Determined to be a CEO again, former Skype CEO Tony Bates left Microsoft when that firm selected Satya Nadella as its next leader. And this week, Mr. Bates showed up for the first time since, with a new position at wearable camera maker GoPro. The big news? He's not the CEO.
Instead, Bates has become the president of GoPro and he will join its board of directors. He reports directly to GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman. In a statement, GoPro said that Bates would focus on its core business help the firm expand its media operations.
GoPro makes a line of wearable cameras that are popular with professional extreme sportsmen and amateurs alike. The firm had $1 billion in revenues in 2013 and posted a profit of $60 million.
Bates had been CEO of Skype for just seven months when that firm was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011. He became the president of Microsoft's Skype division, which was run like a separate company while the firm integrated the communications technology into its other core products. After a reorg in mid-2013, he became the firm's executive vice president of business development, strategy and evangelism. Bates left Microsoft in March 2014.
He is perhaps most famous for declaring in an early 2011 interview that he had a personal goal of becoming the CEO of a company before he turned 45, something he accomplished just a few months later. But with his CEO ambitions crushed at Microsoft, the speculation now centers on whether GoPro's Woodman has promised Bates a succession schedule.
