. Seems to me if you look at things with an emphasis on the 100 percent social construct of "race", you are by vey definition, racist, As well, the statement:

          "But the higher-ups, who were almost all white and straight"

          Is also racist, and unfortunately overly obsesses with who those people want to rub genitals with, therefore also by the very definition - sexist to the extreme.

          Modern woke culture is as racist and sexist as any culture that ever existed. They have different hate symbols to be certain, but having severe hated against males of European descent is as obvious as a KKK grand Wazoo railing on against people of dark pigmentation of African descent wanting to steal their "white"wimmin.

          Woke culture has become their own enemy. The fun part is when they try to express how their own racism and sexism is not racist and sexist.

          Reminds me of the old 1970's slogan "Making war for peace is like fucking to promote virginity". The narrative was lost when they became what they were fighting against.

      • Oddly enough, that concern isn't expressed anywhere in the summary or Gruber's comments. It doesn't even make sense that it would be the complaint: she's a woman because most of those in charge of Away are women.

        The issue here is that a company with an apparently terrible corporate culture is trying to scapegoat one person. Gruber makes that clear, but it looks like the fact it's a woman being targeted has triggered all the misogynists on Slashdot.

        The quote I made was directly from the summary. Re-read it.

        Another thing from the summary is this: "All six sources were anonymous former employees (and, coincidentally or not, women)."

        This is not all that unusual. There are a fair number of cases where a woman boss creates a toxic or even criminal atmosphere. Some examples are Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, or Katherine Kane the disgraced Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

        I bring these two up mainly because so much of the narrative claims that only

  • Why do we still bother to take seriously the "joke" startups that name themselves after dictionary words? Will the one moron teaching these branding and marketing classes please go back to something less stupid, like deleting vowels or something?
    • They sell physical products. I own two of them. They are actually decent luggage. Wife and I were able to do a two week trip with one carryon and one checked, plus personal items. You might not like their product, but it’s not spyware. They make suitcases.

    • I believe they went with putting an "A" at the beginning so they would be at the top of any alphabetical list other wise it would just be Way.

  • My gardner Antonio quit today. He was a good gardener, but he was replaced by Pablo, from Mexico City also. I hope Pablo will take care of topping up the oil in the lawnmower also. That's like huge: I really liked Antonio!

    And that my friends is about as interesting as TFA to you, and much more interesting news to me, that's for damn sure.

  • It's starting to look a lot like 1999 again (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cid Highwind ( 9258 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @10:11AM (#59504368) Homepage
    I wonder what a dot-com bust looks like when all the doomed dot-coms are owned by a handful of private equity firms instead of being publicly traded.

    • My guess is that it is all so interconnected now that these PE firms will be provided with emergency liquidity measures (money from Fed) to ensure they don't collapse and take the whole system down. That is how it works now: when the markets panic, the Fed buys up all the bad debt, drives treasury/safe asset yields into the ground, and basically says to investors 'get back into your bubble positions or we will confiscate your funds through negative rates and do it ourselves'.

    • It's a comforting sign, though, when many of these companies are being rationally punished by the market when they go public or attempt to do so. I don't remember that happening in 1999.

      Uber
      Lyft
      Wework
  • I'll confess I've never heard of this company and couldn't arouse enough interest to even Google them, but is anyone else struck by a $1.4B valuation of a self-described luggage company? Then I looked up Samsonite, a company I've actually heard of and has been in business 100 years and found it has a market cap of $24.8B, so, I guess, fuck me. I haven't bought a new suitcase in 30 years, but apparently someone is.

  • 'the narrative is not "Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man." Instead, the narrative is "Away fires CEO who created 'toxic culture,' brings in fresh leadership"'

    Seriously? What does the junk of the individuals involved matter? Is there some reason the replacement needs to have the "right" reproductive organs or it is a sin that the narrative of the transition of a major enterprise isn't all about reproductive organs of the new person taking over?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I love this story. A great reminder that we read and hear and see the things we are meant to read and hear and see. How many folks, myself included, would have been only too happy to blame the powerful CEO for doing things wrong. But the truth is always a little more crooked and bizarre than you might have imagined.

  • >> Away fires woman CEO and co-founder, replaces her with a man... "Away fires CEO who created 'toxic culture,' brings in fresh leadership" -- a narrative that wouldn't be possible

    Only if you're a raging SJW who doesn't know what women are really like in the workplace outside tech. My wife (an accountant) often tells me stories about how her female-dominated team is such a vile snake pit, that if it was run by men, they'd probably be all fired for creating a hostile working environment. Women tend to

  • The headline said she was fired. Then the article states (the way I read it) she will be moving to a new executive position in the company. New definition of 'fired'?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )
      No, that's the age-old definition of the firing of a CEO.

    • Well, she stepped down as CEO, to become Executive Chairman of the Board... ya know, the person who tells the CEO what to do.

      This is actually a good step for a company that is growing beyond the concept phase. Most people who start up a company don't actually know how to run one. The best thing that can happen is they step aside and bring in a CEO who has actual experience running a business.

      But... fired? I wouldn't have used that term. Musk wasn't fired, Page wasn't fired, Brin wasn't fired. They all j

  • A little bit on the nose, ain't it?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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