Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Fires Company’s Heads of Product and Revenue

Kayvon Beykpour, who’d been head of product at Twitter since 2018:

Interrupting my paternity leave to share some final @twitter-related news: I’m leaving the company after over 7 years.

The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.

While I’m disappointed, I take solace in a few things: I am INSANELY proud of what our collective team achieved over the last few years, and my own contribution to this journey. [...] I’m proud that we changed the perception around Twitter’s pace of innovation, and proud that we shifted the culture internally to make bigger bets, move faster, and eliminate sacred cows.

Beykpour arrived at Twitter after their acquisition of Periscope, a product that, in hindsight, has proven to have been ahead of its time. I bet we hear from Beykpour again.

As reported by TechCrunch, the other executive canned by Agrawal was revenue product lead Bruce Falck, who wasted no time updating his Twitter bio.

Why would Agrawal make these moves now, while Twitter’s future — including Agrawal’s, to be clear — is completely up in the air? Idea 1: Agrawal has reason to believe the Musk acquisition is going to fall through, so he’s managing the company as he sees fit. Idea 2: Agrawal thinks the deal is going through and is trying to keep his job as CEO by doing what he thinks (or knows) Musk wants done.

★ Thursday, 12 May 2022