Shutterfly’s chief financial officer Brian Regan is headed for the world of private equity. Regan is stepping down as CFO of the digital photo company to join Spectrum Equity, where he will be a managing director and CFO of the private equity firm, and based in San Francisco.
He says that the decision was not related to any troubles with Shutterfly (SFLY), which he believes “still has plenty of runway ahead from a growth perspective.” Instead, Regan was attracted by the opportunity to be involved with a broader set of industry verticals.
Prior to joining Shutterfly in August 2012, he had held finance roles with Ticketmaster (LVY), Expedia (EXPE) and LendingTree (TREE).
“I’ll have day-to-day CFO responsibilities with Spectrum and I’ll have to get up to speed on the mechanics of private equity, which should be an interesting growth curve,” Regan explains. “But if it was just the CFO role, that would have been of less interest to me and there were plenty of of Silicon Valley unicorns I spoke with that were looking for that. What I’ll get to do is become actively involved with portfolio companies and help them run better, whether it be identifying executive leadership, mentoring CFOs, handling scaling challenges or any of the other things I’ve lived through.”
Regan said he is unclear if he will remain on the board of Demand Media (DMD), which he had joined earlier this year as an independent director. Spectrum currently holds a 13.9% equity stake in the company, which runs news websites, and is already represented on the board by managing director Victor Parker.
“I’d love to stay involved if governance will allow, but that has to be determined,” Regan says.
He will be succeeded at Shutterfly by Mike Pope, who currently serves as CFO of Clean Power Finance, a residential solar power financing company.
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