Update: The Trade Desk co-founder steps down
Dave Pickles, who co-founded Ventura-based The Trade Desk alongside CEO Jeff Green, announced he will be stepping down as Chief Technology Officer on Sept. 29.
Pickles will also step down from his role on the company’s board of directors, The Trade Desk announced in an Aug. 30 press release.
Although he is retiring from these day-to-day roles, Pickles will continue as a long-term advisor to the company, the press release said.
“When Jeff and I founded The Trade Desk 14 years ago, we shared a vision of a better way to price and buy digital advertising. Our amazing progress since then is a testament to the incredible work of our product, engineering and data science teams,” Pickles said in a press release.
“I could not be more proud of the innovation we are pioneering for our industry, and I look forward to continuing as an advisor to Jeff, Sairaj and Gruia and everyone else at The Trade Desk in the years ahead.”
Green and Pickles co-founded The Trade Desk in 2009, with Pickles joining the board of directors in 2021. In his role as CTO, Pickles has overseen all aspects of the company’s industry-leading demand-side platform, including engineering, product innovation and data science.
He has also been a leader in industry-wide initiatives to improve security, privacy and trust across the digital advertising ecosystem, most recently with Unified ID 2.0.
Unified 2.0 is an alternative to third-party cookies that uses encrypted identifiers to allow people to sign in to websites and browsers using an email address.
That places layers between advertisers and individuals, tracking users’ interests and behavior rather than personally identifying information, according to The Trade Desk.
“In founding and building The Trade Desk into the world’s largest independent demand-side advertising platform, I could not have asked for a better partner than Dave,” Green said in a press release.
“Dave is one of the true innovators of advertising technology, not only in service of The Trade Desk but also more broadly, in helping the industry move forward with transparency and trust. He leaves behind an incredibly talented technical leadership team.
“While I will miss his day-to-day counsel and contribution, I’m thrilled that he will continue as a close and valued advisor moving forward,” he said.
According to a May filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges, Pickles made $550,000 in base salary in 2022 and was set to make $575,000 for the full year in 2023.
In total, Pickles made about $7 million in 2022, including stock options and other forms of compensation, according to the filing.
As of Feb. 28, Pickles also held 666,557 Class A shares and over 2.4 million Class B shares, giving him about 2.8% of the company’s voting power.
By comparison, Green holds over 5.3 million Class A shares, over 42.9 million Class B shares and therefore holds 48.2% of the company’s voting power.
Shares of The Trade Desk closed at $82.42 on Sept. 6, up 4% in the past week. Shares are up 87.2% since the start of the year.
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