Jack Dorsey steps down as Twitter CEO
- He will be replaced by Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal
- Dorsey will stay on Twitter’s board until his term expires in 2022
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey resigned on Monday as the social media network’s CEO, after surviving an activist investor’s bid to oust him in 2020 and steering the firm during the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Dorsey – who also is chief executive of payments company Square – confronted during his tenure thorny freedom of speech issues, ways to make the platform profitable and pressure he had spread himself too thin.
With his recognisable look – shaved head and long beard, and his atypical style – Dorsey for years has embodied Twitter alone.
“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,” he wrote in an email to Twitter staff.
“I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it. It was a tough one for me, of course,” he added.