Kruti Goyal and the education of a sideways CEO

Before Kruti Patel Goyal had a marketplace to run, she had a motel to help with. Her parents owned it. The family lived there and worked there, which gave the young Goyal an unusually short commute between childhood and the practical business of keeping customers happy. Entrepreneurship was something happening at home, with all its demands and uncertainties.

That beginning has acquired a different significance now that she runs Etsy. The company connects independent sellers with customers they might never reach by themselves. Goyal has seen the smaller end of that relationship at close quarters: a family putting its money, time and hopes into a business. A seller’s dashboard may be digital. The stakes behind it are thoroughly familiar.

On January 1, 2026, she became Etsy’s chief executive and president, succeeding Josh Silverman. The appointment was the latest turn in a career that had wandered through banking, investing, media, a mission-driven organization and several corners of Etsy. Viewed from the chief executive’s chair, the wandering starts to look rather useful.

A respectable reason to take a detour

Goyal studied economics at Stanford and earned her MBA at Harvard Business School in 2004. Her early jobs included mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley and growth equity at General Atlantic Partners. Those are recognizable starting points for a corporate career. Her subsequent decisions were less obliging about following a straight line.

After business school, she accepted an internship in media rather than graduating into a permanent job. Later, she and her husband bought tickets around the world and spent six months traveling. She has described the trip as a chance to think about what mattered and what she wanted to do next. Intriguingly, on her return, people wanted to discuss the travel as much as her previous employment.

There is a small rebellion in that sequence. A career can accumulate impressive entries while leaving its owner unclear about the work she actually wants. Taking an internship after an MBA, or leaving room for a long journey, puts a different question ahead of the next title: what deserves the next several years?

Her work in strategy and business development at Viacom and Product (RED) widened the search. Finance supplied one view of companies; media and mission-led work supplied others. Goyal’s eventual home would combine a technology business with a purpose she could recognize in the lives of its customers.

“How can I solve the biggest problem that’s facing us?”

Kruti Patel Goyal, on choosing where to contribute

Eleven years of looking around

She joined Etsy in February 2011. Over the following decade, her responsibilities ranged across international growth, corporate development, Seller Services and marketplace integrity. She was Etsy’s first head of Marketplace Integrity and Trust & Safety. In August 2018 she became senior vice president of product, followed by chief product officer in October 2019.

Consider how different those assignments are. International growth asks how a business travels. Seller Services concerns the practical help that keeps a shop operating. Trust and safety deals with the conditions under which strangers will transact at all. Product brings those concerns into the everyday experience of using the marketplace. Each job offers a different answer to the question of what Etsy does.

For someone preparing to run the whole company, that breadth matters. An improvement for a buyer can create work for a seller. A rule meant to protect a marketplace has to function across an enormous variety of shops. The difficult decisions sit where those interests meet, well beyond the tidy boundaries of a single department.

Goyal’s experience gives her a basis for recognizing those connections. It also complicates the conventional story of executive ambition, in which every job exists chiefly to qualify its holder for the next one. Her account puts solving the problem in front of her ahead of reaching a predetermined destination.

The wardrobe gets a new custodian

In September 2022, Goyal became chief executive of Depop, the fashion resale business Etsy had acquired the previous year. She was moving from a marketplace associated with handmade objects, gifts and vintage finds to one where clothing, personal style and a young community set the pace.

The attraction was partly the chance to support young entrepreneurs. A wardrobe could supply the first inventory; someone could begin selling without the capital usually associated with opening a shop. That gave the business a connection to her longstanding interest in helping individuals build something of their own.

Her strategy included removing selling fees in the UK and US, alongside investment in personalization and discovery. The economic logic was straightforward: make participation more appealing, encourage more people to list, and give buyers more reasons to look. Style, value and sustainability were the combination she wanted Depop to offer.

That ambition required attention to quite ordinary frustrations. How quickly can someone list an item? Can a buyer find the particular thing they want? Does the app learn enough about their taste to make another visit worthwhile? Circular fashion needs a persuasive everyday experience if it is to become a repeat habit.

When Etsy announced Goyal’s promotion in October 2025, it said Depop’s gross merchandise sales and buyer base had nearly doubled during her tenure. That was the company’s assessment of a team’s work, rather than a personal scorecard. It nevertheless explains why the Depop chapter carried weight when Etsy chose its next leader.

Returning with the whole customer in view

Goyal became Etsy’s president and chief growth officer in January 2025, while the transition at Depop continued into March. Her remit brought together product, engineering, marketing, support, trust and safety, and strategy and operations. It was a broad brief for someone who already knew how many different experiences could hide inside one marketplace.

The CEO succession followed later that year. Silverman moved to executive chair in January 2026, while Goyal joined the board. The transition put an experienced internal operator in charge, with her predecessor remaining involved. It also made her responsible for turning familiarity with the business into decisions about its future.

A small exchange captures her preferred way of gathering information. When she asked a group of Etsy sellers where their new product ideas came from, they all pointed to customers. Requests and conversations were feeding the next thing to make. Goyal drew a lesson for larger companies: stay close enough to hear that information before organizational distance muffles it.

The seller Melissa Mary Jenkins has offered a view from the other side of such meetings. Describing a visit to Etsy’s headquarters, she recalled Goyal bringing sellers into her office and taking an interest in their stories. Jenkins characterized her as warm and friendly. It is one person’s encounter, but a revealing one: listening becomes more credible when the person being listened to notices.

Growth arrives with difficult company

By the second quarter of 2026, Etsy reported a third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in marketplace gross merchandise sales. Quarterly GMS reached $2.6 billion, up 7.5%. Sales through the mobile app grew 12.5%. These figures measure the value of goods sold, rather than Etsy’s revenue, and describe a particular quarter rather than a settled future.

Her first year also brought a consequential departure. Etsy completed the sale of Depop to eBay on July 30, 2026. The announced purchase price was $1.2 billion, with adjustments and interest bringing the cash consideration to approximately $1.4 billion. The business she had led was leaving the group she now ran.

On August 5, she told employees that Etsy was restructuring, with approximately 220 colleagues leaving and most changes concentrated in product and engineering. Goyal presented the decision as preparation for the company’s longer-term needs. Improving sales and painful organizational changes were arriving together. The chief executive’s job offered little opportunity to enjoy a clean narrative.

That combination deserves to remain in the picture. A company’s mission can explain why someone wants to lead it; the decisions made under that mission still have consequences for employees, customers and owners. Goyal’s early record contains both renewed growth and a reduction in the team responsible for building the product.

The business behind the handmade thing

Another initiative in 2026 looked beyond the website. Etsy and the Center for Craft announced a $10 million, three-year investment in American craft communities. The first round committed $2 million to 20 nonprofit organizations across five regions, supporting the networks and institutions around makers.

It is a useful recognition of what a marketplace cannot supply on its own. A listing may introduce a customer to a potter, but the skills, space and relationships behind the pottery have their own economics. Supporting those conditions gives substance to a company’s interest in the people whose work fills its pages.

Goyal has said that she wanted to lead Etsy and Depop because she believed in their missions, rather than pursuing a chief executive title anywhere it happened to be available. Her career makes that distinction plausible. The route included sideways moves, a long trip, unfamiliar work and years spent inside one business.

The motel remains a good place to begin understanding her. Long before there were algorithms to improve or shareholders to address, there was a family business and the work of earning a customer’s trust. Etsy operates on a different scale. The people opening shops on it still have to persuade someone, somewhere, to walk through the door.