There's a whole shitstorm of a story behind that, which practically nobody knows... involving an internal boardroom coup around 2014.
DISCLAIMER. This is all how i saw it unfold from the sidelines. I wasn't in the boardroom, i may have some or all of these details wrong, but is how i remember it happening. I make no claim that this is totally accurate.
Basically as i understand it, two c level people in the company tried to convince the board to sell to Microsoft. And move our hq to seattle. All of this was done on the sly and was super conniving. Most of us original employees didnt want this, nor did then ceo David Helgason. But this is what i perceived, i cant speak for him and may have some facts wrong.
I wasnt in the boardroom for it, but because of his opposition , they convinced the board to strip David of all his practical ceo powers and he became ceo in name only. Like they left him there facing the public but took all his executive power away and started making decisions without him. He had a seat on the board but was just one voice against many investors.
I was in our SF office at the time and it became a ghost town as the two underhanded execs started moving management to seattle, not telling us a gdoddamn thing about what was happening. Morale sunk internally because our leader and vision keeper was stabbed in the back.
It was a weird and horrible time.
I dont know the exact details of how it happened, but the microsoft sale was cancelled at the last minute after some original founders convinced the board not to sell, getting a more experienced industry CEO (John) to run the company. I believe this was a condition of the board not selling to MS.
It reminds me a lot of what happened to steve jobs and john scully.
Why John i particular i don't know but i suspect Sequoia and the other vc investors on the board had a lot to do with it. John came in bringing some folks from Zynga and other huge companies, and the focus changed from making kickass software to growing the employee head count as quickly as possible to increase the company's perceived value in anticipation of an IPO (which happened about six years later).
I got in an argument with john over asset store operations, pounded on his desk because i didn't agree with him on several points, was asked to leave, and quit a few days later. He wanted to do things like AB testing different prices for the same asset depending on who the customer was, etc. classic scumbag ecommerce shit. Im proud of that desk pounding.
The real dogs behind the whole affair are the two underhanded execs who tried to secretly sell us to Microsoft though. Classic startup culture conflict in the face of corporate changes.
If they made David Helgason CEO again like apple did by removing scully and reinstating jobs, perhaps sumilar positive growth could happen to unity.
DISCLAIMER. This is all how i saw it unfold from the sidelines. I wasnt in the boardroom, i may have some or all of these claims wrong, but is how i remember it happening.
Tldr: underhanded boardroom coup
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