Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has resigned from his position with immediate effect, saying via a tweet that it was the right time. “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 believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction,” Dorsey said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Dorsey announced CTO Parag Agrawal as the company’s next CEO, and Twitter confirmed he will also join the board. Agrawal first joined Twitter in 2011 and has served as CTO since October 2017. He has been responsible for the company's technical strategy, leading work to improve development speed while advancing machine learning across the company, Twitter said.
Dorsey said he had deep trust in Agrawal. "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," Dorsey said in a statement issued by the company.
At the same time, the Salesforce executive and existing Twitter board member Bret Taylor becomes the new independent chairman of the company. He succeeds Patrick Pichette, who will remain on the board and continue to serve as chair of the audit committee. Dorsey also will stay on the board until his term is over in May 2022 in order to assist with the transition.
Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006. He was fired in 2008 but came back in 2015. He is also the chief executive at mobile payments firm Square. He came under fire from Elliott Management in spring 2020, when the activist shareholder said Dorsey's attention was too divided, running both Twitter and Square. An independent committee set up by Twitter's board later expressed its confidence in the company's management and recommended no change to the management structure in place.
