Lior Tal Is The New Cyanogen CEO

In a bid to tackle scaling difficulties and to endure it's new vision for software development of smartphones into persistence, Cyanogen Inc has announced that it is revamping it’s leadership team while keeping the core intact.

Cyanogen’s controversial co-founder and CEO Kirt McMaster is stepping down from the position of Chief Executive Officer to pave way for Lior Tal, who was previously the COO of the company. Lior Tal, an ex Facebook executive, will also be joining the company's board of directors. Kirt McMaster will now be stepping into the shoes of Executive Chairman. As the Executive Chairman, Kirt will be "working on product strategy, recruiting and working with strategic partners".

Steve Kondik, Cyanogen's co-founder and CTO, will now be the Chief Science Officer.  He will be reporting to Stephen Lawler, Cyanogen's SVP of Engineering.

Informing about this very same issue to it's employees, Kirt McMaster wrote the following e-mail to the company's employees:

As some of you may be aware I have moved to a new role... Executive Chairman.

Lior is now the CEO.

Some history... last Oct/Nov it became clear to me the "full stack" model was not working... although we shipped millions of devices with Cyanogen OS we were not scaling fast enough nor in an efficient manner. We should all be proud of these achievements and the devices shipped... but in startup world even good work may not be good enough to win. I realized at this time we needed not only a product strategy that was more modular but also someone that saw growth as a 100M+ challenge not a 10M+ challenge. I started to look for someone that could be a force multiplier for this growth to join. Lior and I first met in December of last year... and over the months that followed I managed to court him into joining the company.

Lior joined... worked side by side with myself and the rest of the leadership team through what was a very painful RIF and a pivot to a modular approach... Cyanogen Now... which we believe can enable the scale required for success. Myself and the board have been impressed by Lior's calm, perseverance and solution oriented drive during this transition. We felt it was time for a change. After 4 yrs at the helm... for better or worse... the company survives.... with an incredibly strong balance sheet and a product strategy that can bring us scale. I am personally very excited to hand over the reigns to someone I have grown to respect as both a friend and colleague.

Join me in congratulating Lior as the new CEO of Cyanogen Inc... it is well deserved!

So... what the hell is an Executive Chairman? I will still be very active with the company... working on product strategy, recruiting and working with strategic partners as we evolve and grow our business... however my role will be 80% external facing VS internal.

I hope you are all as eager for the next chapter as am I. I want to thank everyone in the company for your patience and perseverance... the last few months have been hard on all of us... our best work is ahead of us.

Now bring on all the "bullet through the head" jokes from the Android blogs. ; )

Ahem, ahem, was this post a "bullet through" Cyanogen's head in any way? 

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.