Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is stepping down as CEO to let the company move away from being led by its founders, and will focus on his cryptocurrency-adjacent payments platform Square.

“There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led’,” Dorsey said in an email to Twitter staff that he shared on Tuesday morning.

“Ultimately I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

Dorsey co-designed Twitter as a short-form messaging service designed to let people communicate with small groups.

It was spawned at podcasting company Odeo where the original Twitter prototype was used internally until July 2006 when it was released to the public.

A few months later, Dorsey and other members of Odeo created a new company called Obvious Corporation which bought Odeo and its assets – including Twitter.com.

In 2007, Twitter was spun out on its own and began its rapid user growth as the microblogging platform went from experiencing 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008 to 50 million tweets per day just two years later.

Dorsey said he was “really sad … yet really happy” about finally leaving Twitter.

“There aren’t many companies that get to this level,” he said. “And there aren’t many founders that choose their company over their own ego.

“I know we’ll prove this was the right move.”

Dorsey is succeeded to the social media company’s top job by former Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal who also tweeted a copy of an email to Twitter’s staff.

“I joined this company 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees,” Agrawal said.

“While it was a decade ago, those days feel like yesterday to me.

“But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s incredible impact, our continued progress, and the exciting opportunities ahead of us.”

Dorsey stays on as CEO of payments company Square, known for its distinct white square point-of-purchase devices that are a favourite of small retailers.

Earlier this year Square acquired Australian buy-now-pay-later company Afterpay in a deal worth $39 billion.

Dorsey is bullish on Bitcoin and was behind Square buying 5,000 bitcoins then another 3,300 over the past 12 months.