The original text was published on 36Kr, author: Linxi Matcha Matcha
Odaily editor's note: Since Twitter was founded in 2006, the road to business has always been full of ups and downs. I believe readers are familiar with the story after a few years after its successful listing in 2013. The executives left and the stock price plummeted. Co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped in and returned to the helm of Twitter…
Until Jack Dorsey stepped down this year, the Elon Musk acquisition drama, which lasted for several months and turned around, is finally coming to an end. Various news show that the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and the consortium supporting him is about to be completed. Twitter may usher in a new chapter belonging to web3. The head Jack Dorsey has already started to talk about web5.
This long article, published 9 years ago in 2013, when Twitter went public, details Twitter's early origin story. From creative ideas to commercialization, after many coaching changes, from chaos to IPO, the excitement is as good as it is today. History always rhymes, and going back to the beginning may bring you new inspiration.
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Fall 2010,TwitterStill a mess. At that time, the micro-blogging website, which had just been established for 4 years, had no progress in the profit model except that it had 145 million users. The website is fragmented, and conflicts among employees are on the verge of breaking out. Chaos is the order of the day at Twitter.
Twitter's first CEO, Jack Dorsey, took the company from an idea to reality, only to be fired after messing everything up. Twitter's successor CEO, Evan Williams, watched the initial surge in user numbers and was helpless with the subsequent slowdown. The board began planning to fire Williams too, but the question is: who is qualified?
andMark ZuckerbergandDrew HoustonSuch a famous founder is half his age, but his achievements have already doubled.
Overwhelmed, the board took a second look at the cards in their hands. They could make Costolo a temporary interim CEO until they find a suitable candidate. Twitter teamed up with executive recruiter Paul Daversa to scout potential candidates and has already drawn up a few good candidates.
Maybe the board can give Costolo a chance. For Costolo, the job of COO used to be quite a challenge, but he accomplished it brilliantly. At the same time, Costolo knows the inner workings of the company at his fingertips and is trusted by board members.
Interestingly, the final decision rests with the person who is about to be fired. After becoming CEO, Evan Williams remains Twitter's largest shareholder. He and Costolo have known each other for more than ten years and were introduced by mutual friend Eric Lunt in the 1990s. To make his retirement more natural, the board invited Williams to join the process of screening candidates. At first he wasn't thrilled with the idea of Costolo replacing him; but in the end, he was the one who made the move.
On October 4, 2010, Williams formally resigned as CEO of Twitter, leaving Costolo alone in charge.
If you only focus on Twitter's upcoming IPO, you may mistakenly think that Twitter's development is smooth, and its success is taken for granted. but it is not the truth.
"Who made it work?" to Jack Dorsey who came up with the idea? Is it Evan Williams, who has a keen eye for the pearl, persists in execution, and takes over as the CEO? Or the Dick Costolo who really brought Twitter to business? Or investors and behind-the-scenes heroes?
In fact, the success of Twitter is not a genius idea, but the product of cooperation. At different times in it, different people contribute leadership, vision, and skills that the company needs.
But this teamwork doesn't look too pretty. After Costolo took over Twitter, the company was still in disarray. Although, at the time, it was only 4 years old, the entire company was riddled with leadership feuds, failed products, office battles, and leadership changes.
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Part 1. Early co-founders forgotten by history
Anyone who knows Twitter knows that the company in the first 5 years of its business is a mess. Rooted in this bad culture of endless bickering among founders. They argue about products, who to run, and even who the founders of the company are.
Twitter's entrepreneurial story is inseparable from three people: Jack Dorsey, Christopher"Biz" Stone,and Evan Williams.
The story goes like this:
Biz Stone and Evan Williams worked together at Google after Blogger was sold to Google. They later co-founded a podcast company: Odeo, which took off quickly. Jack Dorsey was just one of the employees who came up with the idea for Twitter, Stone and Dorsey built the prototype, and Evan Williams formed the new company.
Here's Stone and Dorsey's version, but it's a little different from the story Williams told in 2006 when Twitter was officially launched: "Twitter was the product of months of hard work with Noah, Jack, and Florian. Unlike Odeo, it Nothing to do with audio and podcasts."
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Everything starts with Odeo
Glass met Williams four years before Twitter was founded. At the time, they were neighbors in San Francisco. Glass saw the Blogger logo on Williams' computer, and found that Williams was the founder of Blogger in a magazine, so he mustered up the courage to introduce his true identity. Williams writes: "He once came to me with a wacky proposal: People dial a phone number, record a message, and send it to a website with the push of a button." That wacky idea became Odeo, which eventually became Twitter.
