It’s one of the longest-running questions in tech: How does Jack Dorsey have time to be CEO of 2 companies?
For years, Dorsey has been running both Twitter (the $37B social network) and Square (the $98B payments firm).
We won’t have to ask that question anymore
On Monday, Dorsey announced he’s leaving Twitter after 16 years in various roles (including as co-founder). He tweeted out his resignation email, noting 3 reasons why he is ready to move on:
- The official new CEO is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CTO who started as an engineer and has, per Dorsey, “been behind every critical decision that helped turned this company around”
- The incoming board chair is Bret Taylor, an early Facebook CTO and soon-to-be Salesforce CEO who Dorsey says “understands entrepreneurship, taking risks, [and] companies at massive scale”
- Twitter employees, who have a lot of “ambition and potential,” according to Dorsey
What’s next for Twitter?
Twitter’s stock price is hovering at the same level it was in the summer of 2018. Meanwhile, its competitors (Facebook, Snap) have zoomed ahead.
Agrawal takes over as Twitter tries to unlock new monetization opportunities including tipping, newsletters, a social audio tool (Twitter Spaces), and its first subscription product ever (Twitter Blue).
Per CNBC, Twitter’s goals by end-2023 are aggressive:
- Monetizable daily active users (mDAUs): 315m (vs. ~200m in 2020)
- Revenue: $7.5B (vs. $3.7B in 2020)
Dorsey has more time for Square
The payments platform he founded in 2009 has been very busy this year:
- May: It acquired the Jay-Z owned streaming platform Tidal for $297m
- August: It announced a $29B deal for “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company Afterpay
- October: It floated plans to create Bitcoin mining hardware
Cryptocurrency may be Dorsey’s long-term ambition. His Twitter bio only says one thing (#Bitcoin), and in June he made this comment regarding Bitcoin: “I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on.”
Whatever Dorsey does next, he will always remain on our “Mount Rushmore of Beards”:
