The move is a shift for Marooney, especially after having served as one of the top PR advisers to Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg for eight years during some of the most tumultuous and profitable times in the companys history.
Coatue Ventures is also adding two other partners: Michael Gillroy, who is coming from the Canaan venture capital firm and will focus on financial tech; and Jamie McGurk, who was previously at Andreessen Horowitz and will build out platform services to portfolio companies in both the growth and venture funds.
While Coatue Ventures fund was only announced in late summer, its earlier growth fund has invested in companies like Snapchat, Spotify, Instacart, and Airtable and has tried to use data analytics to differentiate itself from competitors.
In an interview with Recode, Marooney said that she would focus more on enterprise companies, despite her long stint at what has been techs biggest consumer successes.
Thats an understatement, given she has ridden both the up and now downs at the social networking giant, which has come under increasing scrutiny for how it manages its massive and powerful platform. From disinformation to hate speech to anti-trust to privacy violations to Russian election interference, Marooneys job had essentially required her to be Facebooks chief fire putter-outer in recent years.
Considering her PR expertise, its no surprise that she did not want to trash her former bosses as she moves onto her new gig.