LSV 150 People Insights - 2023

Tech lay­offs take a bite out of pan­dem­ic-era employ­ment increases

Over 69,000 peo­ple have been laid off at the com­pa­nies of the LSV150, reflect­ing work­force changes announced start­ing in 2022. These report­ed lay­offs have occurred at 52 com­pa­nies of the LSV150 and rep­re­sent about 8% of their total glob­al work­force as report­ed in their 2022 prox­ies. That being said, the down­ward pres­sure on work­force num­bers is by no means over, and more jobs may be elim­i­nat­ed in 2023. Thanks to the report­ing in the Crunch­base News Lay­off Track­er as of March 31, 2023 for the com­pa­ny lev­el information.

These job loss­es are com­ing at the end of a major pan­dem­ic-era tech hir­ing spree. Accord­ing to a Crunch­base arti­cle, the LSV150 com­pa­nies who have announced the largest num­ber of employ­ees laid off — Alpha­bet, Meta and Sales­force — have tak­en their work­forces back down by only 28% of the 151,416 jobs they added between 2019 and 2022, leav­ing them all much larg­er in terms of work­force than they were pre-pandemic.

The table below shows the top four com­pa­nies in the LSV150 ranked by the num­ber of jobs elim­i­nat­ed as of March 31, 2023, and the cor­re­spond­ing per­cent of the 2019 – 2022 jobs added which are impacted:

Note: source for lay­off infor­ma­tion is the Crunch­base News Lay­off Track­er and their analy­sis; addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion sourced from com­pa­ny proxy information.

Board diver­si­ty push may be slow­ing down

After at least sev­en con­sec­u­tive years of LSV150 com­pa­nies increas­ing the num­ber of board seats filled by women, this trend has effec­tive­ly stalled. Women-held board seats in the 2023 LSV150 is down a total of sev­en seats from the peak annu­al num­ber we mea­sured in March, 2022 (from 457 seats then to 450 seats in March, 2023).

Lon­er­gan Part­ners has been track­ing this board diver­si­ty met­ric since 2015, when 14% of board seats were filled by women (that was 157 seats). As of the month of March, 2023, women direc­tors filled 37% of the 1,214 non-CEO held board seats of the Lon­er­gan SV150. In the wake of Cal­i­for­nia courts upend­ing the 2018 leg­is­la­tion that required an increase in pub­lic com­pa­ny board diver­si­ty along gen­der lines, it is not clear whether the num­ber and por­tion of board seats held by women will resume its pri­or rapid climb. 

A sum­ma­ry of the changes since our first Lon­er­gan SV150 board study in 2015:

• Board seats filled by women:  157 in mid-2015 ris­ing to 450 today — this num­ber is down slight­ly from the peak of 457 women-filled direc­tor seats mea­sured in March, 2022
• Per­cent women held seats: 14% in mid-2015 ris­ing to 37% today — this per­cent­age is flat year-over-year
• Num­ber of Lon­er­gan SV150 boards with no women direc­tors: 45 in mid-2015 drop­ping to 1 today — this num­ber was 0 in 2022

Note: we have adjust­ed our report­ed board gen­der diver­si­ty sta­tis­tics to remove the com­pa­ny CEOs, which in 2023 meant remov­ing 153 boards seats of the Lon­er­gan SV150 (144 men and 9 women — there are three com­pa­nies with two male co-CEOs).

Num­ber of women CEOs still in sin­gle digits

There were only five women CEOs in the SV150 in 2014 when we pub­lished our first report on the CEOs of the Sil­i­con Val­ley. There are cur­rent­ly nine women CEOs in the Lon­er­gan SV150, and we have not seen this met­ric break into dou­ble dig­its at any time in the inter­ven­ing years.

These low num­bers per­sist, despite two of our list’s rare women Founder-CEOs replac­ing them­selves with hired women CEOs in 2021 (at LSV#64 Stitch Fix and LSV#59 Sun­run).

Unlike our track­ing of the num­ber of women board direc­tors (see analy­sis above), the num­ber of women CEOs in this rank­ing is not a met­ric with a trend line — the num­ber of women CEOs inch­es up and down a lit­tle each year, but has seen no mean­ing­ful trend­line improve­ment.

The cur­rent nine CEOs of the Lon­er­gan SV150 are:

• Lisa Su, AMD (LSV #17)
• Jayshree Ullal, Arista (LSV #45)
• Mary Pow­ell, Sun­run (LSV #59), who replaced woman CEO-founder Lynn Jurich in 2021
• Kat­ri­na Lake, back as inter­im CEO of com­pa­ny she found­ed Stitch Fix (LSV #64), replac­ing woman CEO Eliz­a­beth Spauld­ing who last­ed only 17 months
  
• Hay­den Brown, Upwork (LSV #105)
  
• Suzanne Win­ter, Accu­ray (LSV #129)
• Jen­nifer Teja­da, Pager­Du­ty (LSV #136)
• Ann Woj­ci­c­ki, founder of 23andMe (LSV#140)
  
• Julia Hartz, founder of Eventbrite (LSV# 147)

CEO tenure way up, dri­ven by increas­ing num­bers of Founder-CEOs

CEO tenure is dra­mat­i­cal­ly up, as mea­sured by both the aver­age and medi­an years of ser­vice (see table below). The medi­an years of ser­vice for the 153 CEOs in the rank­ings is 8.0 years, an increase of 45% since we mea­sured this in the Fall of 2016. when the medi­an years of CEO ser­vice was 5.5 years.

