Why Bluesky’s CEO is stepping down at a critical moment for the platform

Blue skies ahead?

Jay Graber, the CEO of social media network Bluesky, announced that she’s stepping down on Monday. Graber is “transitioning from CEO to a new role as Bluesky’s chief innovation officer,” she wrote in a Bluesky post, and will be succeeded by interim CEO Toni Schneider.

Schneider, a venture capitalist and partner at True Ventures, posted: “I am thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining Bluesky as interim CEO. I deeply believe in what this team has built and the open social web they’re fighting for.”

Bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey in 2019, and actually began as an internal project at what was then Twitter (now X). It was spun off and became an independent company in 2021. It has seen significant user growth in recent years after Elon Musk took over Twitter and changed its name to X. In fact, earlier on Monday, Bluesky’s user count had recently surpassed 43 million. 

Graber, in a longer blog post, wrote that the company will search for a full-time CEO going forward. “As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things. As part of this transition, Toni Schneider, former CEO of Automattic and partner at True Ventures, will join our team as interim CEO, while our board runs a search for a permanent chief executive.”

Likewise, Schneider, in a post of his own, wrote that he will remain a partner at True Ventures, where he’s been since 2005, while serving as interim CEO. 

“At Bluesky, a small and extraordinarily talented team has signed up over 40 million people, nurtured an open developer ecosystem with over 500 active apps, and scaled all the systems that make that experience smooth and possible: a consumer app, servers, onboarding, moderation, safety, the list goes on,” he wrote. “And they’ve done it while staying true to the open protocol underneath. Now it’s time to build on that foundation and deliver more open goodness to the world.”

Aside from his work in venture capital, Schneider was previously CEO of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, between 2006 and 2014.