The news reached the tech world via Twitter, of course: The previous boss and co-founder of the short message service, Jack Dorsey (45), announced on Monday on the platform that he would withdraw from the front row. With immediate effect, his chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, will take the lead. The name shouldn’t mean anything to a wider audience. The native Indian has had an impressive career.
Twitter: The new CEO drew anger from Trump supporters
At the age of just 37, Agrawal made it to the post of CEO. Among America’s 500 largest listed companies, he is the youngest boss, as reported by the Bloomberg news agency. Who is the man who controls Twitter now, what makes him tick?
Agrawal studied computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. He then received his PhD from Stanford University. Via Microsoft, Yahoo and the telecommunications group AT&T, he came to Twitter, where he has been working for over ten years, since 2017 as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
In this role, Agrawal not only took care of artificial intelligence and the expansion of the platform – he also took a political stance. At the beginning of the year, he explicitly supported the Twitter lock for former US President Donald Trump. It is the company’s task to ensure “a healthy public discussion climate”, so his reasoning. The political right reacted indignantly, as CEO Agrawal is likely to come into the line of fire of Trump supporters.
There are also some entrepreneurial challenges waiting for him: Twitter cannot compete with the big players in the industry such as Facebook when it comes to share price development. Investors are becoming increasingly nervous. Now the company wants to at least double its annual income with a subscription model for exclusive content. An ambitious project. Will it succeed?
Twitter: The new CEO is quite unknown on their own platform
In any case, Agrawal is the ideal successor to Jack Dorsey. In terms of awareness – always measured in the Twitter success currency: the number of followers – he cannot compete with him. Agrawal has just over 253,000 other readers. Its predecessor is followed by almost six million people. So there is still room for improvement for the new CEO.
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