Outgoing Twitter (TWTR) CEO Dick Costolo spoke at the Bloomberg Technology Conference today, discussing his resignation and the future of the company.
During the talk, Costolo divulged that until a board meeting last week, even he was unaware that he would be stepping down so soon. “We went into the meeting open to having a discussion about what the timing would be,” said Costolo at the conference.
Costolo had been planning his exit since the end of last year, citing his exasperation with the constant second-guessing by Wall Street. According to the New York Times, with the help of Twitter’s board, Costolo began rebuilding Twitter’s management team to create a group that could operate Twitter following his resignation, and the board agreed to meet in June to take serious steps in the transition process.
According to the outgoing CEO, the board decided at the meeting that the company was in a strong enough place to go through with the transition, which will go through on July 1. “It was the right time,” Costolo said in an interview with CNBC.
However, the timing might also have something to do with Twitter’s recent financial woes. Stocks in Twitter have plummeted of late, with prices falling from over $50 a share in mid April to close to $35 a share on June 11, Forbes reports. Moreover, Twitter underperformed in terms of revenue in the Q1 of this year, falling short of both Wall Street and in house projections.
Many have also criticized Twitter’s stagnating user grow. According to the New York Times, eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s Monthly Active Users will only grow by 14.1% in 2015, which pales in comparison to the company’s 30% growth two years ago.
Twitter’s underperformance in these categories has instigated criticism from shareholders, including an 8,500 word analysis of how to fix twitter published by early investor Chris Sacca a couple weeks ago. It seems likely that public pressure from Sacca and others played a role in Twitter’s accelerated transition.
Following Costolo’s exit, Twitter co-founder and CEO of Square Jack Dorsey will take the reins of Twitter as interim CEO. Dorsey will certainly be on the short list for the CEO position, and at the Bloomberg Tech Conference, Costolo praised Dorsey for the “fluency in the way he thinks about the product and its potential…”
However, Costolo, who will remain on Twitter’s board, assured viewers that Twitter is “legitimately doing a search” for a new CEO. He seemed not to have a good answer for who’d be running Twitter next, but had only nice things to say about other CEO hopefuls CFO Anthony Noto and president Adam Bain in addition to Dorsey.
As for Costolo, he’s unsure what he’ll be up to next. According to Tech Crunch, he plans to take some time off and has publicly stated only one plan: “I don’t think it would be a smart move to return to standup comedy,” said Costolo. “I can be heckled in real-time in the world.”
