Who is Parag Agrawal, the new CEO of Twitter?
Twitter co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Dorsey on November 29 stepped down from his position, ending his nearly 16-year stint with the social media giant. The resignation of the now former CEO will come into effect immediately.
I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said in a statement.
The new CEO
Parag Agrawal has been named as the CEO of the social media site Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer. The decision to name the former CTO as the new CEO was unanimously approved by the board.
The former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey will step down from his current position of CEO to make room for his successor who was a Chief Technical Officer for Twitter before this.
Jack Dorsey, 45, will however remain on the board through the summer of May 2022 to ensure a smooth transition and will stay at the helm of Square Inc., the payments company he also co-founded.
Agrawal, 37, was named on Monday to succeed co-founder Jack Dorsey after a four-year stint as CTO, a role where he oversaw Twitter’s pursuit of blockchain and other decentralized technologies.
This appointment makes Agrawal the youngest person to run a company in the S&P 500 nudging Mark Zuckerberg aside, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Jack Dorsey’s resignation
While the Former CEO Jack Dorsey is a billionaire celebrity with famous friends and millions of Twitter followers, Agrawal is still a relative unknown who has spent no time in the limelight at the controversial social media company.
Dorsey’s personal interests — like music and Bitcoin — often made an appearance in his posts, and eventually made their way onto the company’s product road map, but he has fallen short of transforming the business since he took over for his second stint as CEO in 2015.
Dorsey, however, has faced criticism from a section of experts who consider that he has devoted more time for Square Inc, the digital payments firm which he had co-founded and has been leading as its CEO since 2009.
Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp was vocal in demanding Dorsey to step down in early 2020, alleging that he was paying inadequate attention to Twitter while simultaneously running Square.
Now, he is passing on the baton to his CTO who had joined Twitter in 2011 and later moved up the ranks to become the CEO of the company.
Parag Agrawal
While not much is known about the new CEO as of now.
We have found the following information on Agrawal-
Education
Prior to his move to Twitter, Agrawal earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University.
Former Roles
Parag has worked as a researcher for Microsoft Corp., Yahoo! Inc. and AT&T Corp., according to his LinkedIn profile.
He joined Twitter in 2011 as an engineer at a time when the company had fewer than 1,000 employees. In that role, he worked on boosting audience growth and revenue and was named Twitter’s first distinguished engineer, the company said.
After being named CTO in 2017,He succeeded Adam Messinger, who left the company in December 2016. As the CTO, he led the company’s technical strategy including overseeing advancements in machine learning, according to Twitter’s website.
Parag’s Challenges
While the Twitter CEO will inherit a lot of privileges and limelight as the new CEO, he is also going to inherit the company’s problems.
Twitter has been struggling lately in remaining the top contender of other social media platforms, mostly owned by Meta Inc or Facebook.
Twitter has been going through its share of turmoil including criticism over its ban on former President Donald Trump as well as friction with India’s ruling party BJP. And he’ll have to chase aggressive goals to step up user growth, double revenue and expedite product execution and make the social media giant profitable.
The company has struggled to remain profitable even after having all the advantages like popularity, first mover advantage, huge funds at disposal, etc.