All you need to know about Meta's new COO Javier Olivan
Javi, as he is popularly known, was once described as “one of the most influential people in Facebook’s history" by none other than Mark Zuckerberg
Tech giant Meta has announced that Javier Olivan will replace Sheryl Sandberg as the Chief Operating Officer (COO). Born and brought up in Spain, 45-year-old Olivan joined Meta (earlier Facebook) in October 2007 as Head of International Growth. In January 2022, he was elevated as the Chief Growth Officer & VP, Cross-Meta Products and Infrastructure.
Once described as “one of the most influential people in Facebook’s history" by none other than Mark Zuckerberg, Olivan had joined the company when Facebook had less than 50 million users. Having a small international user base, Olivan had the daunting task of building Facebook globally, one market at a time.
Olivan, who has so far kept a low profile, helped the company build a 2+ billion-strong community across the globe. Once identified as an American social network platform, over 87% of Facebook's user now comes from outside the US, with India being its biggest market. Olivan played a major role in Facebook's stupendous growth globally.
While announcing Sandberg's departure and Olivan's elevation as COO, Zuckerberg said Javi's (as he is popularly known) role as COO will be different from the one Sandberg had. Olivan, Zuckerberg said, will now lead Meta's integrated ads and business products in addition to continuing to lead infrastructure, integrity, analytics, marketing, corporate development, and growth teams.
"It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous. As part of this, Molly Cutler, our VP Strategic Response, will join Javi’s team and report to Naomi Gleit," Zuckerberg said.
Olivan takes over as COO at a time when Meta is facing a slew of challenges like the 40% drop in share price and sluggish revenue growth due to economic slowdown and Apple's privacy changes. In February, Meta had reported its first-ever Quarter-on-Quarter (QoQ) drop in daily active users in its history. The company's active user base fell from 1.930 billion in Q3 to 1.929 billion in Q4.
The company had also seen a slower user growth in India due to the data price hike by telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea. India is Meta's largest market with 53 crore users of WhatsApp, 41 crore users of Facebook, and 21 crore users of Instagram.
In his most recent role as chief growth officer at Meta, Olivan led the central products and functions spanning the company’s apps: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp. This included Meta’s growth efforts, integrity, ads and business platform, commerce, and social impact efforts. He also led several other groups, including teams for data science, internationalization, UX research, and content strategy.
Prior to Meta, Javier was a product manager at Siemens Mobile where he led a cross-functional team charged with the development and market launch of handset devices. Before that, he worked for NTT in Japan developing software that enabled high-quality mobile video transmission.
Javier holds a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University and a master’s degree in both electrical and industrial engineering from the University of Navarra. He sits on the board of Endeavor, a nonprofit supporting the global entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Javier grew up in a small town in the Pyrenees mountains of Spain and currently lives with his family in Palo Alto, California.
