Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/Insider
- The SoftBank-backed glassmaker View filed for bankruptcy in April, three years after its SPAC merger.
- CEO Rao Mulpuri has stepped down from View, which was taken private by two investors.
- Insiders told BI he had a magic touch with investors but that staff lived in fear of being fired.
Five months after the glassmaker View filed for bankruptcy, CEO Rao Mulpuri has stepped down. Under his tenure, View raised $1.1 billion from SoftBank in 2018 and went public in 2021. It struggled as a public company and ran low on cash several times before declaring bankruptcy in April.
Mulpuri announced his departure Thursday night in a memo to employees, which he also posted on LinkedIn.
"After 15 incredible years, I have decided it's time to leave View Inc. What a ride it has been! A journey of a lifetime, filled with many ups and downs, but never a dull moment," he wrote.
View makes eco-friendly windows that darken when it's sunny, which reduces air-conditioning energy costs. The Milpitas, California-based firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reorganize without liquidating all its assets.
Two of View's longtime investors, Cantor Fitzgerald and the real-estate firm RXR, have taken the company private. Cantor sponsored the special-purpose acquisition company that merged with View to take it public, raising $815 million. On August 22, the financial-services firm agreed to a $12 million settlement to end a lawsuit by SPAC investors who alleged they were misled. Cantor did not reply to a request for comment in time for publication.
According to a separate memo sent to employees Friday morning, two board members will run View as co-CEOs: Joshua Spellman, the chief of staff at Cantor, and Andrew Min, a senior vice president at RXR.
Mulpuri had led View since 2008, replacing one of the firm's cofounders. Previously, he led the Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Novellus Systems.
He is known for his magic touch with investors, managing to raise cash for View multiple times when funds ran low, including from the now bankrupt financier Greensill Capital.
"He's always been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat when it comes to procuring more money for the company," one banker familiar with View previously told Business Insider.
In 2022, BI spoke with 29 former and current View employees. They described a culture of micromanagement and said they were afraid of being fired. All but one spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisal from View. Their identities are known to Insider.
Mulpuri obsessively monitored tweets and LinkedIn posts about View and asked people to write positive reviews of the company on Glassdoor, multiple former employees said.
Two former employees in the corporate office said View staff called him "Chairman Rao," an inside joke rhyming his name with the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.
"If you didn't agree with the company's potential or the rosy picture, or how we were going to revolutionize and change the world, you were kept on the outside," one of the employees said.
Mulpuri did not comment in time for publication. In his note, he hinted that he would return to the startup industry.
He would be "back in the saddle" building things "sooner than later," he wrote, adding: "Stay tuned."
Read the story on how it went from investor darling to problem child: SoftBank's View went from investor darling to one of the worst SPAC deals ever. Insiders say the glassmaker has struggled with cash burn for years, while many lived in fear of being fired.
Correction: August 30, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misdescribed one of View's investors. Cantor Fitzgerald is a financial-services firm, not a law firm.