Hedera Hashgraph ousts its president, less than a year after $118M raise

Tom Trowbridge, a founding member of the VC-backed blockchain development company Hedera Hashgraph, has left his role as the firm's president, the firm has confirmed to The Block.

The Goldman alum previously worked in lead marketing roles at Lombard Odier and Odey Asset Management, before helping launch Hedera with his co-founders nearly two years ago. Trowbridge told BlockPublisher last year that his responsibilities included building Hedera's governance council, capital raising, and overseeing US regulatory issues.

Hedera's CEO Mance Harmon told The Block that "two major hires" had essentially made Trowbridge's role redundant, with industry sources suggesting he was ousted.

“We offloaded major pieces of what Tom was doing to the newly hired professionals in very specific areas," Harmon said, naming the new hires as Lionel Chocron, who joined the firm in February as product management, and Brett McDowell, who began as executive director of the governance council in January.

Trowbridge was seen speaking on behalf of Hedera in February in South Korea, days before his departure later that month. He has since been removed from Hedera’s team page.

To date, Hedera has raised $124M from the likes of Digital Currency Group and BlockTower Capital, hoping to rival Ethereum as a transaction network for enterprises. Hedera's public DLT platform aims to host "blazing-fast decentralized applications" and to register "almost 500,000 transactions per second" using a proof of stake model, although its estimated transaction-processing speed has been called into question.

Hedera opened up testing of its mainnet and its native cryptocurrency hbars to developers last December. It has since attracted a series of high-profile corporate endorsements, lining up leaders from Deutsche Telekom and law-firm DLA Piper to head its governance council, which Trowbridge formally presided over. The 60-person firm is also set to grow, signing a lease in May for over 11,000 square feet in Richardson, Texas to host its global headquarters, according to a local real estate publication. 

Trowbridge's LinkedIn page has not yet been updated to reflect his exit from the company and he did not reply to a request for comment.

Harmon concluded that Trowbridge has "a fantastic talent set” in finance and was open to him working for Hedera as an external advisor in the future.

An archived version of Hedera's team page, featuring Trowbridge third from left, top row.

Last month, Hedera put an ad in the Wall Street Journal, calling out Facebook's Libra project for copying it. CEO Mance Harmon said he communicated the firm's plans to Libra's mastermind David Marcus in February 2018, including their model of transitioning from a permissioned to a permissionless network in the next 5 years.

“Thank you Facebook Libra,” read the ad. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”