Twitter nice guy a front-runner to be company CEO
But popular Adam Bain may be too nice to challenge founder Jack Dorsey for top spot.
Adam Bain has 75,000 followers on Twitter, but that doesn’t begin to describe his following.
He’s so well-liked inside Twitter headquarters that the hashtag #AdamBainIsSoNice recently trended on the social media service. Bain, the company’s president of global revenue and partnerships, is just as popular in the worlds of advertising, media, sports and entertainment, where he has connections that are the envy of the tech industry.
“He’s like Sara Lee. Nobody doesn’t like Adam Bain,” says Michael Kassan, CEO of advisory firm MediaLink, which acts as a consultant to many tech companies, including Twitter.
Bain joined Twitter in 2010, when it had a small sales team and few ad products. On his watch, it increased revenue from $28.3 million in 2010 to more than $1.4 billion in 2014.
“The single biggest reason why Adam Bain is important to Twitter is because he has been able to keep the revenue stream going even in the face of all of Twitter’s challenges,” says Debra Aho Wil- liamson, an analyst at research firm eMarketer.
And that puts Bain in contention for a more prominent role. He and founder Jack Dorsey are front-runners to be the new CEO of Twitter following previous CEO Dick Costolo’s departure earlier this summer.
Dorsey is filling the position temporarily during a search that is looking inside and outside of Twitter.
(Another possibility being floated: Bain will be promoted to president and chief operating officer under Dorsey.)
The knock on Bain: He’s not a founder, and he may be too nice to challenge Dorsey for the top job. Another concern on Wall Street: He may have the makings of a CEO, but he has no CEO experience, which could be a major challenge as Twitter faces an increasingly uncertain future.
“We know Adam Bain can build an ad business. But does that mean he can build a company?” Williamson said. “It’s a good question to ask.”
For now, Bain isn’t speaking publicly about it. “From my perspective, I’m doing the one thing that I know how to do, which is scale the revenue for the company,” he recently told CNBC.