Initially, Williams was an investor and advisor to Odeo, not a founder. He then became active as a co-founder and eventually became the CEO of the company. And technically, Christopher"Biz"Stone is also the co-founder of Odeo - he will be on the scene shortly.
Odeo moved from the Glass family to the Williams family. With some of the proceeds from the sale of Blogger, Williams bought a house for Odeo's new office. At that time, Glass was the leader of Odeo, not Williams. Says former employee Ray McClure: "I think Ev was just interested in the Odeo, but most of the time it was Noah who did the work."
Soon, Odeo moved into real offices and started hiring staff. One is the quiet, excited Jack Dorsey, with his tousled hair and nose ring, and the engineer Blaine Cook.Odeo also has aKevin Systromintern at , who later foundedInstagram。Back then, Systrom sat next to Dorsey, and the two chatted a lot about their "picture" ideas.
In June 2005, Odeo launched a controversial podcast product. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote about it this way: "Sorry if the following report (referring to Odeo) doesn't get you our usual excitement and enthusiasm. We have a weird hunch that iTunes 4.9 will probably Make a huge impact on the podcast market." Arrington's prediction came true. Apple launched the iTunes podcasting platform and tied it to the iPod. At the same time, Odeo employees found that they could not even use the company's products themselves. "We built the Odeo, tested it a lot, and never used it," recalls engineer Blaine Cook.
In the fall of 2005, Odeo investor George Zachary from Charles River Ventures was also disillusioned with the product. At the time, the company had 14 full-time employees, and Biz Stone was one of them.
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Odeo --> Stat.us --> Twttr
Odeo co-founder Noah Glass noticed Jack Dorsey as the company's "rising star."
Dorsey has a new and different idea: Stat.us, which lets users see what their friends are up to (at any given time). The quiet designer sketched Stat.us on a piece of paper before joining Odeo. Now, he and his colleagues at Odeo share his ideas over Mexican food at a playground near his San Francisco office.
At first, Glass was unimpressed: "He described Stat.us to me, and I was struggling to find the appeal of it." It didn't take long for Glass to figure out what was going on.
In February 2006, Glass, Dorsey and a German contract developer, Florian Weber, presented the idea to the rest of the company. Glass will"Stat.us"changed to"Twttr". Users can send text messages to specific numbers on Twttr, and the message will be seen by other friends of the user at the same time. Initially, text messages were limited to 160 characters. Twttr's text was ultimately limited to 140 characters due to the need to include a username in the text message.
Glass has inspired other Odeo employees to participate in the Twitter project, and as a result, he is known as Twitter's spiritual leader. Williams gave the green light to the project, leaving Glass solely in charge.
"Of all our projects, Twitter is my favorite," Williams wrote in an email to Odeo executives, who did not include Dorsey. Williams is often indecisive and relies on intuition when making decisions. "We may need more discussions, but I think it's time to make a decision, and my instincts lead me to Twitter."
At that time, Dorsey was still an ordinary engineer, but he had already occupied an important position in Twitter's research and development team. He and Florian Weber were responsible for coding, Stone for design, and Glass for product development and coming up with signature features like time stamps.
There was a time when all of Twitter's early services ran on Glass's IBM Thinkpad, and Glass said, "Everything is on my desk, and I can pick up Twitter at any time and take it anywhere in the world. "
"Glass and Dorsey are more obsessed with Twitter than anyone else in the company," says investor George Zachary.
In 2006, Glass's marriage was struggling. Twitter allowed him to fill the emotional void and helplessness. Zachary remembers Glass saying, "Twitter makes you feel like you're communicating with someone, and it's a complete emotional punch." The emotional investment in Twitter made it harder for him to deal with what came next.
In March 2006, Odeo prototyped Twttr. In July, TechCrunch first reported on it. At that time, the Odeo employees had already started using Twttr, and they were crazy about it. All Twitter information is released through text messages, and you need to know that text messages are charged. A month's worth of text messages can add up to several hundred dollars, but the company agrees to foot the bill for its employees. In August, news of Opportunity hit San Francisco with a small earthquake, first on Twitter. In September, Twitter had thousands of users.
Since then, engineer Blaine Cook has felt that Odeo has split into two companies -- Twitter, run by Noah, Florian, Jack, and Biz, and Odeo, backed by others.
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Is the repurchase of Odeo shares intended to compensate, or is it a conspiracy?
