Jack Dorsey may be able to hold tightly to his title of CEO at two mammoth tech companies.
Dorsey is the chief executive of mobile payments company Square, which reportedly may finally stop circling the public equity markets and file its IPO as early as within the next two weeks, while also acting as the interim CEO of Twitter, another outfit for which he is cofounder.
While there has been some controversy surrounding the arrangement, The New York Times reported yesterday (Sept. 28) that Dorsey may wind up staying at the helm of both companies.
[bctt tweet=”Twitter and Square investors may be coming around to Jack Dorsey running both companies.”]
Previously, there were concerns about Dorsey being too overloaded to properly manage the two tech giants and handle the work, but it seems the minds of some Twitter investors and Square investors have taken on a more optimistic view.
“After watching Jack execute on his vision at Square, and more recently at Twitter as CEO, we are highly confident in Jack’s ability to serve as CEO of both companies,” Justin Dini, a spokesman for Rizvi Traverse Management, told NYT.
The firm not only believes Dorsey is the right person for the job, but they will also continue investing in Twitter because of its support for Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of global revenue, Dini said.
Rizvi Traverse’s support joins a growing and vocal group of investors calling for Dorsey to take on a permanent role at Twitter, NYT confirmed. According to Keith Rabois, a venture capitalist at Khosla Ventures, there is no doubt that Dorsey can manage running both Twitter and Square at the same time. Considering Khosla Ventures holds a significant share of Square, the endorsement says a lot.
[bctt tweet=”Could Jack really be back as the permanent CEO of Twitter and Square?”]
“Deion Sanders played in both the World Series and the Super Bowl,” Rabois told NYT, in reference to the 1980s and 1990s NFL and MLB athlete.
“I don’t see any reason why Jack can’t do that.”
While it wouldn’t be unprecedented for Dorsey to take over as CEO since he filled the role from May 2007 to October 2008, he has remained quiet about what his next move is.
“Jack Dorsey, on paper and with his history, is probably a great candidate but not if he’s also going to be CEO of Square,” Sinan Aral, a corporate governance professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told Bloomberg earlier this month. Aral also owns Twitter stock.
Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz is one major name that’s come out supporting Dorsey, telling Bloomberg: “I’m reflexively in favor of founders leading companies whenever possible.”
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