Schwartz Group

Schwartz moving from President to Advisor @ Magento

Posted on 05. Nov, 2012 by bob in Magento, SchwartzGroup, Uncategorized

Many of you may have noticed in the recent months that I have been less and less active overall with the business of Magento. Here is what has been in the works:

I officially shifted my role from President to “Advisor” as of September. This transition was planned and in the works for many months (going back to eBay’s acquisition). Most recently I have scaled back responsibilities and overall visibility. My role of Advisor will extend thru the end of 2012 allowing for limited time for select meetings, and availability for our ecosystem of fantastic partners and customers.

If you know me, you know I LOVE MAGENTO and I loved the past 3+ years as President! I also love what JohnD (eBay’s CEO) & eBay are doing in commerce. I love the tremendous power that eBay Inc brings the Magento ecosystem to help drive their continued success. I love what Magento brings eBay Inc in a powerful open disruptive commerce platform, and passionate and innovative global ecosystem of customers, solution partners and technology partners.

Yes, I see Magento as my baby co-parented with Roy, Yoav, Keren, Adi and all of YOU. And yes, in the next months I will need to understand how to reduce the Magento orange blood flowing through my veins, but I will never give up my orange blazer or high tops . Yes, letting go has been tough over the past year. No, I am not great at good-byes, I prefer to ride off into the sunset. Yes, I do expect that I will get all mushy and emotional as these weeks go by.

Imagine eCommerce Conference 2012

The great friends and relationships I have gained have been a personal blessing. We have driven the autobahn in Germany, walked the beach in California, and celebrated at your wedding in France. These relationships are made up of leaders and innovators from around the world in eCommerce, retail, brands and technology. These are all entrepreneurs in your their own right, each pioneering the future, creating great new products, new experiences, taking risks and building great businesses. I am very proud to be part of this. One of my best times each year has become our annual Imagine eCommerce conference that Roy and I created. It’s at this event where you can literally feel the global friendship, passion and innovation of the Magento brand and culture that we all built together.

Business metrics like “over 125,000 merchants including best in class brands, retailers and innovators”, “over 6,500 apps and extensions creating powerful flexibility” and yes “Magento is more Googled than the word “eCommerce“” makes me proud. Yet I am most proud of our people and growing our Magento team from 40 people to 400 – which could only be accomplished by finding and bringing in very talented and inspired leaders and giving them the reins to do what they thought was right.

My personal mission is “to enable others success” and nothing made Magento more satisfying to me than when people around the world would come up to me and tell me that their company “was only a few people a few years ago”, and then they met Magento and “since meeting Magento we have seen tremendous growth and now are over 100 people and still growing rapidly”. I LOVE THESE STORIES!

Roy Rubin, Founder

Quick shout out: Roy, thank you for trusting me with your baby during these past 3+ years. Damn we had fun even amidst all the long hours and hard work! I loved every minute of it, sharing an office with you, building together, the long days side by side, the travel, our building an organization of great people, and our mutual passion about the Magento brand and culture! Roy, we make a hell of a team, like Martin and Lewis and they didn’t stop at just one hit Looking forward to doing it again!

My duties at Magento and around eBay’s acquisition are now complete, and this will allow me to spend my time on new endeavors which will be focused on value creation around “massive changes happening in retail intersecting with technology”. Why? So we can create ways to continue this fun…together —> enabling each others success!

Thank you all for being part of this incredible Magento journey and my life.

Please stay connected!

Bob Schwartz