Is Jack Dorsey The Right Man For Twitter?

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR)  finally has a permanent CEO. Three months after Dick Costolo resigned and co-founder Jack Dorsey took the helm as interim CEO, the board approved Dorsey to take on the job full-time.

Jack Dorsey is ready to save Twitter.  But is he the right person for the job? Some have likened Dorsey’s return to the return of Steve Jobs to his beloved Apple. “Like the Apple co-founder, Dorsey was the impetuous, petulant CEO pushed out by his allies. And after a soul-searching exile, he's welcomed back as the savior to a troubled enterprise.”

Is Dorsey really the Steve Jobs of Twitter? Let’s take a look.

Why Dorsey was fired

Unlike Jobs, Dorsey was never fully focused on Twitter. Leading up to his firing in 2008, Dorsey could never keep his head in the game. His extracurricular hobbies, including sewing and drawing classes and constant partying made his co-workers feel like he wasn’t serious. He also lacked communication with Twitter’s investors and alienated the board of directors.

When the board replaced him with Evan Williams in 2008, he was furious. According to the book, Hatching Twitter, Dorsey received a “passive chairman role and silent board seat” — a simple token with no actual value. Dorsey then launched a whisper campaign among the board and company employees to get Williams sacked and get Dorsey back on Board.

Creating an image of Jobs

During that same time, Dorsey founded Square, a mobile payment company. In true Jobs fashion, he began to mimic Jobs’s mannerisms, design principles and vocabulary. In 2010, his whisper campaign worked. Costolo was brought on board as CEO replacing Williams and Dorsey was made executive chairman.

Now that Dorsey is back as permanent CEO for Twitter, he plans to remain CEO of Square — just like Jobs remained CEO of Pixar, the company he founded after he was ousted as Apple CEO. Square plans to go public in the near future, and the concern of whether Dorsey can focus on one thing at a time remains.

Of course, he’d like you to think that Jobs had it just as bad. Apple was a struggling company when Jobs came back on as CEO. He was also able to manage both companies powerfully. But is Jack Dorsey the next Steve Jobs? It’s unlikely.

Nomura analyst Anthony DiClemente echoed these doubts in an analyst note reported by Quartz. “We are less certain of Jack Dorsey’s ability to drive effective structural change, particularly if he continues as CEO of Square,” he wrote. “Current issues at Twitter represent a significant challenge for any CEO; as result, we are unclear as to whether Mr. Dorsey could help drive user growth reacceleration and monetization stability while separately leading an IPO process for Square.”

Conclusion

Dorsey is a product visionary, no doubt. But it’s difficult to find enough evidence to compare him with the genius of Steve Jobs. While his move to permanent CEO of Twitter gives investors a stronger feeling of certainty, splitting his time with Square isn’t going to help make Twitter great again.