Early Zulily investor Dan Levitan, the Maveron co-founder and partner, will not seek re-election to the company’s board of directors, and will step down following its next annual shareholder meeting, the company said in a Form 8-K filing with the SEC today.
Zulily also said that it appointed John Geschke, Zendesk’s General Counsel, to the board.
“We are thankful to Dan for his service on the zulily board over the years,” Zulily CEO Darrell Cavens said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.
Levitan’s original $4.6 million investment in the online retail company brought Maveron a return of more than $1 billion following Zulily’s successful IPO last year. That deal, which propelled Maveron into a small club of VC firms with billion-dollar gains, was named the deal of the year by Seattle’s venture capital community.
Prior to serving as Zendesk’s general counsel, Geschke worked as the General Counsel for Norwest Venture Partners, and was a partner at Cooley LLP, a large law firm specializing in corporate law.
The news comes at the tail end of a great month for Zulily, which saw its shares jump following a quarterly earnings report that showed sales from the fourth quarter of last year were up 100 percent year-over-year. Cavens said on the company’s earnings call that Zulily plans to expand into new verticals this year, including home furnishings. Earlier this week, Jim Cramer, the host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, said that the company could “beat” Amazon in the retail space.
Zulily’s stock continued to surge today, closing at $72.75 a share, up more than 18 percent. It’s a huge boost for the company’s stock, which was trading around $39 a share at the start of February. Thanks to today’s results, Zulily’s total value hit $8.8 billion.
