Dropbox CTO departs as shares drop

In the latest change at the document-sharing unicorn, Dropbox on Wednesday said CTO Quentin Clark is leaving after two years. Clark, who had previous stops at SAP SE ADR and Microsoft Corp., is being succeeded by tech veterans Bharat Mediratta and Tim Young. Read More...

Dropbox Inc. is losing its chief technology officer but gaining two people to replace him.

In the latest change at the document-sharing unicorn, Dropbox DBX, -3.46% on Wednesday said CTO Quentin Clark is leaving after two years. Clark, who had previous stops at SAP SE ADR SAP, -2.98% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -1.77% , is being succeeded by Bharat Mediratta (CTO) and Tim Young (senior vice president and general manager). Dropbox disclosed the move to MarketWatch before posting a blog item.

“It was not so much a decision to leave as to start my venture career,” Clark, 48, told MarketWatch in a phone interview. Clark, who is leaving Dropbox in January, declined to name the VC firm he is joining.

Mediratta was an engineer for more than a decade at Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -2.33% GOOG, -2.36% Google, one of the two primary rivals of Dropbox for corporate workplace customers. Microsoft is the other.

Young previously was vice president of product and engineering at VMware Inc. VMW, -0.80%.

Clark deemed the change a “fundamental restructuring” of the CTO office, which has grown in responsibility, duties and pressure the past few years as companies collect, share and secure data on cloud-computing platforms.

The executive reshuffling is part of a larger strategic shift at Dropbox. The company went public last year amid great promise only to see its stock tumble 26% the past year. Dropbox shares declined 3% at $19.34 in trading on Wednesday, edging toward a 52-week low.

The San Francisco-based company has revamped its product line to pursue large enterprise customers in a bid to bolster revenue growth, which hasn’t satisfied investors. Its hope is that more of its 600 million registered customers pay for upgraded services rather than stick with a free but more bare-bones service.

Last week, Dropbox said it had made changes to its core product, Dropbox Spaces, so that various work folders are interlinked, and a new desktop app that functions as a digital hub where workers can collaborate with colleagues on projects that require access to digital files.

Dropbox Chief Executive Drew Houston said in a press conference last week it was too early to share user adoption numbers for Dropbox’s new software lineup because it began rolling it out in June.