Sonos CEO John MacFarlane Stepping Back

John MacFarlane, who founded Sonos in 2002, stepped back from running the company at the turn of the year in favor of the company president, Patrick Spence, who came to the privately held company from Blackberry in 2012.

Headquartered in Santa Barbara, Sonos is a power player in audio equipment with funding estimated to be around $1 billion by financial media sources. It reshuffled its employees in March as it moved toward voice activation, like that of Amazon’sEcho, according to Spence’s recent Billboard interview.

MacFarlane stated that he planned to focus on Sonos’s science and math education programs, and the music and tech industries, where he is quite well-known. A frequently mentioned target in the start-up acquisition and IPO world, Sonos has staved off both in recent years by capitalizing with employee-owned stock sales to private investors.