Parag Agrawal, whom Elon Musk removed as Twitter CEO, says he found Microsoft’s Satya Nadella inspiring: ‘I thought of wanting to …’
Parag Agrawal, who was ousted as Twitter CEO after billionaire Elon Musk acquired the platform, has opened up about the leadership figure who inspired him when he took the top job. Now the founder of AI startup Parallel Web Systems, Agrawal revealed hinted that he hoped to transform Twitter’s culture and product line, drawing direct inspiration from how Satya Nadella revitalised Microsoft.In an interview, Agrawal revealed that when he stepped into the high-profile CEO role at Twitter, he looked at Nadella as a blueprint for driving massive institutional change. “When I took the job at Twitter, I was really inspired by Satya, and I used to call him the founder – or a re-founder, or whatever you want to call that,” Agrawal shared in the interview earlier this year.Agrawal explained that taking over the top job at Twitter forced him to figure out how the social media giant could evolve under his leadership and how it could differentiate itself in a crowded tech market.“When I was taking on this Twitter CEO job, it was this moment where I had to figure out what this company was going to become with me and how it was going to be different and the inspiration I got on someone like completely changing a company a business a culture a product came from Satya and I thought of wanting to be a founder in that mold of a founder in that moment,” he said.Agrawal did not have standard founder status at Twitter; he rose through the ranks as the company’s CTO before succeeding co-founder Jack Dorsey. He noted that true entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting a company from scratch. “What I’ll say is like being a founder is like a state of mind,” he added.
Inside the plans for a different Twitter
When asked if he had any radical or “crazy” ideas planned for Twitter – like Satya Nadella for Microsoft by funding non-profit AI startup – before his tenure was abruptly cut short by Musk’s buyout, Agrawal confirmed that a major architectural overhaul was actively in the works.While the company had already funded the decentralised social media protocol Blue Sky before he even took the helm, Agrawal revealed several ambitious internal projects designed to change how users experienced the platform, including Project Saturn and Bird Watch.“I think there were crazy things to be done. I think like ‘Birdwatch’ as we used to call it or community nodes for moderation was something I was building and super excited about. We had this thing called project Saturn which was crazy on how to change the content moderation regimen. We had this notion of how we would change the recommendation system,” he said.He said his team was “going to shape Twitter to be very radically different than what it had been” but he did not get the full opportunity to go do that”.
