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Parag Agrawal

Parag Agrawal to replace Jack Dorsey as the new CEO for Twitter.

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Twitter announced that Jack Dorsey is stepping down as CEO and that Parag Agrawal has been appointed as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. Dorsey will remain on the Board of Directors until the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders when his term will come to an end. Bret Taylor has been appointed as the new Chairman of the Board, succeeding Patrick Pichette, who will remain on the Board and chair the Audit Committee. Since 2017, Agrawal has served as Chief Technology Officer at Twitter, where he has worked for more than a decade.
“Because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders, I’ve decided to leave Twitter. I have a lot of faith in Parag as Twitter’s CEO. His work has had a profound impact over the last ten years. I owe him a debt of gratitude for his talent, heart, and soul. It is now his turn to lead “Dorsey stated.
Twitter’s incoming Independent Board Chair, Bret Taylor, stated, “On behalf of the Board, I’d like to express our gratitude to Jack for his visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to Twitter since its inception. Jack returned to Twitter and saved the company at a critical juncture. Since then, the progress has been nothing short of amazing. Jack has left the world with something priceless, and we will continue to carry it on.”
Taylor remarked, “Parag is familiar with Twitter and recognizes its unique potential. He’s been instrumental in tackling some of our most pressing issues, such as increasing our development velocity, and I’m confident he’ll get right to work to improve execution and deliver results. The Board of Directors has complete faith in Parag.”
“I appreciate the Board’s faith in my leadership, as well as Jack’s continued mentorship, support, and partnership,” Agrawal said. “I’m excited to build on everything we’ve accomplished under Jack’s leadership and to seize the opportunities that lie ahead. We will deliver tremendous value to our customers and shareholders by continuing to improve our execution as we reshape the future of public discourse.”

Parag Agrawal
Image source: live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au

Board Updates

Besides Agrawal’s appointment, Twitter has appointed Brett Taylor as independent chair, effective immediately. He has served on the Twitter Board since 2016. Taylor succeeds Patrick Pichette, who will continue to serve as chair of the Audit Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors. Taylor currently serves as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce, and has extensive experience in the technology sector, overseeing strategy and technology development.

Financial Outlook

The Company’s previously announced fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 outlooks, as well as its 2023 objectives, remain unchanged. On December 7, 2021, at 9:05 a.m., the Company will speak at the Barclays Global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Conference. The previously announced virtual fireside chat with Ned Segal, CFO, will include PT. Parag. Twitter’s Investor Relations website, investor.twitterinc.com, will host a live webcast as well as a replay.

About Parag Agrawal

Since October 2017, Parag Agrawal has been the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Twitter, which he joined in 2011. As CTO, he has been in charge of the company’s technical strategy, leading efforts to increase development velocity while also advancing the state of Machine Learning throughout the organization. Prior to his appointment as CTO, Parag had risen to become Twitter’s first Distinguished Engineer for his work in revenue and consumer engineering, which included his role in re-accelerating audience growth in 2016 and 2017. He earned a doctoral degree in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Nikesh Arora – A Man from being jobless to lead Palo Alto Networks

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There are very fewer people in the world who steps down from a higher position. Most of the successful people run behind more power and fame. In this world, it’s rare to find someone who quits and not chooses to compete.

Nikesh Arora is one such legendary figure who stepped down twice from an honorable position. He chose to leave Google and joined SoftBank. He resigned from SoftBank as well. Last year, Arora became the Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

Childhood

Born on 9th February 1968, Arora became a worldwide significant figure. He was born into a family in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Arora is the son of an Indian Air Force officer and he also has a sister.

Education

Arora did his schooling from The Air Force School, Delhi. After completing his high school Arora pursued engineering. He picked up the common choice of all the Indian youngsters. But, it worked out differently for him.

Arora went to IIT Varanasi (IIT BHU) which is one of the best Indian institutes for engineering. He graduated with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1989. After graduating he started working at Wipro.

Higher Studies

Arora quit his job shortly as he wanted to pursue higher education. In 1990, he left for Boston. He joined Northeastern University and acquired an MBA degree in 1992.

After completing his MBA in Marketing, Arora joined Fidelity Investments as an analyst. But, he wanted to continue his studies. So, he joined Boston College in the same year and attended classes at night. He went to a job and side by side studied for Master’s. He topped the class.

