With more than $1 billion in venture capital investment, more than $128 million in losses last year and a plan for an initial public offering, Snapchat has tapped a public company veteran to run its bookkeeping team.
After a nine-month search, the fast-growing tech company hired former Mattel executive Drew Vollero as vice president of finance and acting chief financial officer. For reasons that are unclear, the Venice company didn’t immediately name him chief financial officer, but said in a statement that it expects to.
Vallero will be tasked with preparing the books at Snapchat, now valued at around $16 billion, for an initial public offering. He spent the last 15 years at Mattel, where for the last five years he was senior vice president of finance, strategy and investor relations.
Snapchat has been adding experienced executives to its roster this year as it seeks to increase revenue and prep for the IPO. In December, it hired Imran Khan, Credit Suisse’s head of Internet banking, as its chief strategy officer; Peter Hamby, a national political reporter for CNN, joined as head of news in April; and this month hired former Fullscreen Senior Vice President James Veraldi to work on strategy and partnerships for Discover, its publishing portal.
The company also expanded today the number of channels in its Discover portal to 15, adding Mashable, IGN and Santa Monica’s Tastemade. The Discover portal is an important advertising revenue stream for Snapchat.
News of Vallero’s hiring comes after media site Gawker last week published leaked documents from the company showing that it lost $128 million on just $3.1 million in revenue in the first 11 months of 2014. The documents also showed that Snapchat had $321 million in cash on hand in November, enough at its then-burn rate to sustain the company for at least 2 years. Expensive operations for young tech companies of Snapchat’s scale and ambition are not unheard of; Twitter sustained similar losses before its 2013 initial public offering.
Snapchat has since raised close to $1 billion from investors, according to website Crunchbase. The company is reportedly expecting $50 million in revenue in 2015 and $200 million in revenue in 2016.
Technology reporter Garrett Reim can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @garrettreim for the latest in L.A. tech news.
