Conrad was the CTO of Pandora for ten years, the VP of Product at Snapchat for two years, and the Chief Product Officer at the failed streaming service Quibi. He, along with Nick Millington, Sonos' chief product officer and the architect behind the original app, led the app's fix, Sonos spokesperson Erin Pategas told The Verge.
Sonos has disappointed customers
Leadership that succeeds Spence has their work cut out for them after Sonos disrupted customer relationships last year and frustrated employees who worried about pushing the app out of the market.
“When [the app’s user experience] doesn't work, our customers are taken out of the moment and are right to feel like we've let them down,” Conrad said in an email to employees. “I think we can all agree that we have let far too many people down this year.”
In the letter (which you can read in its entirety at The Verge), Conrad pointed out “notable” product releases that were brought down by the bad app. Such products are insufficient “when our customers' alarms don't go off, their kids can't hear their playlist during breakfast, their surrounds don't flash, or they can't pause the music in time to answer the buzzing doorbell,” Conrad wrote.
Conrad and the next CEO will have to work to not only improve the value of Sonos, but also convince users that Sonos is equipped to handle their long-standing interests and demands as well as future endeavors. A big driver for Sonos' app problems was the need to develop the software to support mobile devices like the Ace. In August, Spence noted to investors that the maligned app was “a redesign of the entire system — not just the app, but the player side of our system, as well as our cloud infrastructure.”
Interim CEO Conrad seems intent on satisfying disappointed customers and continuing to push Sonos toward a cloud-dependent future.
“Going back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos,” Conrad told employees, noting that Sonos wants to go “well beyond home audio.”
At least for now, customers seem happy that Spence will no longer be leading these efforts.
“Well deserved,” one Reddit user wrote today in a post that has received hundreds of upvotes at the time of writing. “Imagine doing so much reputational and functional damage to a previously known go-to brand.”
