There can be a million reasons for these departures, so take this post with a huge grain of salt. I don’t want to troll or throw reckless FUD on Square. I have no agenda. I recently sold after Jack’s misadventures in Myanmar and am tracking the company to explore the validity of trusting my intuition. I continue to find the company’s culture troubling. Of note, another reason I’m posting this is because I think that investing is much more intuition than most of us want to admit. Three geniuses can all come to wildly different valuations on the same company. It’s only intuition, really, that can figure out if the fortune is behind curtain 1, 2 or 3.
Onto business…
SQ, of course, recently lost Sarah Friar - superstar CFO. Now they lose their Head of Product Development, Mary Kay Bowman. Like with insider sales, when execs depart it could be entirely meaningless. They got better offers, time to move, etc. But it is never an inherently good thing. And it could be a bad thing. Here we have a fast growing company operating in a space with a massive TAM and two major - major - players leave in the early innings. Fine - one took a CEO job, one moved to VISA, both could have left for a million valid reasons. No doubt. But both also know better than any of us what the future looks like for SQ. And both left. These are objective facts.
You probably heard that Square hired the CFO of Activision. That sounds comforting. But I just poked around a bit and found some curious things. Her name is Amrita Ahuja and she has an impressive resume/education. BUT - get a load of this. She was only the CFO of ATVI since March. That’s odd. Maybe ATVI is a mess and she wisely jumped ship. But you do wonder how someone throws her name in the hat for SQ when they just took such a massive job. So, then I found this link on Reddit about her move and one comment twisted my under britches. I edited it for brevity …
https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/acc0tc/mo…
… But the panelist I was by-far most surprised to see was the company’s CFO: Amrita herself! I was struck by the things she said, because she told her story of how she got the position, and spoke with such passion about how excited she was by opportunity to join Blizzard. She seemed to be so authentically hype to be a part of the company and community…
And then it was just a couple weeks later that the Kotaku article was posted that name-dropped her specifically as the person who at their Spring meeting last year said they would be seeking to cut costs. And when I saw that I felt, on some level, like…I had been duped by this person.
And now this happens, and I just don’t really know what to think anymore about this person that 2 months ago I saw for the first time and thought was a positive, authentic person, but now seems to be just another soulless, spreadsheet-worshiping, money-chasing corporate ghoul 
Gosh that’s interesting. The gaming community is a very tight knit community that takes gaming very seriously. And here is a poster who is a big ATVI fan who is real impressed by Amrita’s seeming passion, which turns out to feel false. Gosh.
In this CNBC article, Dorsey sites her “entrepreneurial qualities”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/03/square-hires-amrita-ahuja-as…
Dorsey told CNBC that Ahuja rose to the top of the search for Square’s Board of Directors given her entrepreneurial qualities. Ahuja has held various roles at Activision Blizzard in her eight years there including: SVP of Investor Relations and VP of Finance and Operations.
Here’s her LinkedIn resume…
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amrita-ahuja-2402595/
Entrepreneurship plays a role - she has worked with start ups. But it doesn’t jump off the page the way it might if she sold a company for 100M that she built. Seems like a track record working up the ladders of giant corporations. There is nothing wrong with that and it likely means she is very talented and intelligent. But…
The bottom line is two major execs leave the company and one comes in with virtually no experience as a CFO. And I think she is only 39. Of interest, the Reddit thread suggests she is ruthless in terms of cutting costs. Might there be some cost cutting coming to Square? (Again, could be a good thing!)
Lastly, let me play with fire - I do notice she is a very attractive young woman as is Sarah Friar. I will say NOTHING about this other than I find it interesting in light of Dorsey’s recent escapades. You can do with this comment what you will. I will not comment on it further.
For my taste, again, this doesn’t feel right. And this is not just foo-foo emotional talk it’s a gut feeling I notice in the most elite business, entertainment and sports leaders of all the time. I like teams that stay together for a long time because I believe it makes them better. The better you know people, the more you trust them, the harder you fight by their side. People that come to mind include Jayshree Ullal (ANET), Dheeraj Pandy (NTNX), Reed Hastings (NFLX), Bill Belichick, Khabib Nurmagemedov and his dad (UFC), and the Chicago Cubs - whose joy of playing and brohood was evident in every play of their miraculous 2016 World Series championship season. And the other greatest triumph-over-a-hex, Mark Messier’s leadership of the New York Rangers in 1994. Legendary film directors like the Coen Brothers and Coppola work with the same actors and musicians. The Rolling Stones are still freaking banging out 100M+ tours!
Anyway, forgive the long post, I don’t have time to write a shorter one.
Fool On,
The Intuitive Investor,
BroadwayDan
P.S. My intuition also tells me the major contributors to this board and the NPI board - whose aggregate intellect and generosity of spirit/time is astounding - are the best in the investment world, period. The rallying to process the news of Amazon coming after MDB is truly awesome. And I’m sure I speak for many lurkers when I say thank you to the heavy hitters here who post real, elite analysis. It is massively appreciated.
