What Jack Dorsey Stepping Down as CEO Means for Twitter

While there were plenty of rumors going around and just as many calls for his resignation, Jack Dorsey’s recent announcement that he will be stepping down as CEO of Twitter sparked the attention of investors around the world.

For some, Dorsey’s announcement was long overdue. These critics believed that Dorsey couldn’t be the strong leader Twitter needs while retaining the CEO position at Block, formally called Square, simultaneously. Even if there’s some truth to this, investors’ confidence seems to be directly tied to Dorsey’s leadership. After all, Twitter stock prices rose by 85% since Dorsey rejoined the Twitter leadership in 2015.

Once Dorsey announced his departure, however, Twitter stock fell slightly and continued to drop by more than 10% before regaining traction and nearly reaching pre-announcement rates.

Now, the big question for investors is what will Dorsey’s absence mean for the future of Twitter.

The answer to that depends on the success of Parag Agrawal, Dorsey’s successor. Although Agrawal has been with the company for more than a decade and served as the CTO since 2017, he still has big shoes to fill. As one of the founders of Twitters, Dorsey’s name will forever be linked to the company. Fortunately, Dorsey has tried to minimize his leaving by stating that it’s time for the company to stand on its own.

In addition, Agrawal will now be responsible for ensuring Twitter meets its ambitious goals set earlier this year to double its revenue by 2023 and grow its active users by 20% annually. Although Dorsey did oversee the release of several new application features, including Twitter Blue, a paid survey that allows users to customize their content as well as take steps to minimize the distribution of misinformation and hate speech, it may not be enough to reach these goals.

In fact, it may be this slow release of new features, which continues to be a major complaint among users, that pushed the company to select an experienced software engineer (Agrawal) to lead the company into the future. While a change in leadership could temporarily slow down the release of new features, if investors are patient enough, Agrawal may be just what the company needs to attract new users and perhaps even reach its goals by the end of 2023.