Twitter’s Board Blasted as ‘Country Club of Old White Guys’ by Company’s Biggest Investor (Video)

The social media giant’s largest shareholder Chris Sacca says “fuck that noise” during panel a TheWrap’s sixth media leadership conference TheGrill

Chris Sacca, a tech investor and the single largest shareholder in Twitter, pulled no punches when it came to his thoughts on the social media company’s board of directors.

“I think what happened in the case of Twitter was the company, over this last quarter and a half, was being run by the board. And those aren’t people I want to build relationships with,” Sacca told TheWrap’s founder and editor in chief Sharon Waxman Tuesday during the sixth annual TheGrill media leadership conference.

“I want to work with the founders, the doers, the makers. People who are driving the company, not the mercenaries, not the outsiders, not the country club of old white guys who move from company to company as professional board members,” he continued, paraphrasing a line from fellow investor David Sacks. “F–k that noise.”

Sacca also ripped the board, which includes executives such as Peter Chernin, Peter Currie, and Peter Fenton, for what he called a “fundamental mistake” when the company went public in 2013. “In its IPO filing Twitter said, ‘You should measure the growth of this company based on monthly active users who are logged in to the site,’” he said. “I think that was a mistake.”

Sacca explained that such metrics make sense for a platform like Facebook, which requires login, friend associations and a pint of blood to work, but he said that “in order to get the Twitter experience it doesn’t actually need to know anything about you.”

“It was really advocated strongly by the bankers and mutual funds who wanted to buy something familiar and put it into an existing model,” Sacca explained. “I think they didn’t fundamentally understand Twitter and that set us up for that challenge.”




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