Dive Brief:
- Squarespace, the website builder and e-commerce platform, appointed Nathan Gooden, 47, to the CFO seat, effective Oct. 18, the company announced in a Wednesday press release.
- Gooden is taking the finance helm after leaving his role as CFO of Amazon’s Alexa and Echo units — the online retailer’s smart speakers. He has been in the role since 2017.
- He is the latest in a string of financial executives at retail giant Amazon to move on to take leadership roles at other comparatively smaller companies such as Poshmark and Lyft.
Dive Insight:
Gooden will succeed Marcela Martin, who left the company for BuzzFeed in August, according to her LinkedIn profile. He will receive an annual base salary of $750,000 and a sign-on bonus of $500,000, which will be processed in two separate payments, according to an SEC filing.
Gooden’s “strong track record of leading financial organizations, combined with his deep knowledge of the technology sector, will be invaluable to Squarespace as the company continues to execute against its global growth strategy and further its mission to help anyone with a creative idea stand out and succeed online,” a company spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement sent to CFO Dive.
Squarespace has several growth initiatives in the works. The spokesperson said 2022 will be the New York-based company’s “most aggressive year to date for the number of new products and features brought to market.”
Gooden leaves Amazon as it is pivoting from a growth-focused leadership approach led by former CEO Jeff Bezos to an era of cost-cutting with current CEO Andy Jassy, according to a Wednesday CNBC report. The company recently halted all global hirings for corporate roles, according to an Oct. 4 New York Times report.
Prior to Gooden, one of the more recent senior Amazon executives to depart for other companies was Liz Coddington, who left for Peloton. She was previously the vice president of finance for Amazon Web Services, an Amazon subsidiary that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms.
In November of 2021, Rodrigo Brumana was hired away from his role as CFO of Amazon’s private brands unit to Poshmark. The following month, Lyft appointed Elaine Paul as CFO. She previously worked as the finance chief of Amazon Studios, the retail giant’s film and television programming unit which includes Prime Video.
