Vice President of Surface Brian Hall to leave Microsoft for startup Doppler Labs

Many on the web have been focusing on Microsoft’s recent layoffs of over 700 employees. But today, Vice President of Microsoft Surface Brian Hall announced that he will leave Microsoft for startup Doppler Labs. This is just the latest Microsoft veteran employee to step away from the company for new ventures. Earlier this month, it was announced that Qi Li joined the Chinese search engine Baidu as a COO.

As seen in the tweet above, Brian has left Microsoft “on a new adventure” as COO of Doppler Labs in San Francisco. In case you did not know, Brian Hall spent over 20 yeas at Microsoft, and worked in the Surface and Devices businesses including Surface Hub and HoloLens. In a post to HerePlus.Me, Brian offered his thoughts on his time at Microsoft.

I’m joining Doppler Labs by way of Microsoft, where I spent more than twenty years, and most recently, ran the Surface and Devices businesses including Surface Hub and HoloLens. I also worked in engineering and marketing across Windows, online services, and hardware. Surface was a particularly great ride and was my focus for the last several years. When I joined the Surface team, Apple was the de facto dominating force, but by the time I left, Surface was one of the fastest-growing major tech products that was giving Apple a run for its money.

Brian also detailed what he would be doing in his new role as COO at Doppler. He is particularly interested in helping the company launch it’s Here One headphones and writes:

As COO at Doppler, I want to help lead the charge to do the same thing for Here One. I joined Doppler because of the team’s mission to give everyone superhuman hearing, letting people hear exactly what they want to hear and remove what they don’t. But I was equally impressed when I experienced Here One. Here One is an amazing product. When you use it, it’s clear you are hearing the future and experiencing something totally new. With Here One, I see huge opportunity to reach a group of people who are looking for more than just a wireless headphone.

We here at OnMSFT wish Brian Hall well on his new venture.

Further reading: Brian Hall, Microsoft, Surface