Twitter CTO, Parag Agrawal takes over as CEO from Jack Dorsey who’s resigned
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder, and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc has stepped down handing it over to the company’s Chief Technology Officer, Parag Agrawal. Jack in a statement to employees shared on his personal account said he had made a lot of efforts to disconnect the company from its founders.
“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead,” said Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey is also the head of his payments company Square Inc. and has appeared to increasingly take interest in cryptocurrencies recently. He had actually stepped down as the company’s CEO in 2008 but returned in 2015. His term will officially end in 2022. Dorsey came under pressure from investor Elliott Management Corp in 2020 that had just acquired a 9% stake in the company and was determined to remove him from the position of CEO.
Agrawal, 37, is up for a big task that includes leading the company to achieve its goal of having 315 million monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023 and to at least double its annual revenue by the end of that year.
He joined Twitter in 2011 and was appointed the CTO in 2017, Parag Agrawal has also worked with AT&T, Microsoft, and Yahoo. He will be on the company’s board together with Bret Taylor, the new chairman succeeding Patrick Pichette, a former Google executive, who will remain on the board as chair of the audit committee. He now becomes the latest India-born executive to take over a major American technology company.
“I joined this company 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees. I’ve walked in your shoes, I’ve seen the ups and downs, the challenges and obstacles, the wins and the mistakes. But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s incredible impact, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead of us,” Mr. Agrawal wrote in the company email, which he also tweeted as a reply to Jack’s announcement tweet.
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