Despite being the main force behind the main business, Jeff McCollum, has been fired from the company he founded, Cake (fka Cake Marketing). The reasons were not given, except in a financial statement that the parent company Accelerize New Media had fired him “for cause.”
This termination was done without much being written anywhere, nor any real comments from the company about the reasons given. It seems they made sure that any transition was done seamlessly, unknown to customers. The firing of an employee, who was known as “the face” of the company, is a huge change by a company that has made huge inroads into the market. This was seen by much of the industry as partially to do with the deals which Jeff McCollum himself built, and the willingness of people to try a partnership based on that relationship.
What this means for the company is up in the air, but there has been little or no other news from the company, except for the hiring of two totally new people since the firing of McCollum: Santi Pierini as Chief Operating Officer, Dave Stewart as Chief Technology Officer and Michael Lin as Chief Financial Officer of the parent company. Pierini will also act as the President of the Cake Division, effectively replacing McCollum.
These hiring at the same time that McCollum most likely mean the firing of McCollum was planned for a while as part of a total restructuring of the company. It raises a lot of questions on why Accelerize decided to hire a completely new executive staff only a month after positive reports about the second quarter of 2014. Just last week Accelerize reported that their European Operations were taking off, growing a 200% over the last year.