Let’s look at the changes in CEO tenure by category:

The table above helps illus­trate that the mea­sured increase in CEO tenure is large­ly a func­tion of the increas­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Founder-CEOs, who grew in num­ber from 28% of total CEOs in 2016 to 39% today. As founders grew more numer­ous, it dimin­ished the ranks of hired pro­fes­sion­al CEOs, who have an aver­age tenure ten years low­er than Founder-CEOs . In addi­tion to falling in rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the tenure of all non-founder CEOs has also declined 25% since Fall 2016. 

2023 sees major churn in CEO roster

Grow­ing per­for­mance pres­sure in the Lon­er­gan SV150 may be lead­ing to high­er CEO churn; in the first 4 months of 2023, six ranked CEOs have been replaced so far: 3 depart­ing CEOs were Founders (Mike Chang of LSV#94 Alpha & Omega, Jason Gard­ner of LSV#97 Mar­qe­ta, and Julie Wain­wright of LSV#107 The Real­Real) and 3 depart­ing CEOs were not founders. Both Mike Chang and Jason Gard­ner have moved into the role of Exec­u­tive Chair at the com­pa­nies where they were for­mer­ly CEO.

Founder-CEO trends imply more share­hold­er vot­ing pow­er rests with the CEOs of the Lon­er­gan SV150

When we did our first report on the CEOs of the SV150 in 2014, there were only 38 com­pa­nies being led by Founder-CEOs. Today, that num­ber has grown to an all-time high of 58 com­pa­nies. (Note: There are 59 Founder CEOs at 58 com­pa­nies because one com­pa­ny has two co-CEOs who are both named as Founders, at LSV#125 Guardant Health).

36 of the cur­rent group of Founder-CEOs also enjoy the enhanced share­hold­er influ­ence over the enter­prise afford­ed by dual class stock struc­tures, in which insid­ers own vot­ing stock with high­er vot­ing rights mul­ti­ples over the com­pa­ny’s reg­u­lar stock (the mul­ti­ple is usu­al­ly ten to one). The aver­age per­cent­age vot­ing pow­er of these Founder-CEOs (as report­ed in the 2022 prox­ies) is 42%. This means in ques­tions of board mem­ber­ship, acqui­si­tion, CEO suc­ces­sion, and strate­gic direc­tion, the CEO most like­ly has the vot­ing pow­er to decide these issues with­out much opposition.

Sig­nif­i­cant churn in ros­ter of Founder-CEOs in the Sil­i­con Val­ley 150

While the num­ber of Founder-CEOs lead­ing the Lon­er­gan SV150 has stayed the same since 2022, this flat year-over-year sta­tis­tic obscures what is actu­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant churn in the ros­ter of Founder-CEOs. There are sev­en depart­ing founders, and sev­en new Founder-CEOs.

The sev­en new Founder-CEOs in the Lon­er­gan SV150 are: Tomer Wein­garten at LSV#128 Sen­tinelOne; Jef­frey Tangney at LSV#133 Doxim­i­ty; Dr. Hui Wang at LSV#135 ACM Research; Thomas Siebel at LSV#146 C3​.ai; Julia Hartz at LSV#147 Eventbrite; Rajeev Goel at LSV#148 Pub­Mat­ic; and Spenser Skates at LSV#150 Ampli­tude.

A list­ing of the sev­en Founder-CEOs who left the CEO role since last year’s rankings:

Founder-CEOs: step­ping away from the CEO role, but often named Exec­u­tive Chair 

As you can see in the table, four of the sev­en founders depart­ing the CEO role since last year’s rank­ings are mov­ing onto the role of Exec­u­tive Chair.

A note on Exec­u­tive Chairs: there are cur­rent­ly 15 Exec­u­tive Chairs in the LSV150. Eight are com­pa­ny Founders who were for­mer­ly CEO. They are: Reed Hast­ings (LSV#10 Net­flix); Ben Sil­ber­man (LSV#52 Pin­ter­est); Lynn Jurich (LSV#59 Sun­Run); Kat­ri­na Lake (LSV#64 Stitch Fix — she is cur­rent­ly inter­im CEO as well after the depar­ture of her 2022 replace­ment); Lew Cirne (LSV#89 New Rel­ic); Mike Chang (LSV#94 Alpha & Omega); Jason Gard­ner (LSV#97 Mar­qe­ta); Andrew Ng (LSV#115 Cours­era), and Artur Bergman (LSV#126 Fast­ly).

Read the 2022 LSV150 Com­pa­ny Insights for more about LSV 150 finan­cial met­rics, acqui­si­tions, and com­pa­nies mov­ing their headquarters…