NEW DELHI: Jack Dorsey, the billionaire Silicon Valley coder who dabbled in facial-hair and came close to becoming a masseur and drawing pencil-skirts, before he snubbed lakhs when he boldly banned then US president Donald Trump from the micro-blogging site, has called it a day at Twitter, the company he co-founded in 2006.
Jack, who Forbes estimates to be worth $11.9 billion in 2021, in a message — it was later made public by him on his Twitter account — addressed to his colleagues at the company wrote, “Not sure anyone has heard but I resigned from Twitter.”
“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 said in an attached email he sent to staff.
Jack announced a successor in the mail but added that he will exit the board when his term expires next year.
“I believe it’s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead.”
Parag, who was appointed Monday to succeed Jack, is an Indian engineer from IIT Bombay. Twitter insiders say he’s 37, the same age as Meta Platform Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Media outlets in the West and Europe now say calls for Jack’s departure began in 2020 from Elliott management, an investment firm which owns a significant amount of Twitter’s shares.
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 💙 https://t.co/eNatG1dqH6 pic.twitter.com/liJmTbpYs1
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) November 29, 2021
The firm reportedly felt a need for a full-time CEO with only one company to run would be better for Twitter’s fortunes.
Jack was also running a digital payments app firm Square he founded in 2008. This firm too had grown into a multi-billion dollar company.
Earlier this year, Jack had put up his first ever tweet for sale.
“Just setting up my twttr,” his post in March 2006 said then.
It was to be sold as non-fungible token (NFT) – a unique digital certificate that states who owns a photo, video or other form of online media.
Another great moment for India's depth of talent and USA's meritocracy system. Congrats @paraga on your unanimous selection as CEO. You will do @Twitter & @jack proud. After Microsoft, Google, IBM, Adobe, Flex, VMware and more, yet another Indian rises to lead the digital world. https://t.co/KmVbzHlAma
— Gautam Adani (@gautam_adani) November 30, 2021
The billionaire was also in news over his link ups to several models and women entrepreneurs. He has remained unmarried till now but several media outlets said he dated an artist Kate Greer for several years, a British model and actress Lily Cole earlier and also a US model Raven Lyn Corneil in between.