All of IronSource’s founders are leaving Unity in the next six months after a reshuffle at the top of the company.
According to an internal email obtained by mobilegamer.biz, IronSource founders Tomer Bar-Zeev, Omer Kaplan, Eyal Milrad, Arnon Harish, Tamir Carmi and Assaf Ben Ami are leaving after a six month transition period.
That means new roles for Marc Whitten, Felix Thé, Nadav Ashkenazy and Giancarlo Fasolo.
Whitten will now be chief product and technology officer for Unity’s Create business. Thé will be appointed SVP product and technology for Grow, Nadav Ashkenazy will be promoted to SVP and chief revenue officer for Grow, and Giancarlo Fasolo will be promoted to SVP of Aura, which will be run independently from Grow. Jules Shumaker will continue in her role as SVP and chief revenue officer.
A company-wide email sent by Unity interim president and CEO Jim Whitehurst earlier today states that the changes are designed to help the company “bring legacy Unity and legacy IronSource people and culture much closer”.
The changes are also intended to “reduce management layers and improve coordination in the organisation”, the email says.
Whitehurst continues: “We believe that we have a tremendous opportunity to drive even greater success for our customers by eliminating the GM layer and moving to a flatter, more functional structure.”
The email concludes: “A change like this is not only structural, it’s cultural. Across the entire organization, we will need to come together and intentionally think through what type of team we want to be in order to reach our full potential.
To that end, we will soon kick off an initiative to redefine our mission, values, and the behaviors that will bring them to life. This process will give us all the opportunity to shape the culture we want as a company together.
I know this has been a particularly difficult week and a lot to take in. While changes like these are challenging to move through, I believe this reset is essential for us to do now and it’s setting us up to succeed for many years to come. I will continue to keep you updated.”
Separately, an SEC filing confirms that IronSource cofounder Tomer Bar-Zeev sold 37,500 shares yesterday, worth around $1.4m.
Today’s exec reshuffle follows the news that Unity would be cutting 25% of its staff, around 1,800 jobs in total.
Unity merged with IronSource in July 2022 in a landmark deal worth $4.4bn, and has had a turbulent time since. In September it announced a wildly unpopular ‘Runtime Fee’ policy, which led to many developers organising and joining a Unity boycott later that week.
Part of the motivation behind the Runtime Fee policy was to force developers onto Unity’s LevelPlay mediation platform in a bid to ‘kill’ IronSource rival Applovin, we were told.
Unity later apologised and dialled back some of the pricing policies before the company announced the retirement of president, CEO and chairman John Riccitiello the following month.
