Twitter's Surprise Announcement

November 30, 2021 Leslie Gaines-Ross

As you may have heard, Twitter’s co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced that he is stepping down. The new CEO Paraq Agrawal, previously the chief technology officer, is taking over. It caught many by surprise after the Thanksgiving lull but how many of us really want to know about Twitter’s new CEO? Apparently… a lot. I found 2,440,000,000 mentions when I searched Google. Interestingly to me at least, there were few headshots of the incoming CEO and mostly ones of Dorsey in various stages of hair lengths over the years. He was the news!

I was curious about founding CEOs and how common it is for them to remain at their start-ups. Noam Wasserman, an academic and dean of the Yeshiva University Sy Syms School of Business, is deemed the expert on founding CEOs. As author of The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, the book is based on data among 10,000 founders from 3,500 start-ups. His research concluded that within the first three years of business operation, 50% of founder CEOs step down. The following year, another 10% step down and, by IPO time (if it happens), less than 25% of founders still hold the CEO position. Dorsey outlasted many other founders. According to Wasserman’s work, the decision to step down is not always voluntary, four out of five founder CEOs are forced to relinquish their role as CEO by investors. Dorsey says he made the decision himself to be replaced despite rumors that he was not as involved as investors wanted.

No surprise, Dorsey had something to say about his departure on Twitter. In his message, he criticized the hyper-focus on founding CEOs as being the best individuals to run their businesses: “I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure.” He added, “I believe it's critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder's influence or direction.” I agree with him that the greatest single point of failure is thinking that only one person, the founder, can steer a company he or she founded. Take a look at Tim Cook at Apple and Satya Nadella of Microsoft. They are not founders but have successfully advanced their companies and burnished their companies’ reputations at the same time.

Here’s just some mentions that popped up in my Google Alerts this morning about Agrawal. The spotlight is now on him.

5 things to know about Parag Agrawal, Twitter's new CEO - Fast Company

Fast Company

New Twitter CEO steps from behind the scenes to high profile | AP News

AP News

Twitter's New CEO Parag Agrawal: Who Is Jack Dorsey's Successor? - Bloomberg

Bloomberg.com

Parag Agrawal: Twitter's new CEO steps into the limelight - Nikkei Asia

Nikkei Asia

Jack Dorsey Expected to Step Down as C.E.O. of Twitter - The New York Times

The New York Times

Meet Twitter's new CEO: a 37-year-old machine learning and AI expert - Business Insider