The interim CEO of Astronomer—the company at the heart of the kiss cam CEO scandal—has found a silver lining to all the publicity.
In a LinkedIn post made Monday afternoon titled “Moving Forward at Astronomer,” Pete DeJoy wrote that the public scrutiny of Astronomer has been “unusual and surreal.” However, he argued that the scandal came with its own set of benefits.
“The events of the past few days have received a level of media attention that few companies—let alone startups in our small corner of the data and AI world—ever encounter,” the new CEO wrote. “While I would never have wished for it to happen like this, Astronomer is now a household name.”
DeJoy also wrote that “at Astronomer, we have never shied away from challenges ... and each time we’ve emerged stronger.”
Last Wednesday, then-Astronomer CEO Andy Byron was caught canoodling with the company’s chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, on the jumbo screen at a Coldplay concert in Massachusetts. Both are married and immediately shied away from their unexpected kiss-cam feature.
In the wake of the incident—which has sparked spoofs from baseball mascots and TV show hosts—Byron resigned, and the company’s board installed DeJoy as interim CEO over the weekend. Cabot’s fate at the company is unclear.
The new CEO has a point about the company’s boost in name recognition. According to Google data, “astronomer” has been searched more times in the last seven days than it has since data collection began in 2004—causing some to speculate that the scandal was actually an ingenious marketing ploy.
One tech CEO even joked on social media in a since-deleted tweet that Byron should have received a raise. “Without this viral moment, I’d never know that Astronomer is used by enterprise clients to manage Apace Airflow,” Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen wrote.
DeJoy said in his LinkedIn post that he has “proudly poured [his] entire professional life” into building Astronomer, where he was formerly the chief product officer. He helped co-found the company in 2017 after graduating from college.
Earlier this year, the company raised almost $100 million from a group of investors. DeJoy is surely hoping that the kiss-cam scandal doesn’t disrupt the company’s meteoric path in the field.
