SAN FRANCISCO (BRAIN) — Zwift founder Eric Min announced Friday that he will become co-CEO, sharing duties with former Amazon executive Kurt Beidler. Min, who has been CEO since Zwift's founding in 2014, said Beidler's hire came after "a long search." Min will also remain chairman of Zwift's board of directors.
Beidler was at Amazon for 17 years. "For most of the past eight years, Kurt has been leading Amazon Kids+, a hardware/software/content subscription service structurally similar to Zwift," Min said in a LinkedIn post. "Kurt led the Kids+ team of several hundred people to grow Kids+ into the largest kid-focused subscription service in the world. Before that, Kurt built and ran several books and Kindle-related businesses across the US, Europe, Japan, and China."
Min said he would work closely with Beidler as Beidler "takes the reins of Zwift's core business and ramps up in his new role."
"The most significant value this new Co-CEO relationship brings to Zwift is the ability for Kurt and me to divide and conquer. There is much work to do! For me, rather than being spread thin trying to do it all myself, I will have time to go deeper into specific areas that are also critical to Zwift's long-term success," Min wrote.
A Zwift representative said the company laid off some workers last month, without sharing a number. Those departures follow a round in May, when Zwift laid off several dozen employees, including 63 employees at its Long Beach, California, facility.
It also said in May that it was pausing internal development of a trainer. A few months later, Zwift entered the hardware market anyway by marketing a $500 trainer made by JetBlack; Wahoo Fitness is suing Zwift for patent infringement over the product.
