Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has named DoorDash CEO Tony Xu as a member of the Board of Directors. The company’s board has received criticism recently for not being independent and it seems that the arrival of the founder of one of the most dynamic companies in Silicon Valley could change that. This is the first appointment since Meta formation in October.
Meta appoints Tony Xu of DoorDash as a member of the board
Since 2020 Facebook (now renamed Meta) does not change the structure of its board. In fact, in March 2020 Jeffrey Zients had left the company, replaced by the former Secretary of the Treasury during the Bush Jr administration, Robert Kimmitt. But in recent years, several members of the board of directors have left the board of Facebook / Meta, including the CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings and that of American Express Kenneth Chenault.
Xu is 37 years old but already as a student at Stanford he co-founded DoorDash, which especially during the pandemic years had a great success. In the United States it is the app of home delivery of food more used, especially because it is well integrated in the suburbs and small towns. And despite the restaurant reopening, it continued to be a of the American companies that grow the most.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chairman and CEO as well as the company’s CEO, explained that Xu “has built a great service for millions of people to bring food and more to hundreds of thousands of restaurants and small businesses. I always thought it was important to have great tech leaders on our board. AND Tony has direct experience both to have managed a technology company and to have solved complex challenges in the market “.
Zuckerberg has the majority of the shares in the company and according to some critics this gives the CEO and President too much power on the board. Some outside investors recently asked for the two offices to be separated but the company rejected the requests. In addition to Zuckerberg, the COO is on the board of directors Sheryl Sandberg, investors Marc Andreessen e Peter Thiel, the CEO of Dropbox Drew Houston, the vice president of PayPal Peggy Alford, Nancy Kellefer, Estee Lauder, Tracey Travis e Robert Kimmitt.