
SoftBank President Nikesh Arora to Step Down - ghosh
http://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-president-nikesh-arora-to-step-down-1466506804
======
shaqbert
Typical case for botched leadership transition.

Arora held executive positions at Google, Deutsche Telecom, and in a fund mgmt
group, is the poster boy of a leader Softbank could wish for. Don't think he
would have come over without a clearly defined date for taking over the helm.

Interesting to see which self-respecting exec would be willing to follow into
Arora's footsteps. I guess we see a B-player puppet so Masayoshi can continue
to hold on.

------
perseusprime11
I have a different takeaway - Leaders from Google like Nikesh Arora, Marissa
Mayer, Vic Gundotra don't succeed outside of Google because Google has a very
unique culture and team environment, and success does not come from individual
leaders at Google - it comes from teams.

~~~
w1ntermute
A counterexample is Sheryl Sandberg, who was Google's Vice President of Global
Online Sales and Operations from 2001 to 2008.

~~~
perseusprime11
I like this counter example. I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the
kingmaker and not the king to be successful. She is a driving force behind
Mark Zuckerberg's success. Of all the folks mentioned, I put Sheryl in the
rare breed category who has very high emotional intelligence.

~~~
w1ntermute
> I also think Sheryl knows that she can be the kingmaker and not the king to
> be successful.

Another example of this is Uber's Ryan Graves. He was Uber's original CEO, but
was replaced in December 2010 by Travis Kalanick[0]. At that point, Uber's
success was by no means ensured, but Graves stuck with it, and now he's a
billionaire anyway[1].

0: [https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-
abou...](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/uber-ceo-super-pumped-about-being-
replaced-by-founder/)

1: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber-
billio...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/03/02/uber-billionaires-
garrett-camp-ryan-graves)

------
mathattack
Interesting. He seemed uniquely suited to do the job, with a commercial
background in both old telecom and new cloud. Perhaps this just didn't
translate to picking companies to buy.

~~~
denzil_correa
This is still behind a paywall. You can search for the WSJ title and follow a
search engine link to bypass this.

~~~
pc86
There is a web link under the article that achieves the same result.

~~~
denzil_correa
Which link? I am curious.

------
grizzles
On Twitter, Nikesh is spinning it as a positive, no big deal. He says: I still
love Masa, etc. So maybe it worked out well for him. Softbanks stock has
declined somewhat since he is reported to have bought $487 million worth to
become Softbanks 2nd largest shareholder. If he managed to unwind that
transaction and somehow break even then he has done very well. That would mean
he would have essentially freerolled any upside in the company's share price
over the last 2 years, if it had rised. Pretty interesting because on the face
of it, it would look like Softbank had him over a barrel.

------
cominventor
[http://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh-
arora...](http://www.vccircle.com/news/finance/2016/04/22/nikesh-aroras-india-
deals-softbank-investors-are-seeking-probe)

