There has been an enormous amount of speculation about who the next CEO of Twitter (TWTR) will be.
So far, and it's early, the top three contenders I've heard smart people talking about are all insiders.
- Interim CEO Jack Dorsey
- CFO Anthony Noto
- Sales Head Adam Bain
I said from the start that I thought Bain was going to be the next CEO. I want to make the case for him here. It will also address some of the criticisms that I've heard levied against him.
- He's headed the most consistent and stable part of Twitter for five years. Product has been a constant problem at the company. CEOs at the top have come and gone. COOs have been jettisoned. But sales has always been stable under Bain. Usually, there's a reason for that.
- If you think Dick Costolo deserves credit for taking Twitter from no revenues to a couple of billion dollars, Bain deserves at least the same amount, if not more.
- Everyone likes him. When you think of sales, you think of back-slappers, Mad Men and coffee is for closers. In tech, that seems to be make people suspicious. But getting along and stability are important. Bain has that in spades. I've never heard anyone say a bad word against him.
- He's a good communicator. He doesn't get too much exposure in front of a general investor audience, but Bain did a bang-up job at last fall's investor day. He's also extremely popular with advertisers. Costolo struggled in being able to coherently communicate the Twitter opportunity to investors when user growth slowed. No one cared about that when Twitter's stock was at $70, but they cared when it was at $30.
- He's been at Twitter for five years. While people have come and gone around him on the management team and board, Bain has been a constant. That breeds trust from insiders and from the co-founders of the company to give him a shot.
Let's address some of the concerns I've heard about Bain, including the biggest one.
- He isn't a product person. There are some who've made the comparison between Bain and Ross Levinsohn at Yahoo! (YHOO) and how the board instead chose Marissa Mayer as a CEO because she was a product person. The idea was that Mayer was going to gin up some new products for Yahoo! that would ultimately deliver more value for shareholders. Some thought Levinsohn would just cut headcount and do media deals. How is the product hire working out for Yahoo! three years later? We are still waiting for the value creation. I would say that Bain doesn't have to be a product person, but he has to have the right product person and I think he does with Kevin Weil. Kevin used to work on Adam's team, so there's mutual trust and respect already. Bain doesn't have to code. But he needs to be respected by coders and he is.
- Wall Street doesn't know him. Well, not yet. But that doesn't mean they won't like him when they meet him. They have a little at that investor day. The bigger question is will they like what Bain has to say when they meet him. They didn't like the joint interview with Dick and Jack last week.
- Jack Dorsey is a co-founder and he's well-liked. If he really wants to be CEO, there's probably a way to do it, but it is going to be a problem that he wants to be CEO of Square and Twitter as long as Twitter's stock is in the $30s.
- Anthony Noto is a great guy. Well-liked on Wall Street. Great addition to Twitter. But he hasn't been there that long. If the co-founders are going to pick a non-Dorsey insider, then I believe they'll want Bain over Noto because they'll have more trust in him and they'll think most of the employees will too.
Will Bain have the right stuff over other insiders and outsiders? Ultimately, he has to make his case to the board about how to take this company to the next level. I believe he's going to have the right answers to their questions.