He Co-Founded Facebook and Asana – But Had to Step Down From This ‘Exhausting’ Role: ‘I’m an Introvert’
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was the CEO of workplace productivity platform Asana for 15 years.
Key Takeaways
- Dustin Moskovitz is the co-founder of Facebook and the co-founder and former CEO of Asana.
- Moskovitz stepped down as Asana CEO in July after 15 years leading the company, and says the job was “exhausting” and ill-suited to his personality.
- Under Moskovitz’s leadership, Asana has become one of the leading enterprise work management companies, with more than 170,000 customers.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is relieved to stop being a CEO, a job he calls “exhausting.” He says that the role, which he took on for over a decade at Asana, didn’t suit his personality.
Moskovitz, 41, who was Mark Zuckerberg’s sophomore-year roommate at Harvard, co-founded Facebook in 2004 and served as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering before leaving in 2008 to start Asana, a workplace productivity platform. He began serving as Asana’s CEO in October 2010.
In July, Moskovitz retired as CEO of Asana and transitioned to become chair of the company’s board. In an interview published Monday with Stratechery, Moskovitz said that being a CEO was “quite exhausting,” particularly because he is “an introvert.”
Related: Spotify’s Founder and Longtime CEO Is Stepping Down: ‘To Be Clear, I’m Not Leaving’
“By personality, I don’t like to manage teams, and it wasn’t my intention when we started Asana,” Moskovitz explained. “I’d intended to be more of an independent or head of engineering or something again. Then one thing led to another, and I was CEO.”
Moskovitz said that because he is an introvert, he had to put on a “face” every day as CEO — and his job never got easier because circumstances “kept getting more chaotic.”
“I’m an introvert, I had to just kind of put on this face day after day,” Moskovitz told Stratechery. “In the beginning, I was like, Oh, it’s going to get easier, the company will get more mature. And then the world just kept getting more chaotic.”
He said events like the pandemic made the CEO role less about building the company and more about reacting to problems.
Still, Moskovitz grew Asana into one of the leading enterprise work management companies, serving more than 170,000 customers and over 85% of Fortune 500 companies, with annual revenue exceeding $700 million. The company went public in 2020 and has a market capitalization of $3.53 billion at the time of writing.
Related: Airbnb’s CEO Says He Personally Manages 40 to 50 Employees as Direct Reports: ‘A Lot of Work’
Key Takeaways
- Dustin Moskovitz is the co-founder of Facebook and the co-founder and former CEO of Asana.
- Moskovitz stepped down as Asana CEO in July after 15 years leading the company, and says the job was “exhausting” and ill-suited to his personality.
- Under Moskovitz’s leadership, Asana has become one of the leading enterprise work management companies, with more than 170,000 customers.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is relieved to stop being a CEO, a job he calls “exhausting.” He says that the role, which he took on for over a decade at Asana, didn’t suit his personality.
Moskovitz, 41, who was Mark Zuckerberg’s sophomore-year roommate at Harvard, co-founded Facebook in 2004 and served as chief technology officer and vice president of engineering before leaving in 2008 to start Asana, a workplace productivity platform. He began serving as Asana’s CEO in October 2010.
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