5 Things You Might Not Know About Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal

Twitter Inc TWTR co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced he was stepping down from the CEO role in November 2021. The news came with the announcement that Twitter’s Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal would become the new CEO of the social media platform company.

Agrawal served as the CEO of Twitter from November 2021 until October 2022 when he was relieved of his duties after Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk acquired the social media platform. 

Agrawal received over $40 million in payment for being let go by Twitter. 

Here are five things you might not know about Agrawal.

1. Youngest CEO In S&P 500: With the appointment of Agrawal as the CEO of Twitter, he was at the time the youngest CEO of a company in the S&P 500. Agrawal took the title away from Meta Platforms META CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Agrawal and Zuckerberg are the same age, but Agrawal’s birthday, which is not publicly disclosed, falls later than Zuckerberg’s.

The oldest CEO of a company in the S&P 500 is Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) CEO Warren Buffett. The average age of a CEO of a S&P 500 company is 58.

2. Agrawal's Decentralization, Crypto History: As chief technology officer at Twitter, Agrawal was tasked with being in charge of Bluesky, a decentralized platform Twitter is working on.

The project, which was announced in December 2019, seeks to create an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” Bluesky was once considered a “pet project” of Dorsey’s but has been gaining attention recently.

In August, Jay Graber was put in charge of Bluesky as the product lead. Bluesky could continue to be a big focus of Twitter’s given Agrawal’s relationship with the project.

Twitter’s recently created cryptocurrency team led by Tess Rinearson reported directly to Agrawal when he was the chief technology officer. This November 2021-created team works with Bluesky and also looks to lay out a crypto strategy for Twitter going forward.

Related Link: 5 Fun Facts You Might Not Know About Jack Dorsey

3. First Amendment Views: One of Twitter’s biggest challenges has been how to address how posts and Twitter accounts are moderated and what is and isn’t allowed on the social media platform. Agrawal said in a 2020 interview with MIT Technology Review that Twitter’s role is to allow people to have conversations online and not say whatever they want.

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation,” Agrawal said.

Agrawal’s comments might suggest that former President Donald Trump and others may find themselves to continue to be banned from Twitter.

4. Gold Medal Winner: In 2001, at an age of 17, Agrawal won a Gold Medal at the International Physics Olympiad held in Istanbul, Turkey. Agrawal was one of three members on his team to win gold medals at the competition.

5. New Role Leads To More Followers: Agrawal was with Twitter since October 2011, joining as a software engineer and working his way up to the CEO role. Outside of Twitter, many may not have been familiar with Agrawal, something that changed when he was the CEO.

On the company’s namesake social media platform, Agrawal had 22,930 followers through Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021. That figure of course changed after Agrawal was announced as the new CEO of Twitter. On Monday, Nov. 29, 2021, when he was announced as the new CEO, Agrawal’s Twitter followers had jumped to more than 160,000. 

At press time, Agrawal has over 626,000 Twitter followers.

Original publication: 2021-12-02