In 1994, he acquired a Master’s degree in Finance and became CFA. He struggled a lot during these two years. Arora’s job was going well. He received promotions several times. His last post in Fidelity was Vice President, Finance.

Early Career

After completing his Masters, he decided to leave Fidelity Investments. Arora joined Putnam Investments but left shortly. After this, he joined Deutsche Telekom.

In 2000, Arora founded a company, T-Motion PLC. He built the company mainly to provide services to the newly launched 3G products of Deutsche Telecom. After two years, these two companies merged. Arora stayed as a Board Member.

For the next couple of years, Arora didn’t take any big steps. In 2004, he came to know that Google was hiring. The company went public and it was hiring for its European office.

The Big Decision

When Nikesh joined Google it was a young company. So, this decision was life-changing. Arora chose to join Google over founding a new company.

He started managing the operations in Europe and continued for three years. Under his leadership, the success of Google in the European market grew rapidly. In 2007, he started managing the Middle East and European markets as well.

Promotions

Nikesh Arora got a big promotion in 2009. He became the President of Global Sales Operations and Business Development. In 2011, he got promoted to Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer of Google. And this year he became the highest-paid executive of the company.

SoftBank

After working in Google for almost a decade, Arora resigned in 2014. He immediately joined SoftBank, a Japanese multinational company.

Nikesh Arora stepped up as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company. Under Arora’s supervision, SoftBank grew bigger. Arora suggested the company to invest in start-ups. SoftBank invested in Ola, Grofers and etc.

Arora became the third highest-paid executive around the world after he received $73 million from SoftBank in 2016. This became very big news for the business world.

Palo Alto Networks

After achieving one of the most dignified positions in SoftBank, Nikesh Arora chose to resign. He joined Palo Alto Networks in June 2018 and currently serves as the CEO and Chairman of the company.

Palo Alto is a Santa Clara based company founded in 2005. The main products of the company are cybersecurity and cloud computing.

After Arora joined the company, it made the biggest acquisitions in its history. In 2018, Palo Alto ranked 8th in Forbes Digital 100. The company acquired Demisto for $560 million, Twistlock for $410 million and recently Aporeto for $150 million in 2019.

Nikesh Arora is a great leader. Under his leadership, Palo Alto is doing excellent. He has proved himself as a truly skilled individual.

Personal Life

Nikesh Arora’s first marriage didn’t work out. He later married Ayesha Thapar in 2014 who is a businesswoman. Arora has a daughter.

Kahoot!: A Platform, Where You Learn While You Play

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How many of you really enjoyed the last lecture you attended, or you literally dozed off and lost track of time? I guess most of the answers won’t be in assertive. Well, that is true. Every one of us gets tired of listening to a monotonous speech for several hours, which also make us lose our interest to learn something new. At times to really grow our curiosity and to really nurture the young minds, we should find innovative ways to learn. We should also discover more ways to teach that crosses the boundaries of the four walls of our classroom.

The learning platform Kahoot has already made it possible. Kahoot is a game-based learning app, which allows you to learn new things through many intellectual games. You can create your own games, and especially, if you are a teacher you can make your students learn by playing over this platform. It makes students put their minds together, which also help improve their communication skills and will help them get better overall. Now, before we learn more about how this app works let us delve deeper into its history.

Kahoot Founders
Image Source: medium.com

The history behind the success of Kahoot!

The five great minds that were mainly behind the development of this application are Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker, Morten Versvik, Prof. Alf Inge Wang and Âsmund Furuseth, a Norwegian entrepreneur. The entire idea of transforming the tiresome methods of teaching to eye-catchy fun games came from Prof. Alf Inge Wang, who was from the Department of Computer Science at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology.

At first, multiple tests were carried out on the prototypes of the app, and the first one tested successfully was named Lecture Quiz 1.0, which was developed in 2006. The first experiment was carried out with 20 students in a classroom, where they concluded that Lecture Quiz is easy to use and entertaining. This way, the regularity of the students in the class was started to increase. Since then, four new versions of Lecture Quiz were developed, and as new updates were implemented to each one of them.

