Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down as chief of the social media company, effective immediately. Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer (CTO), will take over the helm, the company said on Monday. Twitter shares went up by around 2% with the news.
Indian-origin Agrawal, 45, is a graduate in Computer Science from IIT Bombay and has done his PhD in Computer Studies from Stanford University. Parag joined Twitter in 2011 and became Twitter CTO in 2017. He briefly worked at Microsoft, AT&T and Yahoo before he joined Twitter.
“Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that Jack Dorsey has decided to step down as Chief Executive Officer and that the Board of Directors has unanimously appointed Parag Agrawal as CEO and a member of the Board, effective immediately. Dorsey will remain a member of the Board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders,” the company statement said. Agrawal has been with the company for more than a decade and has served as CTO since 2017, Twitter added.
Dorsey said that he has decided to leave Twitter because he believes 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,” Dorsey said.
“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’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders,” he added. Parag Agrawal tweeted a note he sent to the company saying that he felt honoured and humbled at being chosen and expressed his thanks to the “team”: “Deep gratitude for @jack and our entire team, and so much excitement for the future. Here’s the note I sent to the company. Thank you all for your trust and support…”