Feels like an old school Friday night news drop. Man, Zenefits has had it rough in the press recently.<p>I think Sacks has done an extraordinarily good job as CEO. Hard to put oneself in the CEOs shoes here, but this guy had to make multiple <i>huge</i> decisions and changes to Zenefits over the past year. Sacks' consistency of right calls and handling things deftly under a ton of pressure, I can't remember the last time a CEO had to run such a gauntlet, maybe <i>Iceman</i> back in 1986. The guy deserves more credit than he has gotten. Though it's not surprising the press missed this part of a story as they tend to do when they smell unicorn blood in the water.<p>I also don't think it's too surprising he is stepping down. How long can someone work on cleaning up someone else's mess? While under-compensated for it. And while putting better more interesting potential opportunities on hold.
Apparently he's joining Thiel and the Trump team <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/technology/zenefits-chief-quitting-and-is-said-to-consider-trump-transition-team.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/technology/zenefits-chief-...</a>
Huge fan of David Sacks. Rough blow about Zenefits the past few months. It feels like one piece of bad news after another.<p>Really, the big news here is Gusto. Gusto has hands-down slipped right passed Zenefits and will consume their market.
Surprising. From This week in startup's interview that came out 3 days back, it appeared David Sacks had no such plans: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/twistartups/twist-e692" rel="nofollow">https://soundcloud.com/twistartups/twist-e692</a>
I think what's interesting is that Sacks was put into this position at the request of the board and shareholders. For the most part, this will be a interesting transition for Zenefits as they deal with the wave after wave of bad news...
I don't know why anyone would want to be the CEO of such a troubled company without either a huge golden parachute or a huge payoff in the event of an acquisition.
Seems appropriate considering he was supposed to have Conrad's back but seemed to happily throw him under the bus when the Zenefits issues came to light.<p>This will be a good way to close out that chapter and for everyone to move on.<p>FWIW,asides the throwing of Conrad under the bus, Sacks seemed to have done a pretty good job (from the outside) of steadying the Zenefits ship after last year's collusion.<p>I expect Buzfeed to have the gossip back story by early next week.
tl;dr since some of us won't have wsj access:<p><i>“David Sacks is still the CEO of Zenefits and remains very committed to the company,” she said in a statement. “This is not a role that David sought, but he accepted it without any compensation at the request of the board to get the company past a crisis. Now that the crisis is over, David is leading a process to determine what senior talent the company needs to get to the next level.”</i>
The lead has changed to: "David Sacks confirmed he is stepping down as chief executive of Zenefits, less than a year after taking over the troubled health-benefits broker."<p>The "still the CEO of Zenefits" quote from his last-to-know PR person is now gone.