Twitter GM of Consumer, Keyvon Beykpour, announced today he will be leaving the company after seven years. Beykpour first joined the social media platform by way of its acquisition of Periscope, which he founded, said in a tweet he was asked to leave by current CEO Parag Agrawal, who wants to take the team in another direction. Bruce Falck, Twitter’s Revenue Product Lead, is also departing, Twitter confirmed to TechCrunch.
A Twitter spokesperson said its VP of Consumer Products Jay Sullivan will now become the new GM of Bluebird and interim GM of Goldbird.
In addition, the company confirmed it’s undergoing a hiring freeze — which is not uncommon following M&A deals.
“Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business-critical roles. We are also pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” the spokesperson said.
The company had no further comment on the changes.
“The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision,” wrote Beykpour on Twitter. The exec was on paternity leave at the time he received the news, he noted. “While I’m disappointed, I take solace in a few things: I am INSANELY proud of what our collective team achieved over the last few years, and my own contribution to this journey,” Beykpour added before reeling off accomplishments that took place under his leadership.
After joining Twitter by way of the live video app Periscope in July 2018, Beykpour become Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product. He then moved up to GM, Consumer in December 2021 — an elevated role that saw him leading all teams across Product, Engineering, Design, Research, and Customer Service & Operations teams that worked on Twitter’s consumer apps.
In his tweets, Beykpour noted Twitter’s DAU (daily active users) grew by over 87% since the second quarter of 2018 and his team has since shipped a variety of products. Notably, his team is behind the surge in product innovation Twitter had seen in recent months which gave birth to new product concepts like its live audio chat rooms, Twitter Spaces, as well as Communities, Topics, Creator Tools, Safety controls and more. These products began to ship at a much faster pace than any time over the past decade, said Beykpour.
He went on to thank his team and fellow employees, specifically calling out Jay Sullivan, the former Meta product director who joined the company last year and became Twitter’s VP of Consumer Products; as well as former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo who brought Persicope to Twitter in the first place; and Twitter’s most recent CEO before Agrawal, Jack Dorsey; among others.
The departure follows Telsa and SpaceX exec Elon Musk’s decision to acquire Twitter and take it in a direction that’s focused more on “free speech.” Musk has other specific plans for Twitter products, he’s said, like verifying users who pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions, charging for embedded tweets, and other changes designed to grow Twitter revenue and users. It’s not clear what that means for all the products Beykpour’s team had spearheaded, however.
Agrawal had begun restructuring the Twitter team back in December, after taking over the role formerly held by Dorsey. At the time, Twitter lost its Chief Design Officer Dantley Davis, who joined the company in 2019, and its Head of Engineering Michael Montano, who joined in 2011. Shortly after, Twitter lost two more leaders, chief information security officer, Rinki Sethi, and head of Security, Peiter Zatko (Mudge).
It wouldn’t be surprising to see further changes to Twitter’s organization and its leadership in the days to come.
