Hasan Sukkar, the founding father of AI startup 11x, is stepping down from his position as CEO, Sukkar announced on LinkedIn this morning. Prabhav Jain, 11x’s CTO, has been named the corporate’s new CEO.
Sukkar will transfer right into a “non-executive chairman” place, the place he’ll work with Jain on “strategic course, product imaginative and prescient, business relationships, and opening new market alternatives,” Sukkar wrote on LinkedIn, serving to 11x in any approach he can “into the long run.”
“I’ve spent lots of time eager about what it takes to go from a quick rising startup to a permanent enterprise grade scale-up, and I’ve realised that I like constructing from the bottom up. It’s in my bones,” Sukkar wrote on LinkedIn. “I like 11x and imagine in our mission deeply. Now we have a large alternative forward. However typically, loving your organization means figuring out when to move the CEO baton for the subsequent leg of the race.”
As TechCrunch beforehand reported in March, 11x at the moment had been displaying off buyer logos on its web site of corporations that weren’t energetic prospects, and a type of corporations was threatening to sue over the matter. Different sources additionally advised TechCrunch that the 11x product had points and the corporate had struggled with buyer retention. Some staff additionally described the startup as a grueling place to work.
11x has raised greater than $70 million from traders, together with a $24 million Sequence A led by Sarah Tavel, a longtime investor with Benchmark, and a $50 million Sequence B led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Joe Schmidt, the a16z partner part of the 11x deal, publicly doubled down on his assist for the corporate and its CEO, posting on X in March that the firm loved “Hasan and the whole workforce at 11x,” and that the “workforce, product, and metrics are world class.”
Tavel additionally posted on X saying, “As a board member, I’ve seen the progress up shut, and our conviction within the workforce and the chance is stronger than ever.” Final week, Tavel, who joined Benchmark as a basic companion in 2017, additionally introduced she can be taking over the place of enterprise companion, a extra restricted position on the storied agency.
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A spokesperson for 11x despatched a prolonged electronic mail explaining that the change was meant to place the best individual within the CEO position for a brand new development section of the corporate.
“Present CTO, fmr. Brex exec and 3-time founder Prabhav Jain is entering into the CEO position, with Hasan Sukkar transitioning into a brand new position as Non-Government Chairman,” the 11x spokesperson wrote. “The transfer displays 11x’s development: Over the past 12 months, the corporate has developed from a single product, single use-case firm to a platform that powers lots of of the world’s main GTM groups.”
Benchmark and a16z didn’t instantly reply to a request for added remark.
Charles Rollet contributed reporting.