Kayvon Beykpour
Former Head of Product & GM Consumer at Twitter / Founder of Periscope
Kayvon Beykpour was the longest-tenured head of product at Twitter and GM of the consumer business until Elon Musk's acquisition. He arrived at Twitter through the acquisition of Periscope, the world's largest live-streaming platform that inspired Instagram Live, TikTok Live, and Facebook Live. He transformed Twitter's product culture from stagnant to regularly shipping major features.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Kayvon Beykpour shares how he transformed Twitter's product culture from risk-averse and stagnant to one that shipped Super Follows, Spaces, Communities, Twitter Blue, and many more features. His approach: treat sacred cows as the roadmap, use acquihires and hungry leaders to inject ambition, and accept you might flame out while trying. He also shares the surreal story of meeting Elon Musk for the first time over FaceTime and returning to Twitter HQ after being fired during paternity leave.
Leadership Principles
- → The sacred cows are their own roadmap — start with all the things people think you're not allowed to change
- → Use acquihires and hungry up-and-coming product leaders to break through organizational inertia
- → Change the lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, and the lack of customer perception that the product has changed
Notable Quotes
"The sacred cows are like their own roadmap. What are all the things that you think we're not allowed to change? Let's start there."
— On how he identified what to work on when transforming Twitter's product culture
"We wanted to change the lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, the lack of customers feeling that the product had changed at all. I was like, 'I might flame out completely, but Hell if I don't try.'"
— On the mindset behind transforming Twitter from a stagnant product org to one shipping regularly
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