Tim Sullivan is stepping down as CEO of geneology site Ancestry.com, which has been gearing up to go public. The company was most recently valued at $2.6 billion.
Sullivan will transition into a chairman role on October 1. He will be succeeded on an interim basis by CFO/COO Howard Hochhauser.
What happens to the IPO? It's delayed, not dead. The company already filed confidential paperwork with the SEC, but won't submit a publicly-available S-1 document until the new boss is in place.
A source close to the situation says Ancestry's senior management had been talking about post-IPO succession planning, given that Sullivan had been with the company for 12 years (he was previously CEO of Match.com). Sullivan is said to have felt that since Utah-based Ancestry wasn't under any financial pressure to go public, it would make more sense to accelerate the transition and give future shareholders a longer-term senior management team. There are no plans to raise interim financing.