Paddy Cosgrave returns as Internet Summit CEO after resigning over Israel/Gaza controversy

Paddy Cosgrave, the co-founder of the Internet Summit tech convention, is returning to his position as CEO after resigning in October over controversial statements he made in regards to the Israel/Gaza warfare final yr on social media. Rumors of his return started to surface over the weekend; Cosgrave confirmed the transfer in a post on X today.

Notably, in his announcement, Cosgrave doesn’t make any point out of the politicized remarks he made that led to his departure seven months in the past (with the social media posts he wrote on the time deleted as nicely). As an alternative, Cosgrave goes for de-escalating, asserting plans for a shift in focus to “smaller” teams.

“As Web Summit becomes bigger, our aim should be to make it smaller for our attendees. More intimate. More convivial. More community focused,” he writes.

In doing so, the transfer is reiminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg’s shift to “community” at Facebook within the wake of the social community’s large post-2016 election scandal (Cambridge Analytica, election manipulation, Congressional hearings and the remainder).

Smaller teams, after all, provides a bigger entity — whether or not it’s a social community or an occasion — a method to cater to totally different agendas and opinions. Extra opportunistically, as with Fb, the emphasis on neighborhood is a counterweight to Internet Summit’s larger enterprise intention: scale, in Internet Summit’s case rising its convention empire by getting as many individuals and corporations as attainable paying to attend its occasions.

Internet Summit runs a variety of world tech conferences, the most effective identified and largest of which is in Lisbon, which in recent times attracted upwards of 70,000 attendees. The record additionally contains smaller, invite-only occasions below the model F.ounders.

That flagship occasion went via a tumultuous interval final yr after it was engulfed in criticism from its giant tech sponsors, who pulled out of the occasion within the wake of Cosgrave’s remarks.

The controversy began when, shortly after October 7, the day of the Hamas bloodbath of Israeli residents, Cosgrave posted information on X of the human price of the Israel-Palestine battle between 2008 and 2023, however omitted the occasions (and casualties) of that weekend.

In face of an outcry, Cosgrave continued to double-down in subsequent posts.

Cosgrave additionally posted assist for the Irish authorities’s criticism of Israel’s implied plans to chop off water and electrical energy to Gaza as a part of its plans for the warfare.

Cosgrave tweet

This was the final straw for a lot of of Internet Summit’s audio system, with the loudest voices of criticism coming from Israel-based VCs and founders, who have been then backed up by U.S.-based tech founders and buyers.

Massive sponsors, together with Microsoft and Google, then pulled out of the convention.

Underneath strain, Cosgrave apologised for offence attributable to the posts and resigned as CEO. (Later, Israel indeed did reduce off water and electrical energy to Gaza, and the nation’s authorities has been accused, by a vote within the UN’s Human Rights Council most recently, for actions that would quantity to warfare crimes.)

Scrambling within the lead-up to the Lisbon occasion, Internet Summit shortly appointed former Wikimedia CEO Catherine Maher as Cosgrave’s CEO substitute, whilst Cosgrave retained an 80% possession of the enterprise.

It was a really quick tenure: Maher left Web Summit just a few months later for the CEO position at NPR, leaving Cosgrave’s firm rudderless as soon as once more, but in addition setting the stage for Cosgrave’s return.