It’s a tight round of “Game of CEO’s” at Twitter right now
as the board circles in on a short list of who might have the right stuff for
the job.
So far we’ve heard the board is looking for someone who can
focus solely on Twitter (and not some other cough Square) company, is a heavy
tweeter, and gets the product. There’s also significant interest to bring in a
woman or minority to do the job.
Rumors continue to swirl, so we’ve put together a list
of plausible appointees, as well as some wild hearsay for good measure. So sit
back and enjoy our picks as possible successors cuz winter is coming – we’ve
heard as soon as the end of July.
Jack Dorsey
The current interim CEO may have stepped in during a time of
need, or he may be campaigning for the title. We’ve heard this is a trial run
for the once and current Twitter leader.
Pro: Jack has done this before. He knows the product
and is a favorite of former CEO Dick Costolo.
Con: Aside from that wizard beard everyone is talking
about; Jack is also the head of Square. We’ve also heard there’s a healthy
contingent of employees who’d be very against this comeback kid. Don’t knock
the two-company straddle, though. Product engineering lead Gokul Rajaram could
get the nod from Dorsey to take over Square, should Dorsey want to assume the
role at Twitter.
Padmasree Warrior
We’ve heard Warrior is on the shortlist for Twitter CEO.
Cisco’s CTO is stepping down and we’ve heard is on the hunt for a CEO position.
She’s also an avid tweeter. She would be a neat pick for the now public
social networking giant and also fits the bill for both gender and
diversity.
Pro: She’s available. She fits both ticks on the list
for gender and diversity. She seems to get the product and uses it. She has operational
experience. We’ve also heard she’s aware of the list and is interested in the
position, though Warrior wouldn’t answer back when we reached out to ask.
Con: Warrior comes from the enterprise world and
doesn’t have the consumer experience. The board may see that as a crutch to the
growth and direction of the company.
Bradley Horowitz
Rumor has it at least one Twitter board member has tipped
his hat to the man responsible for Google+. Though Horowitz
recently stated that Google+ is still ticking, it’s barely on life
support at this point. Now would be a good time for him to jump
off that sinking ship and into another social network.
Pro: He has experience working on another social
network. Though Google+ isn’t what Google execs hoped and dreamed it would be,
one could argue this was more of a case of jumping in too late to the social
field. Twitter is an already established network that grew up at the right time
and Horowitz experience could make for a good fit.
Con: Twitter is still a fragile flower in need of
growth beyond journalists and celebrities. Horowitz may not have the experience
the board is looking for to expand the market. Also, Horowitz mans
Google’s photos and streams, an increasingly important part of Google Search.
“We aspire to do for photo management what Gmail did for
email management,” Horowitz recently told Medium’s BackChannel. He isn’t likely to give up on that.
Adam Bain
Multiple sources told us the current director of
revenue and partnerships at Twitter was overheard *insinuating at
Cannes that he was in the running for the job. Bain is well-liked among
employees and we’ve heard the board may want an insider who understands the
product to take over the company.
Pro: He’s familiar with the product.
Con: We’ve heard Ev is not in favor of show-boaters
and though Bain didn’t come right out and say he had the job, confidently
hinting he had the job may not go over well.
Jeff Weiner
This is a weird one. We only include it based on a tip we
got, but it seems very unlikely this would ever happen. However, we’re at least
willing to entertain the possibility.
Pro: He has both the operational experience of
CEO and experience running a large social network. Weiner started out as the
interim CEO with LinkedIn and ran the professional social network since that
time. Plus, think of the jokes to be had with the change from Dick to
Jack to Weiner.
Con: The idea seems preposterous. Weiner seems
well-situated and happy with his current position, but you never know.
Mike McCue
Twitter board member Peter Currie is quite close to the
Flipboard frontman, dating back to their days together at Netscape in the ’90s.
Pro: Mike McCue is one of Silicon Valley’s most
beloved entrepreneurs. During the last boom, McCue cofounded the speech
recognition company TellMe, which, helped by hundreds of millions of investor
dollars, not only survived the dot.com crash but sold for $800 million in 2007
to Microsoft. Since cofounding Flipboard in 2010, McCue has again experienced
ups and downs – good experience for an incoming Twitter CEO.
Con: McCue has never run a public company.
Shareholders who already think the company needs fresh blood (and a new
board) might not be thrilled, either. McCue was a himself a Twitter
director for a couple of years.
Snoop Dogg
This is another one we’ll entertain just for fun. Snoop
volunteered
himself as tribute for the role of Twitter CEO mere moments after the
twittersphere exploded with news that Costolo was stepping down.
“Because it seems crazy, it’s exactly why Twitter should
consider it,” Our Crunch Network partner James Altucher wrote
on the subject,
Pro: Snoop is a big fan of Twitter and has been since
early days. He also uses the product. Snoop tweets. A lot. Snoop also runs
several business franchises, including one that sells these phone case lighters. And he’s clearly interested.
