He sold to Google, and regretted it. “Those same programmers didn’t understand blogging, and Ev soon learned that the acquisition of Blogger was facilitated simply to place ads next to people’s blogs, not to try to further the cause of push-button publishing for the people.” (pg. 24)
Jack Dorsey is an odd duck. Though most people in the office liked Jack, they weren’t shy about telling him his ideas were a bit strange. He was always experimenting with peculiar concepts. One day he showed up to work with a white T-shirt that had his cell-phone number sewn onto the front in giant, dark numerals. He explained to a coworker that it was an experiment. Jack had done similar bizarre experiments before joining Odeo. In 2002, in his early twenties, he had become enamored with eBay. At the time, he was destitute and didn’t have anything to sell, so he set up auctions where he offered to read the famous children’s book Goodnight Moon over the phone to the highest bidder.” (pg. 36)
Twitter was built in two weeks. “Then finally, two weeks later, Jack sent what would be the first official Twitter update. On March 21, 2006, at 11:50 A.M., Jack tweeted, “just setting up my twttr,” like the first message Ev had sent on his Twitlog a few days earlier.” (pg. 67)
Twitter’s primary investor hated it. “What do you think?” Noah asked George Zachary, the lead Odeo investor, after his demonstration. “It’s amazing, right? It can allow you to connect with your friends!” George stared at Noah with a confused look, quietly wondering to himself why anyone would want to “connect with their friends” when those friends were sitting right there. He thought the group of programmers had smoked something before the meeting and looked around uncertainly. Still, Noah continued with animated examples of Twitter’s ability to connect people.” (pg. 73)
One of the co-founders left very early. “Two weeks later, faced with no other choice and no one in his corner, Noah resigned. He stopped by the desolate office on Saturday afternoon, packed his life into cardboard boxes, and let the beige door slam behind him, no longer an employee of two companies he helped start.” (pg. 80)
The culture was too loose. “Many of the employees did what they wanted, where they wanted — that was, if they wanted to do anything related to their daily job at all. Rather than fix the servers, people built their own little trinkets and apps that fed into Twitter. Jack had no luck taming them.“ (pg. 92)
Let users decide what you are. “Jack saw Twitter as a place to say “what I’m doing.” Ev saw it as more like a mini blogging product. Both of them thought the way people had used it during a mini earthquake the previous summer held clues to what Twitter could be. Jack had continued to see Twitter as a way to talk about what was happening to him. Ev was starting to see it as a view into what was happening in the world.” (pg. 95)
Ev was the sole investor with vision. “After weeks of private discussions — some over coffees or beers, others via e-mail — they were finally going to decide who would be running Twitter, what each person’s title would be, and how they would split up the stock. Until this moment, the company had belonged solely to Ev, who had financed it with his personal money after buying out Noah and the previous investors almost six months earlier.” (pg. 102)
Twitter could have sold out early to Yahoo. “So what’s the lowest price we sell for?” Goldman asked. “A hundred million?” Ev hazarded. Biz and Goldman would each get about two to three million dollars if a sale went through at that price. Although such as number is like winning the lottery for most of the world’s population, a million dollars in Valley terms in like finding a quarter between your couch cushions. Jack had the most to win from a sale. Although he was making seventy thousand dollars a year, he was still flat broke, living paycheck to paycheck, paying off credit-card debt and student loans from a year of college at New York University before dropping out years earlier.” (pg. 111)
One VC, Fred Wilson at USV, took a bold step. “Then in a separate blog post, Fred explained why his firm was investing in a company with no income. “The question everyone asks is ‘What is the business model?’ To be completely and totally honest, we don’t yet know,” Fred wrote on Union Square’s Web site. “The capital we are investing will go to making Twitter a better, more reliable and robust service. That’s what the focus needs to be right now.” Revenue would have to come later.” (pg. 114)
Growth was parabolic. “Its slowness didn’t stop Twitter’s growth. People kept signing up. The press kept coming — some good, some bad. The site kept growing. Every two weeks the number of people joining Twitter doubled.” (pg. 117)
But the founders couldn’t agree on what Twitter was. “Jack had always seen Twitter as a status updater, a way to say where he was and what he was doing. A place to display yourself, your ego. Ev, who was shy and had been shaped by his days building Blogger, saw it as a way to share where other people were and what other people were doing. Ev saw it as a way to show what was happening around you: a place for your curiosity and information. This was the debate that had originated with the concept of Twitter as a news source after the earthquake months earlier. “If there’s a fire on the corner of the street and you Twitter about it, you’re not talking about your status during that fire,” Ev said during one of their unending discussions about the topic. “You’re Twittering: There’s a fire on the corner of Third Street and Market. In reality, it was about both. One never would have worked without the other. A simple status updater in 140-character posts was too ephemeral and egotistical to be sustainable. A news updater in 140-character spurts was just a glorified newswire. Though they didn’t realize it, the two together were what made Twitter different.” (pg. 123)
The Fail Whale! “He soon came across an illustration on a stock-photography site by Yiying Lu, an artist and designer from Sydney, Australia, of a whale being lifted from the sea by some birds. This became the new image people saw when Twitter crashed. As the site was going off-line so much, it didn’t take long for the whale to garner its own nickname: the Fail Whale. Like rolling blackouts in a country already starved of electricity, the site had continued to go off-line daily. The Fail Whale took over the site almost hourly. Some outages lasted a few minutes, others more than a day. The fire hose, the name given to the stream of all the tweets coming through the service for third-party applications, would often turn off.” (pg. 141)
Facebook could have bought Twitter. “In the weeks leading up to Jack’s firing, Facebook had been trying to buy Twitter. Then, as Mark often did when he was trying to buy companies, he had noted that if the founders chose not to sell, Facebook would continue “to build products that moved further in their direction.” A threat with a kiss: You join Facebook and we live happily ever after. Or you say no and we do everything in our power to destroy you. Another possibility to get fucked.” (pg. 164)
Facebook got nasty. “Although the call ended amicably, Mark did not like to lose, and he switched his battle plan from trying to buy Twitter to trying to hire Jack.” (pg. 165)
The $21mm round. “depositing twenty-one million dollars that would value Twitter at more than two hundred fifty million dollars.” (pg. 174)
And the offers kept coming in. “Then Rose interrupted, “And of course, if you guys ever want to just sell the company, we would be interested in buying it.” At that point Ev had received more offers to buy Twitter than he could count. Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, a former vice president, celebrities, and rappers had all made overtures toward Twitter, and each time Ev had said no.” (pg. 217)
Don’t hire friends. “When it was Ev’s turn to talk, he asked his first question: “What’s the worst thing I can do as CEO to fuck the company up?” Without skipping a beat, Campbell responded: “Hire your fucking friends!” He went into a ten-minute tirade about friends and business and how they don’t mix. Ev scribbled in his notepad.” (pg. 222)
The culture was a bit loose. “A note was sent around to employees by the lawyer reminding people that they were not allowed to use drugs at work. People were asked to delete tweets.” (pg. 279)
The story of Twitter is fascinating and very messy. There are plenty of lessons on how to/how not to start and run a business. Enjoy the book.
Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com and email me directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.comhttps://blossomstreetventures.com/metrics/