Before Elon Musk's takeover changed everything, Parag Agrawal had a leadership role model in mind for Twitter — here's who inspired him

Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has revealed that Microsoft chief Satya Nadella was the biggest influence on how he planned to lead the social media company before Elon Musk's takeover ended his tenure.

Speaking in an interview earlier this year, Agrawal said he looked to Nadella's transformation of Microsoft as a model for changing Twitter's business, culture and products after he succeeded co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO.

"When I took the job at Twitter, I was really inspired by Satya, and I used to call him the founder or a re-founder, or whatever you want to call that," Agrawal said, as quoted by Times of India. 

Agrawal said taking over as CEO was a defining moment that made him think about how Twitter could evolve under his leadership and stand out in the competitive technology industry.

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"When I was taking on this Twitter CEO job, it was this moment where I had to figure out what this company was going to become with me and how it was going to be different and the inspiration I got on someone like completely changing a company a business a culture a product came from Satya and I thought of wanting to be a founder in that mold of a founder in that moment," he said.

Although Agrawal was not one of Twitter's founders, he rose through the company's ranks as chief technology officer before becoming CEO in 2021.

He also said entrepreneurship is not limited to launching a company from the ground up.

"What I'll say is like being a founder is like a state of mind," he added in the interview in February.

Inside the plans for Twitter

Agrawal also spoke about the ideas he hoped to introduce at Twitter before Musk acquired the company in 2022.

Asked whether he had any bold plans similar to those Nadella pursued at Microsoft, Agrawal said several major projects were already underway, including changes to content moderation and the platform's recommendation system.

While Twitter had already backed the decentralised social media project Bluesky before he became CEO, Agrawal said the company was also working on initiatives such as Project Saturn and Birdwatch.

"I think there were crazy things to be done. I think like 'Birdwatch' as we used to call it or community notes for moderation was something I was building and super excited about. We had this thing called project Saturn which was crazy on how to change the content moderation regimen. We had this notion of how we would change the recommendation system," he said.