You always want to keep focused on the long-term vision, yet when you go public you re on a 90-day cadence and there s a very public voting machine of the stock price that accelerates that short-term thinking.
— Dick Costolo, who s leaving as Twitter CEO after five years, in an interview with the Guardian. He s not the first tech chief executive to talk about Wall Street s influence on a company s long- and short-term thinking, but his parting words are significant because his departure is related to the pressure he was under to deliver results quickly in the form of user growth and more revenue.
Costolo also addressed another big challenge he faced at Twitter, which has become a tool for activists and governments and groups with different agendas: geopolitical issues.
When I took on the role of CEO I thought of myself as a technologist, but I ve had to become more and more concerned with the geopolitical landscape, as have all my counterparts in tech, Costolo said. Referring to regulation as a threat to free speech, he said, I m unable to conceive of a regulatory body that will be swift enough to deal with the constantly evolving issues of ethics, communication and technology.
Costolo is being replaced by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who is taking on the chief executive role on an interim basis — but is facing some high expectations, as Queenie Wong wrote.
Photo: Dick Costolo addresses a session at the National Venture Capital Association s annual conference in San Francisco on May 15, 2013. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group)
