Jack Dorsey said Twitter's board 'has always been a problem' and that he plotted his exit from the firm because of its activist investor

Jack Dorsey creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square, speaks during the crypto-currency conference Bitcoin 2021 Convention at the Mana Convention Center in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021. MARCO BELLO/AFP via Getty Images

• Jack Dorsey said Twitter’s board — and its activist investor — prompted him to plan an exit from the firm.
• “I was happy to see it end,” Dorsey said of the board when Elon Musk took Twitter private.
• Before leaving Twitter in 2021, Dorsey faced pressure from investors looking to replace him as CEO.

Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, slammed the board that oversaw the social media firm during his tenure at its helm, saying the group had “always been a problem.”

“I was extremely challenged by my board,” Dorsey said during an interview published Thursday by Mike Solana, the head of marketing for VC firm Founders Fund and editor of digital media brand Pirate Wires.

“The board has always been a problem at that company, and I was happy to see it end,” Dorsey continued. “But there was only one way for it to end, which is going private. And I think that’s the greatest act.”

Twitter was sold for $44 billion in October 2022 to Elon Musk, who took the platform private, radically changed its approach, and rebranded it to X. By then, Dorsey had already stepped down from the company, leaving it in 2021 to its new CEO, Parag Agrawal.

Dorsey told Solana that earlier on, he’d tried to bring Musk onto Twitter’s board but was stopped twice. That was partially why he decided to ditch the platform, he said.

In April 2022, Musk joined Twitter’s board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the company.

But Dorsey said he was also unhappy with the board because of an activist investor seeking to boot him, he said.

“I didn’t want to be on a board with an activist,” he said. I didn’t want to run a company like that. It’s just a Wall Street mess. It’s not creative, it’s diminishing.”

That investor was Elliott Management, an investment firm led by Paul Singer that wanted to replace Dorsey because he was spending time on his other venture, Square, while running Twitter as CEO.

Dorsey said he offered to step down, an offer that was rejected by the board. Still, he said Elliot Management’s presence took a toll on his relationship with the firm.

“So at that point, I’m like, okay, I have to plan an exit,” Dorsey told Solana. “It’s not going to be right now, but it has to be over the next two years, because I just don’t want to live this way.”

His comments align with reports that a fed-up Dorsey was receptive to Musk buying Twitter and revamping the platform.

During the interview, Dorsey didn’t address allegations that he was practically an “absentee” at both Twitter and Square because he was split between companies. He was accused of being more of an advisor at either firm than the decision-maker and CEO he needed to be.

Dorsey made his recent remarks just after quitting Bluesky, a social media platform he helped create with an open-source protocol. He then urged users to use X, calling it “freedom technology.”

Since taking over, Musk has pushed for X to become an ideal “digital town square” free of censorship, reversing prior bans on controversial figures such as former President Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

The billionaire’s repeated controversial remarks eventually led to major advertisers leaving X, though Dorsey has also said he believes that the path forward for the platform is to ditch advertising as a main revenue stream.

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