Anchor co-founder and Spotify executive Nir Zicherman has announced that he will be leaving his position as vice president and global head of audiobooks at the start of October.
Zicherman joined Spotify four and a half years ago after the audio giant acquired podcast hosting platform Anchor, which he co-founded with Michael Mignano. During Spotify’s annual Stream On event in March this year, the company announced that it was rolling Anchor into its all-in-one podcast creator platform Spotify for Podcasters, which Megaphone will also be integrated into in the future.
In an email sent to The Hollywood Reporter, Zicherman told the publication that the reason for his departure from Spotify was so that he can return to his “entrepreneurial roots” and pursue a new start-up project. Mignano also left his position at Spotify as head of talk for podcasts, live, and video in June 2022 to become a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Parcast founder Max Cutler recently announced that he too was leaving his position as Spotify’s head of talk creator content and partnerships in May after four years. In an internal memo that Cutler wrote to Spotify staff, he said almost the same thing as Zicherman, stating that he was leaving to “return to his entrepreneurial roots” and to launch his own start-up venture.
“After a total of 9 years working across Spotify and Anchor, I’ve decided that it’s time for the next chapter in my career,” said Zicherman. “I’m extremely proud of the work the team has done, and now that we’ve successfully established a foundation, I’m excited about what’s next for audiobooks at Spotify — but I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and on a personal level, I’m excited to be getting back to the startup world. I felt that now was a good time to begin that transition, as the team at Spotify is set up well for success in our future work.”
Zicherman also made a LinkedIn post announcing the news of his departure and specifically thanked Spotify CEO Daniel Ek for welcoming the Anchor team to Spotify and for “betting on them” as well as Spotify chief research & development officer Gustav Söderström for being his mentor during the process.
Until Spotify finds a replacement for Zicherman, Spotify vice president of business affairs David Kaefer will take over his responsibilities and oversee the business end of the company’s audiobook expansion.
Other Spotify executives besides Zicherman and Cutler that have also left the company recently or announced their upcoming departures include chief content officer Dawn Ostroff and head of studios and videos Courtney Holt.