The prototype of Lecture Quiz 2.0 was much user-friendly, which implied in an increased number of students using it. On the other hand, the latest version of Kahoot, i.e. Lecture Quiz 3.0, has got a much better user-interface, helping the students in better understanding as well as help in increasing the motivation and enthusiasm to learn. This prototype was tested both inside and outside the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and received appreciation for its features.

The app was first launched in private beta in March 2013, which later was publicly released the same year in the month of September. Since then, a lot of experiments have been carried out among different groups of students, to see how it affects the majority. One of the experiments revealed that the students put more effort and concentration when it comes to learning through games than giving just a dull pen-paper test. Though a few students reported that this application is very time consuming, but overall, Kahoot became a grand success. Many such experiments were carried out to check whether the students lose motivation after a particular point or not, whether it is having a negative impact on their concentration but every outcome of these experiments was clearly in favour of Kahoot, and hence, today it has reached the apex.

The entire idea of launching this app proved advantageous to both students and teachers because it became less laborious for the teachers. This time, the students would actually put their brain together to win the learning games on Kahoot, which ultimately, meant learning new topics. The audio effects, later added to the platform, made the app even more attractive and alluring.

Where Kahoot! stands today

Johan Brand, the co-founder and the CEO of Kahoot, played a major role in converting this project to massive success. Kahoot started growing very rapidly, especially, among the young students and teachers. It, especially, captured the attention of U.S. K12 classrooms. By May 2017, the company showed statistics of 50 million active users, and currently, Kahoot! is worth $300million.

Thus, from checking the prototypes of this application among a handful of students to currently having more than 70 billion active users in 200+ countries, narrates the grand success story of Kahoot. With the help of this very platform, people are only a few clicks away from learning in a better way. Also, the idea of learning anytime, anywhere, has helped Kahoot grow at a faster pace.

In a nutshell, this application helps you learn a topic, play a Kahoot, practice and get through with it. You can also try helping out your peers, by creating your own Kahoot and sharing the link. Since the app is free, the number of users seems to increase exponentially. These small tactics on how to approach the users in a much better way have provoked the growth of Kahoot to many extents.

Tomas Gorny : The CEO and Founder of UnitedWeb, NextVita, IPOWER

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There are times when people fail, but only the ones who don’t let their spirits fail, reach their goals. One such personality, who fought with all the ups and downs, is Tomas Gorny, who despite many challenges, never gave up on hard work, and even after, becoming bankrupt, did not lose hope and continued to work for his aims. Today, he is the CEO of a multi-million company, and all the strategies that he used to succeed have become the inspiration for other aspiring entrepreneurs.

Gorny was born in 1975, in Poland. He belonged to a relatively poor family. He had always heard that in the U.S. there is a better life, and you are paid on the basis of your hard work. This had ignited a desire in him to go to the U.S. But before that at the age of 7, he got the chance to visit Germany, which was a life-changing experience for him. In the next seven years, he was convincing his parents to move to Germany, so that he could go to a better school and they could have a better life.

TomasGorny
Image Source: nextiva.com

When he was 14 years old, he along with his family, moved to Germany. In Germany, he attended a business school, from where his interest in entrepreneurship started to grow. In the class, he was the second best student, and in three years, he was running a PC distribution service in Europe. Here as a 17 years old his smart work worked for him, and he was more successful than his other competitors. According to Gorny, this was the time, when he started believing in himself, and he developed great business skills. Despite all the success in Germany, he had never forgotten his dream of moving to the U.S., and after completing six years, in Germany, Gorny migrated to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, he started a web hosting company, named Internet Communications and became a part owner of that company. During his time ar Internet Communication, he struggled financially. He was 20, and he had to work in double shifts to bear with his daily expenditures. He also worked as a carpet cleaner and a valet and lived on $3 a day in terms of a food allowance. Only after two years at the company, it got acquired by another company, which made Gorny a millionaire. Gorny was a 22 years millionaire.

Gorny knew that nothing is forever, so, he started investing in various other ventures to utilize his newly earned money and increase the profits. But there came the famous dot-com crash, followed by the 9/11 mishappening, bringing him back to the start, wiping off all his wealth. He was left with his car and a $6000 in his bank account.

