Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is stepping down as they reveal their time has come, and the company needs a new direction with its new successor and CEO.
There have been rumours out of the Twitter camp and this one is true. Today, reports and Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account revealed today they will be resigning their role in the company. An engineer who joined the team in 2011 and became the CTO in 2017, Parag Agrawal, will succeed Dorsey’s CEO role. Dorsey shared their thoughts on why the resignation made sense for them and the future of the company. “There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led’. Ultimately, I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”
Dorsey will remain on the social media giant’s Board until the end of their term at the 2022 stakeholders meeting. The president and COO of Salesforce at the company, Bret Taylor, has also been recently named the new Chairman of the Board, which also affected Dorsey’s decision. Dorsey mentioned in the letter shared in the same tweeted letter that Taylor “understands entrepreneurship, taking risks, companies at massive scale, technology, product, and he’s an engineer.”
Agrawal is praised by Dorsey, and they emphasize that their step-down as CEO is an act of their own volition and trust that Agrawal will continue to grow the brand. Agrawal responded to the news of their new CEO role, “I want to thank the Board for their confidence in my leadership and Jack for his continued mentorship, support, and partnership. I look forward to building on everything we have accomplished under Jack’s leadership, and I am incredibly energized by the opportunities ahead. By continuing to improve our execution, we will deliver tremendous value for our customers and shareholders as we reshape the future of public conversation.”
It has been said that Twitter’s leadership and product progression had been too conservative or too slow with the times. However, recent developments and new products and services have quashed the criticism. Some of these moves involve the subscription service, Twitter Blue, that gives users more customizability of their account for $2.99 a month. Also, the acquisition of companies like Threader, Sphere, Breaker and Revue have all been great assets to building up the subscription service and diversifying what the social media company can offer its consumers.
It is not entirely clear what ventures Jack Dorsey will take on in the near future. Perhaps, this may be Dorsey’s opportunity to dive deeper into their interests in cryptocurrency as their bio information just has “#bitcoin”. Dorsey’s final thoughts proclaimed, “There aren’t many founders that choose their company over their own ego. I know we’ll prove this was the right move.”
