Andrew Jones
Kayvon Beykpour, head of Twitter’s core features, and Bruce Falck, revenue product lead, alleged they were fired by CEO Parag Agrawal.
Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion. Beykpour’s Twitter resignation announcement didn’t mention Musk’s takeover. Instead, Agrawal fired him, he stated on Twitter.
“I never expected to leave Twitter in this manner, and it wasn’t my choice,” he added. “Parag asked me to go because he wanted to refocus the team.” Falck tweeted that Agrawal fired him.
Agrawal announced Beykpour and Falck’s leaving in a memo to staff Thursday, reported the New York Times. In the memo, the CEO said Twitter will freeze most new hiring and limit discretionary expenditure due to revenue and user growth shortfalls, but no layoffs are planned.
Agrawal is anticipated to be unemployed if Musk buys Twitter. Musk expects to become interim CEO when the deal closes, CNBC reported, and he’s chosen a permanent CEO, per Reuters.
“While I’m unhappy, I take comfort in a few things,” Beykpour stated. “I am INSANELY proud of what our team has accomplished over the last three years, as well as my own contribution.” The executive says he’s leaving Twitter and “interrupting my paternity leave.”
Beykpour led Bluebird’s researchers, designers, engineers, product managers, and customer operations employees. He led Twitter’s consumer product team and defined its product strategy. Twitter’s head of consumer product will supervise Bluebird.
Beykpour joined Twitter after the company acquired Periscope in 2015. Twitter shut down Periscope in March 2021 and integrated livestreaming functionalities.
Beykpour co-founded Terriblyclever Design, which produced the first mobile apps for Stanford’s iStanford and Duke’s Duke Mobile. After Terriblyclever was acquired by Blackboard, Beykpour led the mobile division for four years.
Falck was CEO of ad-tech company Turn before joining Twitter in 2017. Before that, he was COO of BrightRoll, which Yahoo bought. During his eight years at Google, he helped design and oversee the Google Display Network, DoubleClick Bid Manager, and Google’s Advertising Exchange.
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