Paddy Cosgrave, the co-founder of tech conference Web Summit, is returning to his role as CEO after stepping down in October over controversial statements he made about the Israel/Gaza war last year on social media. Rumors of his return began surface over the weekend? Cosgrave confirmed the move in a post on X today.
Notably, in his statement, Cosgrave makes no mention of the political remarks he made that led to his departure seven months ago (with social media posts he made at the time also being deleted). Instead, Cosgrave is going for de-escalation with a planned shift in focus to smaller groups.
“As Web Summit gets bigger, our goal must be to make it smaller for our attendees. More intimate. More pleasant. More community focused,” he writes.
In this way, the move is reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg’s turn to Facebook’s “community” in the wake of the social network’s massive post-2016 election scandal (Cambridge Analytica, election manipulation, congressional hearings, and the rest).
Smaller groups, of course, give a larger entity—whether it’s a social network or an event—a way to accommodate different agendas and viewpoints. More opportunistically, as with Facebook, the emphasis on community is a counterweight to Web Summit’s larger business goal: scale, in Web Summit’s case to grow its conference empire by getting as many people and companies as possible to pay for to attend its events.
Web Summit organizes a number of global technology conferences, the best known and largest of which is in Lisbon, which in recent years has attracted over 70,000 participants. The list also includes smaller invitation-only events under the F.ounders brand.
The flagship event went through a tumultuous period last year after it came under fire from its major tech sponsors, who pulled out of the event following Cosgrave’s remarks.
The controversy began when, shortly after October 7, the day Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, Cosgrave published figures for X on the human cost of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2008 and 2023, but omitted the facts (and casualties) of this one. weekend.
In the face of an outcry, Cosgrave continued to double down on subsequent publications.
Cosgrave also published support for the Irish government’s criticism of Israel’s implied plans to cut off water and electricity to Gaza as part of its war plans.
Tweet by Cosgrave
This was the final straw for many of the Web Summit speakers, with the loudest voices of criticism coming from Israel-based VCs and founders, who were then supported by US-based tech founders and investors.
Subsequently, major sponsors including Microsoft and Google pulled out of the conference.
Under pressure, Cosgrave apologized for the offense caused by the posts and resigned as CEO. (Later, Israel indeed he did cut off water and electricity in Gaza.)
Ahead of the Lisbon event, the Web Summit quickly appointed Wikimedia CEO Catherine Maher as Cosgrave’s replacement CEO, even as Cosgrave retained 80% ownership of the business.
It was a very short tenure: Maher left Web Summit a few months later for a CEO role at NPR, leaving Cosgrave’s company rudderless once again, but also setting the stage for Cosgrave’s return.
