Snowflake performs in-out CEO routine, with Frank Slootman replacing Bob Muglia

The Snowflake board has dumped chairman and CEO Bob Muglia and brought in former ServiceNow boss Frank Slootman to replace him.

Founded in 2012 venture-backed Snowflake provides a data warehouse in the cloud, atop AWS or Azure.

Muglia has been Snowflake’s Chaiman and CEO since July 2014, and has raised an astonishing $923m in funding in that time, with the latest round for $450m completed in October 2018.

At the time Muglia said: “Our post-money valuation is now $3.9bn making Snowflake amongst the top 25 most highly valued private US tech companies. This funding is also the fifth ever largest private company financing in enterprise software.”

Muglia is now history. Mike Speiser, venture capitalist and board director at Snowflake, said in a statement: “Snowflake is one of the most significant new companies in Silicon Valley and we believe Frank is the right leader at this juncture to fully realize that potential. The best time to make a change is when things are going well. We’re thrilled to have Frank take the helm at Snowflake. We also wish to recognise the incredible role Bob Muglia has played over the past five years to get us to this point.”

Bob Muglia.
Frank Slootman

New broom Frank Slootman was the chairman and CEO at ServiceNow from April 2011 to March 2017. Before that he was president and CEO of Data Domain, which was bought by EMC in June 2009 for $2.4bn.

ServiceNow IPOed in June 2012, raising $210m.

Blocks & Files thinks Slootman’s track record of acquisition and successful IPO-based growth must have been attractive to Snowflake’s investors, looking for a great exit.