Con: The legendary artist has 25 years of
experience in the music business, but nada in running a giant social
network. There was also that incident in the early days of Twitter when Snoop
and his posse came into Twitter HQ and proceeded to rap, blaze up and start a riot among employees while all
the execs were away in a meeting.
David Eun
As executive VP of Samsung’s Global Innovation
Center, Eun is squarely focused on developing breakout software
and services for one of the world’s biggest electronic and mobile giants.
Twitter could use some breakout software and services.
Pro: Eun is used to bridging the gap between
Silicon Valley and Asia, a skill that Twitter’s new CEO could use to grow
the company’s user base – and ad revenue – far more aggressively outside the
U.S. Eun also has plenty of M&A and media experience thanks to past
gigs as Time Warner’s VP of operations, as head of a
strategic ventures group at NBC, as VP of content partnerships at Google
and, going back a little further still, as the one-time president of AOL Media
and Studios.
Con: Eun is well-regarded by his many past peers
but he might not be high-enough profile to excite dispassionate public
shareholders. Eun could also be hesitant to leave the comfy confines
of Samsung. After all, Samsung still leads the worldwide smartphone
market, with a market cap of $212 billion to show for it. (Twitter is currently
valued at $23 billion.)
David Sacks
It’s still a mystery to some why David Sacks hasn’t hit the
beach somewhere, but he hasn’t. In fact, late last year, Sacks, who served as
COO of PayPal for years until its sale to eBay, agreed to join the fast-growing
human resources software company Zenefits as its COO.
Pro: Sacks is one of the best-known entrepreneurs in
tech, having sold his last company, Yammer, a social networking company for
enterprises, to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. The same year, another of
his companies, the family history company Geni.com, was acquired by a rival
company in a deal that appeared to at least pay investors back. Sacks is also an active angel
investor whose early stakes include Uber, Airbnb, and, yes, Twitter, so he
probably understands the company fairly well.
Con: Zenefits. Sacks recently described it as “the most exciting company that I’ve
seen that needed my help.” Twitter would need to get him even more excited
about its own future.
Susan Wojcicki
As senior vice president of YouTube, Wojcicki is at the top
of every recruiter’s dream list.
Pro: Wojcicki may be head of YouTube, but YouTube is
still a subsidiary of Google. She might be open to the challenge of running an
independent, publicly traded company. We’d guess she’d have all kind of ideas
of how to spruce it up with more video content, too. Either
way, shareholders would be over the moon.
Con: Wocjicki recently celebrated her 16th
year with Google, which famously got its start in her Menlo Park, Ca. garage.
She really seems to like it there.
Sundar Pichai
All those Google products you use? Sundar Pichai, a senior
VP at Google who is now broadly believed to be the third most powerful person
at the company, probably signed off on them.
Pro: Pichai is famous for his fast rise within the
search giant. Seven years ago, he was a middle manager reporting up to Marissa
Mayer. Having been handed the day-to-day oversight of Google’s product
portfolio in October last year, Pichai now oversees everything from
search, maps, commerce, ad products and infrastructure to Android, Chrome and
apps like Gmail and Google Drive. He’s also widely liked, according to many
reports.
Con: Did we mention that he’s basically Google CEO
Larry Page’s right-hand man? It could take more than Twitter has to offer to to
induce him to leave.
David Marcus
Last August, Facebook descended on David Marcus, plucking
the PayPal CEO out of his role of two years and installing him as Facebook’s VP
of Messaging Products. By January of this year, Facebook had a new payment
feature available to Messenger users in the U.S . It’s the kind of hat trick
that Twitter – which has reportedly been looking into a mobile payment service
for roughly a year — could use.
Pro: Marcus is a skilled entrepreneur who knows how
to manage a lot of employees, as well as understands profit and loss statements
and product management. Before becoming CEO of PayPal, where he oversaw 13,000
people, he sold his mobile payment company, Zong, to its parent, eBay, for $240
million in 2011.
Con: Marcus has described PayPal as a searing
experience whose “real management” (read: bureaucracy) took him away from what
he most loves, building products. He might not be willing, or able, to jump
back into the frying pan just yet.
Adam Cahan
As Senior VP of Mobile and Emerging Products at Yahoo, Adam
Cahan became highly prized by the company, which he joined in 2011 when it
bought his then five-month-old company, IntoNow. In fact, after helping grow Yahoo’s
100 mobile users into 600 million (by his own telling), Cahan was asked in
April to to lead Yahoo’s video efforts.
Pro: Cahan is a product guy who ‘s been
successfully running growth businesses inside a company whose traditional
business is declining. He has also worked in the past as an EVP at MTV Networks
and in business operations at Google, credits Twitter’s board would surely
appreciate.
Con: Cahan’s star has been rising in recent years, but,
as with Eun, Twitter might need a more widely known executive in the corner
office, especially after its strange and seemingly inept handling of Dick
Costolo’s departure.
Source : Techcrunch
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