Sequoia-backed unicorn Faire just promoted an internal candidate to be its new CFO. Here’s how he stood out

Faire is a wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with global brands.

Good morning. Unicorn Faire is shuffling its executive ranks, Fortune was the first to report. Lauren Cooks Levitan, who joined Faire in 2019 as its first CFO, will become the new president. The startup has also promoted an insider, Jason Lee, to become the next CFO.

Faire, based in San Francisco, is a wholesale marketplace that connects hundreds of thousands of independent, local retailers with global brands. Some of the product categories include food and beverages, apparel, home, and jewelry. Since its launch in 2017, the company has raised over $1 billion from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Forerunner, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, reaching unicorn status. Faire reported a $12.4 billion valuation in 2021. It has over 900 employees.

Lee joined Faire about 18 months ago as VP of finance, after spending over a decade leading finance for Square and investor relations for Block. “Thank you Lauren Cooks Levitan for bringing me into Faire and supporting me, and the broader Faire leadership team for trusting me with this wonderful opportunity,” Lee wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

“I hired Jason with the expectation that he had the potential to be the future CFO of Faire; he has the perfect experience,” Levitan told me. Lee potentially becoming CFO was something that was discussed during his recruitment, and “part of the way we were even able to persuade him to join Faire in the first place,” Levitan added.

What were some of the qualities Levitan was looking for? “The first is being very mission-aligned,” she said. Lee has been supporting technology enablement for small and mid-sized businesses for virtually his entire career. Levitan also sought a person who had a level of familiarity and comfort with the complexity of a marketplace business, which “requires a very high-level analytical rigor,” Levitan said.

A CFO capable of both attracting high-quality talent and developing and retaining them, was also essential, she said. “I’d say that’s a real strength and it’s a critical strength for any executive-level leader,” Levitan said. That’s something Lee has done over many years of his career, and at Faire, she added.

Although Levitan joined the startup as its first finance chief, she told me that she never really thought of herself as exclusively a CFO. “I’ve always seen my role as being a partner to the business, to the CEO, to the rest of the leadership team,” she said. “I think of myself as a business leader first, and then the financial expert on the leadership team, second.”

In her new role as president, Levitan is expected to focus on driving new business development opportunities, globally, to impact customers and the company’s future. She began her career on Wall Street as an equity capital markets analyst at Goldman Sachs. Levitan has more than 30 years of experience in retail. She joined Faire after serving as CFO of Fanatics.

Now taking on the role of president will provide a different lens to look at the business—and the trajectory of her career. “I think it helps me think through the range of possibilities for my future career as well,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be specific to a finance swim lane.”

Sheryl Estrada

sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Leaderboard

Simona Jankowski was named CFO at Lightmatter, a photonic supercomputing startup. Jankowski brings more than 20 years of experience to the role. She joins Lightmatter from Nvidia, where she was VP of investor relations and strategic finance during a period of unprecedented growth for the company. Previously, she was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where she led equity research for the hardware and communications technology sectors and managed the Global Investment Research office in San Francisco.

Fred Cromer was named EVP and CFO at Spirit Airlines (NYSE: SAVE), effective July 8. Brian McMenamy, who served as interim CFO, will remain in a senior finance role for a transition period. Cromer brings three decades of experience. He most recently served as CEO, and previously CFO, of Xwing, Inc., an aviation technology company. Before that, Cromer served as president of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, president of international lease finance corporation, and CFO and VP at ExpressJet Airlines.

Big Deal

Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade released data from its monthly sector rotation study. The results are based on the trading platform’s customer notional net percentage buy/sell behavior for stocks that comprise the S&P 500 sectors.

In June, traders continued the early summer’s profit-taking with net selling in 10 out of the 11 sectors, according to Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley. Investors are bullish on communication services. However, industrials saw a dip in consideration. “Further, traders rotated out of the energy sector amid volatile oil prices, the outperforming consumer discretionary sector, and health care,” Larkin said in a statement.

Going deeper

The Gallup Economic Confidence Index (ECI) registered -33 in June, essentially unchanged from May. This is “consistent with the longer trend of negative public sentiment about the economy’s current and future states,” according to the report.

The ECI summarizes Americans’ assessments of current economic conditions. The index has a theoretical range of +100 (if all Americans rate current conditions as excellent or good and getting better) to -100 (if all Americans rate the economy as poor and getting worse). Since 1992, the highest ECI score was +56 in January 2000, and the lowest was -72 in October 2008.

Overheard

“We can make the mistake of thinking AI can replace an artist—but this is a trap. AI can only imitate the way that a talented human artist connects with and inspires their audience.”

—Dan Nikolaides, chief technology officer at Studio 369, a computer games technology company, writes in a new Fortune opinion piece titled, “I’m a game developer CTO. AI is forcing us to rethink the rules—and boosting my appreciation for human creativity.”

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