The 55-year-old, who until yesterday was the company’s president, will have his work cut out to steer the customer relationship management software provider at a time of stalling growth in the small and midsize business segment — its primary revenue generator.
Woodside also has big shoes to fill, for founder Mathrubootham’s exit was not received well by the markets. The stock fell nearly 28% to $13.15 a piece following the news at 6:25 AM eastern time on Nasdaq after-markets, a far cry from the $50 in 2021, when it first listed on the bourses.
Turnaround specialist?
The CEO position is not Woodside’s first rodeo. From 2012 to 2014, he served as chief executive of Motorola Mobility under Google’s ownership, where he quickly made his mark. He recruited a new management team, reset product and go-to-market strategy and re-established growth in the mobile device business, before selling it to Lenovo.
Woodside joined Freshworks in September 2022 as president and serves on the board too. The firm has seen a few top-deck changes under his leadership. Last year, Mika Yamamoto was appointed as chief customer and marketing officer, replacing Stacey Epstein, while Johanna Jackman was named chief people officer in place of Suman Gopalan.
In February 2024, chief revenue officer Pradeep Rathinam resigned, while Abe Smith was roped in as chief of its global field operations.
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Prior to taking over Motorola Mobility for Google, Woodside spent eight years across senior management roles heading entire geographical regions such as Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa.He was also the chief operating officer at storage firm Dropbox, helping it scale from about $300 million to $1.4 billion in revenue over 4.5 years, and then into a public listing. Just before he joined Freshworks, Woodside was president of Impossible Foods and also served on the board of Freshworks’ competitor ServiceNow.
After Woodside came on board, Freshworks has increasingly been trying to shift its reliance away from small and midsize business clients to mid-market and enterprise customers in trying to close larger accounts.
The Stanford Law School and Cornell University alumnus was also a triathlon athlete in his Juris Doctor days. At Cornell, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Relations, he was also captain of the varsity lightweight rowing team.
Woodside will now need to put his hard-running and rowing skills to good use at Freshworks.
