Google Executive Leaves For Venture Capital Firm Accel

9th April- 2009

Sukhinder Singh CassidyThe flight of executives from Google continues.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google’s top sales executive for Asia-Pacific and Latin America, is leaving the company to join Accel, the venture capital firm. Her departure follows the exit of Tim Armstrong, the top sales executive for North America, less than a month ago. Ms. Singh Cassidy was reported to be one of the candidates to replace Mr. Armstrong, who left to become chief executive officer of AOL. But the job went to Dennis Woodside, who led Google’s sales organization in Great Britain, Google’s second largest market after the United States.

Ms. Singh Cassidy said in an interview that she did not seek Mr. Armstrong’s job and that her decision to leave has nothing to do with his departure. “The timing was very coincidental and there was no talk internally about me taking Tim’s job,” she said. “The reality is that I was always pretty clear in my ambition and desire to one day take the step of running my own company and pretty transparent in talking with Google about that.”

Ms. Singh Cassidy will be a C.E.O.-in-residence at Accel, the venture firm behind Facebook, MetroPCS and Baidu. She will evaluate new investments, work with companies in Accel’s digital media and advertising portfolio and eventually start a new company or run one of Accel’s portfolio companies. Accel is currently investing a $520 million fund in early-stage start-ups and a $480 million fund in late-stage companies.
Ms. Singh Cassidy will be valuable to Accel because her experience ranges from founding a start-up to running a multi-billion dollar business at Google, said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a partner at Accel, in an interview. “She’s the rare executive in the Internet that scales all the way from starting a company to running a large, sizable Internet company,” Ms. Gouw Ranzetta said.

Ms. Singh Cassidy first worked with Accel in 1999 as co-founder of Yodlee, an online banking company in which Accel invested. She joined Google in 2003 as the first general manager of Google Local & Maps.

In a statement, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, called Ms. Singh Cassidy “an ambitious, entrepreneurial executive who has a proven track record of building successful operations.” He said: “We wish her only the best as she pursues her passion to lead and run her own company.”

Google’s Latin American director, Gonzalo Alonso, also recently left the company. He joined Globant, a software development and maintenance outsourcing company headquartered in Argentina.