But as is always said, hard work will pay you off. Gorny had gained enough experience with his hard work. The asset of his experience encouraged him to start his business once again, such that even after his bankruptcy, he kept on experimenting and launched and sold two companies. Later, by the end of 2001, he launched another hosting service under the company name IPOWER with his $6000.

The company had a new strategy. Other companies were selling everything at different prices as separate products, whereas IPOWER had a single package that included all from domain to hosting, that too for $7.95. Also, the company offered one-click installation and control panels for web hosting. The formula worked, and within six years, IPOWER was the second big hosting company after GoDaddy. In 2007, the company hit the million user spot, and that was the time when it had a merger with a company called Endurance, Gorny remaining the CEO. In 2011, the company was sold to Goldman-Sachs for a billion dollars, and Gorny left the company, remaining a member of the board.

In 2008, Gorny started United Web, as the parent company for his next venture, named Nextiva. He had started working on Nextvita in 2006, Nextvita was the result of a lack of innovation in the telecom industry. Gorny founded an opportunity in the same and took phone system and brought it to the cloud. After six years of its inception, the company became the third largest privately-held business cloud communication provider in Arizona. The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, United States and has over 700 employees (as of 2017).

In the beginning, when Gorny was working in Germany, his accent was considered the biggest flaw in him. But in the years passed by, he made it his biggest asset. He says, “Your obstacles are your strength. Your biggest strength is going to be sometimes your biggest weakness.”

Cheng Wei : The Founder of China’s Biggest Transport Network DiDi Dache

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China has been the home for many startups and innovators including Jack Ma, the founder of the biggest eCommerce giant Alibaba Group, and Lei Jun, the founder of Xiomi. Another tech innovator who hails from China is Cheng Wei, the founder of China’s biggest autonomous technology conglomerate, DiDi. Wei is one of the fastest grown CEO in China and is often counted among the top three most successful CEOs in China.

Cheng Wei was born on 19 May 1983, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, in Shangrao, China. He completed a graduate degree in administration from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, and after graduating, joined as the assistant of the head at a foot massage company. Soon he realized that this is not the job he always intended to do, and after working for a period of one year at the company applied for the job of a salesperson for the business-to-business e-commerce service at Alibaba.

Cheng Wei
Image Source: fortune

Joining Alibaba proved to be a good decision for Wei, and in the span of six years, he was promoted to various positions in the company. He became the sales manager for the north of China. After six years he was appointed as the deputy general manager at the online payment department, Alipay, in Alibaba, becoming the youngest regional manager in the company.

In 2012, Wei left Alibaba to found his own company Beijing Orange Technology Co, and the first service that he started under the name of the company was DiDi Dache, a transportation service, with an initial capital of worth 15 million dollars from the tech giant Tencent. This car-rental service was a result of his experience with the cabs, as he had missed many flights due to as he could not catch the cabs on time.

People could use the service through an app and get an immediate pickup. The app also included a feature that allowed the users to book the cabs for the next day.

In 2013, the company completed its Series B funding, followed by a series C funding in 2014. In the same year, DiDi Dache appointed the ex-Goldman Sachs Asia managing director, Jean Liu (Liu Qing), as the as COO of the company.

In February 2015, DiDi Dache merged with the other major mobile-based transportation network Kuaidi Dache, making DiDi Kuaidi, keeping the management separate. In July 2015, the company had fundraising, which made it the world’s first private company having completed the largest single fundraising round and raised a worth of US$2 billion.

The company provides hiring service for cars, bus, minibus, chauffeur service, car rental service, bike-sharing service and has got over 10,000 employees working for the company. In 2013, Uber entered China, but DiDi maintained the strongest hold on the transportation market in China. In September 2015, Didi Kuaidi rebranded itself as Didi Chuxing

According to Wei, Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing, and his company is working on the very technology to bring new ideas and technology to DiDi. In 2017, the company started expanding in the other parts of the world starting from Brazil. Also, the company has invested in the other car-rental services like Grab, Lyft, Ola, Uber, 99, Taxify and Careem. The company currently is serving 550 million users across over 400 cities.

Wei is known as a Nationalist and many times has been heard of addressing China’s history and military in his speeches at big conferences. In September 2015, he got the chance to join China’s leader Xi Jinping, to visit the U.S. and attend the 8th U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum (USCIIF) and become the youngest person to participate in the forum.

