Dropbox CTO departs as shares drop

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Dropbox Inc. is losing its chief technology officer but gaining two people to replace him.

In the latest change at the document-sharing unicorn, Dropbox DBX, -3.46%  on Wednesday said CTO Quentin Clark is leaving after two years. Clark, who had previous stops at SAP SE ADR SAP, -2.98%  and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -1.77%  , is being succeeded by Bharat Mediratta (CTO) and Tim Young (senior vice president and general manager). Dropbox disclosed the move to MarketWatch before posting a blog item.

“It was not so much a decision to leave as to start my venture career,” Clark, 48, told MarketWatch in a phone interview. Clark, who is leaving Dropbox in January, declined to name the VC firm he is joining.

Mediratta was an engineer for more than a decade at Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -2.33% GOOG, -2.36%  Google, one of the two primary rivals of Dropbox for corporate workplace customers. Microsoft is the other.

Young previously was vice president of product and engineering at VMware Inc. VMW, -0.80%.  

Clark deemed the change a “fundamental restructuring” of the CTO office, which has grown in responsibility, duties and pressure the past few years as companies collect, share and secure data on cloud-computing platforms.

The executive reshuffling is part of a larger strategic shift at Dropbox. The company went public last year amid great promise only to see its stock tumble 26% the past year. Dropbox shares declined 3% at $19.34 in trading on Wednesday, edging toward a 52-week low.

The San Francisco-based company has revamped its product line to pursue large enterprise customers in a bid to bolster revenue growth, which hasn’t satisfied investors. Its hope is that more of its 600 million registered customers pay for upgraded services rather than stick with a free but more bare-bones service.

Last week, Dropbox said it had made changes to its core product, Dropbox Spaces, so that various work folders are interlinked, and a new desktop app that functions as a digital hub where workers can collaborate with colleagues on projects that require access to digital files.

Read more: Dropbox overhauls product line, welcomes Michelle Obama

Dropbox Chief Executive Drew Houston said in a press conference last week it was too early to share user adoption numbers for Dropbox’s new software lineup because it began rolling it out in June.