Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft and the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, weighed in on his investment in Twitter at the Code Conference at the Terranea Resort in California.
Steve Ballmer says Jack Dorsey will eventually have to choose one company to lead
“Being a CEO is a hard job, I can speak to that,” Ballmer said. “Being a CEO of two things, I can’t even imagine.”
Asa Mathat
Ballmer, who invested in the company after he retired, said that the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey (who also runs payments company Square) will eventually have to choose one company to head up.
“Being a CEO is a hard job, I can speak to that,” Ballmer said. “Being a CEO of two things, I can’t even imagine.
“Jack will eventually wind up picking one or the other,” he continued. “The business over time will either get sorted through or it will be sort of an appropriately valuable asset for somebody to buy — that’s been much speculated about. It’s hard to deny that it has an important role, so the question is is there somebody who can better monetize Twitter than Twitter can as an independent company.”
Ballmer isn’t playing as active a role in the company as he once was, however.
“I was doing a quarterly call [with Jack],” he said. “I stopped that as soon as I decided that my business was not investment. The only thing I really focus in on on a close basis now is my Microsoft shares.”
But that’s mostly because Ballmer is done investing in general.
“I’m out of that [investor] phase for those of you who are trying to get money,” he said to the crowd in the audience.
Watch: Steve Ballmer on Jack Dorsey and Twitter
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