The employees of his company see him as the greatest leader who is confident and knows how to deal with every situation. Despite the big rivalry between Tencent and Alibaba, he has been able to maintain a calm relationship between the two investors of his company.

In 2015, he was named in the list of “40 under 40” for the Chinese Business Leaders by Fortune. And in the same year, he was at number 1 in the list of China’s “40 under 40” along with Jean Liu. In 2016, he was named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year. In 2017, Time listed him among the 20 Most Influential People in Tech and was named one of the Global Game Changers by Forbes. In 2018 Forbes China named him among the 50 Most influential business leaders in China.

Trip Hawkins : Silicon Valley Entrepreneur & the Founder of the Gaming Pioneer Electronic Arts

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“I’ve never been content with a straightforward job,” says Trip Hawkins, the American entrepreneur and the founder of startups like Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate. This may be the reason how a person who was once handling one of the most successful video game companies (EA), left it to pursue a new challenge of running a startup (3DO) all over again. Trip Hawkins, who has registered his name as the eighth person into the ‘Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame for his contribution to the video game industry, believes that if one wants to succeed in life, he has to be ready to fail first.

Hawkins was born as William Murray Hawkins III on 28 December 1953, in Pasadena, California, U.S. He was a bright student and a video game lover. According to Hawkins, every time he played video games, it switched on his brain. Therefore, eventually, it became his passion.

trip-hawkins
Image Source: playworks.org

After completing his high school education from a local school, he entered Harvard University. Interestingly, here he majored and graduated in a self-designed course, Strategy and Applied Game Theory.

As soon as he completed his college, he joined Apple Inc. as the Director of Product Marketing in 1978. He was one of the first fifty employees of Apple. During this time, the company saw its first most successful years and also filed for its first IPO in 1982. The company also registered its name among the Fortune 500 companies and increased the number of employees to one thousand people.

In 1982, Hawkins decided to start his own financing venture named Amazin’ Software and met Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital to talk about the plan and raise funds for it. On the advice of Valentine, Hawkins left his job at Apple and shifted to a Sequoia office for his startup. On 27 May 1982, Hawkins started Amazin’ Software investing US$200,000 from his personal savings.

At the same time, he started working on his next startup Electronic Arts and hired a few ex-fellow colleagues from Apple. By November 1982, the company had hired over eleven people, and it was relocated to San Mateo.

Hawkins incorporated Electronic Arts on May 27, 1982. In the beginning, the company functioned with name Amazin’ Software, but most of the employees did not like the name and suggested for SoftArt, but eventually, ended up naming the company Electronic Arts. The company started building video games, and their marketing strategy included dealing with retailers directly. It was a great marketing move, and the company started running successfully.

Hawkins has always called the developers artists, and that is why the company name includes Arts in it. The next different thing that he chose to do in marketing was to give photo credit to his game developers on the game covers. In fact, the company released its first ever video game ad featuring the developers in it.

In 1987, EA released its first internally developed game named Skate or Die. The mega-hits from EA are Madden NFL, The Sims and Rock Band. In the early 1990s, the company started producing console games for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

In 1991, Trip Hawkins stepped down as EA’s CEO, after successfully leading the company for 12 years, to found another startup named 3DO. Currently, the company headquarter is located in Redwood City, California and Andrew Wilson heads it as the CEO.

3DO was a video game console company, which in 1993 released the most powerful and expensive gaming console of that time, costing US$599. Being at a higher price, the company failed to sell the gaming console, and eventually, stopped making them. Later in 1996, the company started producing video games that also failed to support the revenues, and it became bankrupt.

After shutting down 3DO, Hawkins went to found another video game company named Digital Chocolate, in 2003. The company produces video games for handheld devices. After serving the company as the CEO for over 9 years, Hawkins stepped down from the position in 2012.

In the same year, he joined the board of directors of Israeli technology company Extreme Reality, and in 2013 became the senior advisor to the board of directors of NativeX. He also joined the advisory board at Skillz, in 2014.

According to one of his interviews, when he was asked about if he was not an entrepreneur what would he be? He answered that he would have been a professor as he assumes himself a natural teacher.

In 2016, he joined the University of California as Professor of Practice in the Technology Management Program.