Kayvon Beykpour: evaluation

Transcript context

…It was weird, to say the least. Honestly, it took me some time to come to peace with it because it was frustrating and surprising. I guess the story of what happened starts with Jack resigning. Jack resigned in ... It was like November of 2021 at the end of the year. The board chose Parag to be the CEO of the company, and I've had a long relationship with Parag. I respect him, but I had mixed feelings about that. To his credit, Parag very quickly addressed one of the biggest things that I was really frustrated about in the last three years essentially of my time at Twitter. One of my biggest points of feedback and points of consternation was the structure of the company in that we had a functional organizational model, meaning we had a head of consumer product, me, we had a head of revenue product, Bruce, we had a head of engineering, we had a head of design, we had head research. It was a functionally run organization. And the combination of that model and the type of leader that Jack was wasn't working in my view. I think if you're going to have a functional organization, you need to have a GM or a CEO who's extremely leaned-in to tiebreak and resolve conflict and make sure the team is moving quickly. And Jack, for all of his amazing qualities, just wasn't operating that way, and so you had a group of highly opinionated people that often disagreed and would create either the need for consensus or deadlock. That just was driving a lot of people crazy, including me, and I think it really held us back from living up to Twitter's potential. Anyway, all of that was super frustrating for me, and the combination of that and a dramatic change in leadership with Jack leaving and Parag coming in, I wasn't feeling too stoked. Parag to his credit, when he became CEO, quickly changed that and shifted the company to be a GM structure. And he promoted me to being the GM of consumers. So, for the prior three-ish years, having been responsible for growing Twitter's consumer product, I was only responsible for the product management team. I didn't have engineering or design, and that honestly was difficult. It's very difficult to change culture with one hand tied behind your back. Still no regrets. Had a lot of fun. I think we had some impact, but it was frustrating. So, Parag changed that. The irony of this, by the way, is he was one of the biggest proponents of the functional structure. When he became a CEO, he changed the structure, promoted me to be the GM of consumer, and I was, at that point, one month ... This is one month before I went on pat leave because my daughter was due. So, I went into my paternity leave being like, "All right, I'm going to give this a shot. We'll see. We'll see how this goes," as Parag addressed the biggest frustration that I had with the company and how it was being run. So, I had some trepidations but went into my pat leave feeling optimistic. Mind you, this was all before Elon was even part of the picture. ration that I had with the company and how it was being run. So, I had some trepidations but went into my pat leave feeling optimistic. Mind you, this was all before Elon was even part of the picture. He had not become a board member. There was no news about him having beef with the executive team or for that matter, trying to buy the company. So, I went on pat leave maybe a week and a half before our daughter's due date. Three weeks goes by. In that three weeks, Elon joins the board, leaves the board, makes an offer, has a short dramatic feud about whether that goes through. And also during that time, my daughter was born. Some drama at the hospital for us, but a week afterwards, we come home. Mom's healthy. Daughter's healthy. The day after we get home from the hospital, Parag called me and said that he was letting me go and that he was taking the team in a different direction. That night, Twitter signed a term sheet with Elon to sell the company. So, a lot happened in a very short period of time, and the reason that Parag gave is exactly what I shared publicly, which was that he wanted to take the team in a different direction. The only other thing he said is that given that new direction, he thinks that the things that I'm good at, Twitter doesn't need anymore. And the things that Twitter needs are not particularly in my skill set or in my interest. He wasn't particularly expressive about what that direction was, but that was the reason he gave me. That was a huge bummer for me for a bunch of reasons. One, I love the company. I love the product, and also it just sucks to leave not on your own terms. And two, I was just confused. The timing was very frustrating and confusing for me, not least of which because I had just come home from the hospital while on paternity leave. But also because at that time, especially the fact that Elon was buying the company was ... Well, I was conflicted, honestly. I was very excited because Elon is someone that I looked up to immensely, and you just look at the things that he's achieved in the world and you can't help but be inspired by that. And two, Twitter for all of, I think, the impact and progress that we had made, had a lot of challenges associated with its governance and the fact that it was constantly vulnerable as a public company. So, there's just always this drama associated with Twitter as a public company, even a private company before that, that made it extremely hard as a builder to get shit done and have the product live up to its potential. One of the benefits of this particular takeover was that Elon offered a path towards solving all of that. It was like, "Oh, cool, now you've got one owner who happens to be, by the way, extremely opinionated about the product and a voracious consumer and creator of the product. " I think there was an incredible opportunity in that that now you have this organization and this product and this incredible ecosystem that can be devoid of all the political bullshit associated with being a public company. Now, it has this conduit to just living up to its potential. So, it was a bummer to be removed from that, I suppose, without having any agency myself. bullshit associated with being a public company. Now, it has this conduit to just living up to its potential. So, it was a bummer to be removed from that, I suppose, without having any agency myself. That was very a long-winded answer to your question, but that's what happened towards the end there. Like I said at the beginning, it took me a while to come to terms with it and to be at peace with it. I did eventually. Listen, there's a huge silver lining of I spent the first year of my daughter's life with her and my family. My wife Sarah had left Twitter eight months prior to me leaving, and so when's the next time we could all be together and have time and space to just enjoy each other and our new family, and frankly, to avoid a lot of the drama that ended up ensuing that not a lot of people could have predicted? The deal was on. The deal was off. It is just a whole lot of drama that I got to miss, which is the silver lining. Then it was confusing there for a bit because when Elon did end up buying the company, in that conversation that I had with him, it was definitely ... I was conflicted about do I want to maybe spend some time working on this still? Elon was very cool about ... He actually used this phrase at the end of our conversation, which I still find hilarious. He was just like, "Do you want to just come? You seem like you care about the product, and you don't have dumb ideas. Do you want to come hang out?" And I was like, "What would my job be?" And he was like, "Don't know, just hang out, and you can swipe left or swipe right." He used the swipe right, swipe left Tinder metaphor, and I thought that was hilarious coming from him.…

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