Opendoor announced Thursday, in a blog post by CEO Eric Wu, that Carrie Wheeler, a former leader with TPG Capital and current Opendoor board member is joining the firm as chief financial officer while the company’s top finance executive, Gautam Gupta, is leaving to start his own company.
Eric Wu | Photo credit: Opendoor
“Typically, executives progress to board members,” Wu said, in a blog post. “But when there are rare opportunities to transform a category and build a once in a generation company, you see Board members raise their hand to be an executive.”
Wheeler joined the board of directors for the privately held real estate startup last year. She was previously a partner at TPG Captial, which she joined in 1996 and was integral in scaling into one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, according to Wu. She has also sat on the boards of a number of nationally recognized brands, including Dollar Tree, Neiman Marcus and Petco.
“[Wheeler] has spent the past year working closely with me and the other executives helping us refine our financial model and helping navigate the choppy waters during the onset of COVID-19,” Wu said.
The “choppy waters” referenced by Wu likely include Opendoor and other iBuyers suspending the homebuying portion of their businesses in the early days of COVID-19 due to safety concerns. While the company has since returned to buying in every market — and with new offerings — Opendoor was forced to lay off approximately 35 percent of its workforce in April.
Wheeler will fill the hole in the C-suite left by Gupta, who recently served as chief business officer and chief financial officer — and was at one time the company’s chief operations officer. Gupta joined Opendoor in 2017 after serving as Uber’s head of finance.
He’ll work with Wheeler for the next few months to help the transition and support Wu on business, strategy and corporate development initiatives through the rest of the year, according to Wu.
“Gautam will be focused over the next few months on successfully onboarding and transitioning the CFO baton to Carrie while supporting me across a few business, strategy, and corporate development initiatives through the remainder of the year.”