Who is Esther Crawford, executive who rose on Elon Musk’s ‘hard-line’ Twitter

Days after Elon Musk completed the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, Esther Crawford posted a photo of herself sleeping on the floor of the social networking company’s headquarters.

Bundled up in a sleeping bag, with a mask over her eyes, she added a caption to the viral Nov. 2 post: “When your team is working around the clock to meet deadlines, sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.”

Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management, according to current and former employees, became one of the most influential leaders left of the old guard before Musk laid off more than half of the social networking platform’s 7,500-strong workforce, including most top executives.

The 39-year-old did so, according to people close to the company, embodying the “hardline” vision that Musk seeks to instill at his other companies, such as Tesla and SpaceX, where there is an expectation of working long hours “at high intensity”.

That allowed him to quickly rise to the helm of lucrative new ventures such as the Twitter Blue subscription service and plans to allow payments through the site.

Crawford also became one of the few women at the company to join Musk’s trusted aides — a rise marked by her regular online posts about the new Twitter, along with self-improvement or management quotes.

For some insiders, Crawford has the charismatic energy needed to help transform Twitter’s business, while at the same time being a no-nonsense voice that gets attention from its impulsive owner. To other former employees, she is criticized as a sycophant and an opportunist.

“The sleeping bag incident really upset people,” said a senior official who added that Crawford had become one of the few so-called Twitter 1.0 employees to successfully translate Musk’s demands to others under his ownership. “She became something of an interpreter between Elon and the product team,” the source said.

Crawford declined to comment. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

When Musk first went to the San Francisco headquarters shortly before closing the deal, Crawford showed up at Perch, Twitter’s local coffee shop, and arranged a one-on-one meeting to discuss his thoughts on payments and creators, according to multiple people. informed about the meeting.

For Musk, as one of the top creators on the platform with 126 million followers, his ideas resonated well. Other people were irritated; Crawford was berated by a senior leader for stepping over his head and going directly to Musk, according to people with knowledge of the company’s operations.

Under the command of Musk, who sought to diversify revenues so as not to depend on advertising, Crawford led the launch of Twitter Blue, an $8 premium subscription service that guarantees users a “blue seal” of authenticity.

It finally took off late last year after several hiccups, with Crawford admitting: “There are no more sacred cows in products on Twitter. Elon is willing to try a lot of things – many will fail, some will succeed.”

Longer term, she is charged with Musk’s ambitious plan to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions on the platform, along with e-commerce payments, and has been named chief executive of its Twitter Payments subsidiary, according to several people familiar with the matter and first reported by Platformer.

Crawford first joined Twitter in late 2020, when the company bought Squad, the video chat startup she founded, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold. On her LinkedIn profile, she said the app had “millions of users” and funding for early-stage companies, including First Round Capital.

Prior to that, she was one of YouTube’s first video bloggers herself and was asked to be the main strategist for the Weight Watchers social network in the late 2000s after successfully launching her own weight loss video blog.

A philosophy major with a master’s degree in international relations, Crawford has also held product marketing roles at several Silicon Valley startups and has become an avid Twitter user, posting personal reflections on her life, such as growing up in a Christian “cult”. and its contractions during childbirth.

Upon joining Twitter as an employee, she would be responsible for finding ways for influencers to make money off the platform and exploring opportunities around cryptocurrency, as head of their initial bets.

It initially focused the search on what creators want from the platform, according to two colleagues, one of whom said the results were “dismal” because the company has failed to adequately serve creators up to this point. Crawford then worked on plans to meet their demands, which included focusing on the Audio Spaces feature, one of Twitter’s most successful updates, and creator subscriptions.

Several current and former colleagues describe her as empathetic and tactful: Her schedule is often open for all to see, and she buys personalized mugs for team members. Her charm, combined with a startup mentality, has earned Musk trust, according to three people who have worked with her, one of whom said she was able to sway him by gently challenging him behind closed doors rather than publicly. .

Crawford was responsible for smoothing over tensions with Apple, two of the people said, including after Musk publicly criticized chief executive Tim Cook over the fees the tech group charges developers on its app store.

His ideas were not always welcome. Crawford was among the proponents of Twitter’s controversial and now-suspended plan to introduce a feature that would allow users to offer adult videos through a paywall similar to subscription site OnlyFans, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Many former employees, in turn, resent their fondness for the spotlight. She regularly posts a mix of Twitter business updates and inspiring corporate talks to her 50,000 followers.

A former senior employee described her as a “boot-licker”, adding: “She was a nobody who became somebody because she was willing to sell her soul for 15 minutes of fame. It’s disgusting.” It remains to be seen whether Twitter’s engineering teams will respect her, as she was not a programmer, said another current colleague.

Crawford seems unperturbed. On his Twitter profile, the background photo reads: “Be bold. Stand up. Believe in yourself.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves