Guild, an ad-free platform for professional communities and networking, has promoted COO Gregor Young to CEO as it plans to accelerate growth in 2023.
Young takes over the role from founder Ashley Friedlein who stays on in a strategic sales role, says the company.
Speaking of the appointment, the company says Young joined Guild in January 2022, and previously led the FT’s digitisation efforts and implemented the publisher’s martech strategy.
Since then, Guild has grown by more than 100%. It hosts more than 6,000 communities for organisations including the CIPD, PRCA, Deloitte, The Marketing Society, National Education Union, Cambridge Judge Business School and is now seeing organic growth in the US and internationally with clients like Renewd, SISO, INSEAD, Risk Leadership Network, and Palo Alto Networks. In late 2021, Guild raised a $2.7m in a seed round to accelerate product development.
Ashley Friedlein, founder at Guild, said: “Our last funding round allowed us to hire senior talent, like Gregor, and our CMO Michelle Goodall, invest in our product and grow the user base towards 100,000. We believe 2023 is poised to be a breakout year for community, and community tech like Guild, as evidenced by recent community product launches from both WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams. Gregor's experience in product, data and operations at scale comes at the right time!"
Gregor Young added: “I’m passionate about righting some wrongs in social media and creating a better way to connect with peers, navigate your career, develop your expertise and yourself. There is still a lot to solve and I’m excited about building the team that will answer the remaining questions. Ashley's well-known brilliance in community, marketing, content, communication and entrepreneurship will continue to help Guild thrive as we focus on growth for 2023.”
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