Sidecut Reports

According to Scott Richardson, his departure Monday from the post of chief strategy officer for national WiMAX provider Clearwire was a pre-planned move, to kick-start some delayed plans for building a software startup. While his parting seems amicable and is draped with pledges to “keep helping them out,” it’s valid to ask at this point how much departures like Richardson’s will hurt Clearwire’s plans to build a national wireless network, plans which are only now starting to get underway.

Already this year, the Kirkland, Wash. company has changed CEOs, moving Ben Wolff into the cozy “co-chairman” chair in favor of the big-telco experience of new CEO Bill Morrow. While Morrow continues to build his own team — a work in progress that saw a CFO replacement Monday alongside a hire to sort-of replace Richardson’s strategic responsibilities — it’s becoming evident that Clearwire is placing a premium on big-company experience for its C-level newcomers, perhaps at the expense of startup-type enthusiasm that both Wolff and Richardson had in spades.

Maybe the big telco and operational experience is necessary, given the scale at which Clearwire hopes to grow its network and operations. Richardson, who said he had wanted to start a software company before kind of falling into his Clearwire gig in 2007, said he saw the company building rapidly into something that reminded him of his days leading big teams at Intel.

“I could see my team becoming four times the size it was now, in a short period of time,” Richardson said Monday in a quick phone chat. If he stayed while the company got bigger, Richardson said, “it would be harder to extract.” By leaving now, Richardson can start anew looking for opportunities in the mobile Internet software space, “something I originally wanted to do.”

The startup world’s gain, however, may be Clearwire’s loss, since more renegade thinking may be its best hope in competing against the largest service providers, namely the telephone companies. Richardson, who was a champion of innovative devices like the mobile Clear Spot Wi-Fi/WiMAX router, says he will stick around a bit to help Clearwire with its current game plan. The challenge will be for the new hires with big-company resumes to either deliver themselves or recognize innovators within, to replace the startup expertise that isn’t around anymore on a daily basis.

Looks like Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow is continuing to fine-tune his executive team, with some new additions today and the exit of short-term CFO David Sachs and the apparent step-down of chief strategy officer Scott Richardson.

Though we don’t know either of the two execs named today, both Erik Prusch (the new CFO) and Teresa Elder (named “president of strategic partnerships and wholesale,” a new position) have previous CEO experience, showing that Clearwire’s potential is at the very least attracting top-level talent to the Kirkland, Wash., HQ of the national WiMAX provider.

Though we haven’t talked to anyone at Clearwire yet, we are wondering if Sachs (who just started as CFO earlier this year) was shown the door due to poor earnings call performances — he was noticeably shaky on the most recent conference call. But Richardson’s exit from his post as chief strategy officer is a bit of a surprise, since the company seemed to be grooming him earlier this year for a more-visible role. More as we hear more!

UPDATE, 4 pm PST: Just heard from the aforementioned Mr. Richardson, and he says the departure is his idea — more details in a follow-up post later tonight.

Whenever we’ve talked about Clearwire’s pricing plans, we always have been guessing or waiting on the inevitable pricing promotions to goose the sign-up rate. C’mon, we said. This is a new service, and people need more of an incentive to give it a try.

Today in our email inbox was the first of what will likely be many such salvos from Clearwire: A 50 percent off offer, which reduces an entry-level unlimited mobile plan to $22.50 a month, albeit for just the first three months UPDATE: A commenter says it is now 6 months. No word on Ginsu knives. We haven’t checked out the Clearwire ordering page yet for exact details (hey it is birthday night around here) but here is the ad that was in the email. If you are interested, go to the Clear ordering site for more info.