One of Silicon Valley’s eccentrics is Jack Dorsey.
If he were a movie character, you’d think he was too cliched.
He is deeply sincere and idealistic in his belief that technology can bring about world peace and prosperity.
He’s a libertarian hippy, with a mindset that may be perplexing at times. He’s also a true visionary in the field of technology.
It’s the second time he’s stepped down from Twitter. After quitting the social networking behemoth he co-created for the first time, he launched the digital payments business Square in 2009, which has since grown to be a huge success.
In 2015, he returned to Twitter.
He remained in charge of both firms until Monday, a position that didn’t sit well with many investors.
Elliott Management, a major Twitter investor, sought to force him to choose between the two last year. They wanted a CEO that spent all of their time on Twitter and only Twitter.
This helps to explain why Twitter’s stock didn’t plummet after their legendary boss abruptly departed again.
For a long time, investors have believed that Twitter is squandering money, claiming that the company could make a lot more money from its vast and engaged user base.
And having a CEO that is just focused on Twitter would undoubtedly be beneficial.
When compared to Google or Facebook, Twitter is a little player.
Some people believe Dorsey is to blame for Twitter’s slow development. A Twitter purist who had contributed to the platform’s creation but opposed commercialization at the price of user experience.
To be fair to Dorsey, he has attempted a variety of revenue-generating strategies. He also stated that by the end of 2023, he wants to reach 315 million monetizable customers and quadruple revenue.
Adding people to Twitter has been a success during the epidemic, but the goal is just too lofty.
It’s an aim that Parag Agrawal, the new CEO, will take over.
Agrawal, who was born in India, has climbed through the ranks to become a skilled and well-liked chief technology officer. He’s been described as a steady hand, and he’s got a big task ahead of him.
Agrawal takes on Dorsey’s monetization challenge right away. Twitter is not the same as Facebook. It has a lot less information on you, thus the data it has isn’t worth as much to advertising.
You can only show consumers so many advertisements before they become annoyed. It may be a challenging balancing act to achieve fast growth while simultaneously increasing income.
Dorsey has developed a fascination with cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin.
He’d recently formed a crypto team to examine how the corporation might embrace digital assets and decentralized apps.
The team was to report to Agrawal, possibly indicating that digital currencies will play a crucial role in the new CEO’s plans for the company’s expansion.
However, Twitter has become intensely politicized in the United States, and Agrawal inherited its moderating issues.
Democrats complain that the platform hasn’t gone far enough in combating fake news. They also claim that the company’s technologies are ineffective at promptly finding and eliminating hate speech.
Republicans say that the platform is anti-conservative, citing the decision to exclude Donald Trump following the Capitol Hill protests as evidence.
Agrawal has gone from relative obscurity to a big public figure in the blink of an eye, and he will almost certainly be called before Congress shortly.
Some Conservatives are already pointing to a tweet he sent in 2010 with a quotation from the Daily Show as proof that the new CEO is left-leaning.
In his farewell email, Dorsey made a dig at entrepreneurs who remain too long at the company they founded.
“There’s a lot of discussion about how important it is for a firm to be ‘founder-led.’ Finally, I feel that this is very restricting and a single point of failure “he penned
That comment seems to be directed at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Elon Musk would agree with Dorsey, having said openly that he dislikes being Tesla’s CEO).
However, the emotion has a far broader significance. Almost all of the oddball tech entrepreneurs who built immensely successful firms – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Steve Jobs, and now Dorsey – have all been replaced by’safe alternatives,’ or CEOs who are nothing like their predecessors.
And it’s possible that Twitter requires it.
Dorsey, on the other hand, is still relatively youthful at 45 years old. He casually developed Square, which is now worth $100 billion, the last time he spent some time away from Twitter.
Although Dorsey might be a satirical figure at times, he has earned the right to be regarded seriously.