In September 2006, Williams wrote a letter to Odeo's investors. The letter said he could not see a future for Odeo and was saddened by it. Because he was too sad, he hoped to buy back the equity in the hands of shareholders to recover their losses. In this letter, Twitter is also briefly mentioned. He wrote, "Twitter is the most valuable part of Odeo I see so far, but it's too early to tell. Two months after launch, with less than 5,000 registered users, I will continue to invest in Twitter, but it's hard to say when be rewarded.”
Ultimately, Odeo shareholders agreed to the proposal to sell all of their equity to Williams for a total of $5 million. As such, he remains Twitter's largest shareholder today, with a 12% stake. In contrast, Jack Dorsey's shareholding is less than 5%, and the shares of Biz Stone and Noah Glass are unknown. Maybe they also sold their own part, or maybe the proportion is too small to be worth mentioning.
Odeo investors still have a huge question mark:
When Williams repurchased the shares, did it anticipate its value? Is the buyback a conspiracy? Or does Williams really feel that Odeo's idea has failed and wants to compensate investors?
These questions are very reasonable. Williams knew that some of Twitter's early adopters were fanatics because he used to pay employees' text message bills as high as $400 a month. Glass also said that mobile operators have said: Before the advent of Twitter, text messaging has never been seen so active.
The reason why people doubt Williams' motives is that the Twitter co-founder has always been known for being shrewd. Even Meg Hourihan, a partner at Blogger, once told the New York Times: "I don't think Williams is a person who is grateful." The New York Times also quoted Williams as saying: "Every businessman on the road to success will inevitably meet An enemy." An Odeo employee also believed that Williams had premeditated: "Ev was sure that Twitter would have a bright future, so he bought all the assets and let everyone else out."
Another employee gave a different opinion. Blaine Cook, an Odeo engineer, recalls a meeting in the summer of 2006, just a few months before the share buyback, where everyone was discussing whether to shut down Twitter. No one knew that 6 months later, Twitter would be an overnight sensation.
At the same time, a few months after the repurchase, Williams invited other investors to join at a valuation of US$25 million, including Charles River Ventures, Ron Conway, the godfather of Silicon Valley angel investment, and so on.
In any case, in the fall of 2006, Williams successfully bought back all the shares of Odeo from investors and quickly changed the company's new name:Obvious Corp。
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Noah Glass who 'made it all' is out
Not long after Glass presented the Twitter idea to the Odeo board, Williams invited him for a walk. That day was June 26, 2006. They strolled through South Park, where Dorsey came up with the idea for Twitter. That's where Williams fired Glass.
Glass was shocked. Williams offered to give him a six-month quarantine, but would keep his shares in Odeo. If Glass disagrees, he will be publicly fired. When Glass left two weeks later, everyone was surprised. It's heartbreaking to see someone so obsessed with Twitter being forced to leave his product.
So why did Williams fire Glass? An important reason is the difference in personality: Glass is loud and high-key, Williams is quiet and low-key.
"Noah is always talking loudly, but Ev is always thinking in silence." An Odeo employee analyzed that Glass was fired because he was too emotional. During that time, he had to deal with a crumbling company and a precarious marriage at the same time. Mood swings are inevitable.
Glass believes that the dismissal stems from a power struggle, and he may have expressed his enthusiasm for Twitter too much. Long before Williams and Stone endorsed Twitter, Glass wanted to spin it off, form a new company, and serve as CEO. "When it comes to rights, there tends to be a lot of disagreement."
Another reason for firing Glass seems to have come from another Odeo employee: Jack Dorsey, Glass's pal. Nick Bilton wrote in "Hatching Twitter" that Dorsey approached Williams and confessed that if Glass didn't leave, he would leave.
At first, Glass didn't get any shares of Twitter, and shortly after leaving, he got a small stake. But the share is very low, even if Twitter goes public, it won't bring him much wealth. Another early employee, Florian Weber, got even less. In 2005, Williams hired him as a part-time contractor for Odeo, and to this day, he doesn't own Twitter. Glass and Weber aren't the only ones missing out on Twitter's perks. Odeo's quality director, Dom Sagolla, was fired by Williams in May 2006. Like Weber, he didn't get any benefits. That summer, Adam Rugel, Odeo's director of business development, left; product director Tim Roberts also quit in the fall.
For Glass, being kicked out of Twitter was a coup de grace. "I felt betrayed by my friends, my company, people I trusted around me, and a career that gave me everything. If I knew this was the result, why did I work so hard? It took me a long time, all by myself One reflects on everything one goes through.”
It's worth noting that even though Williams fired Glass, he mentioned Glass's contributions on Twitter several times after the old friend left. "I know Twitter is a credit to the team, but even more, there would be no Twitter without me," said Glass, whose Twitter profile still reads to this day:first level title
Part 2. The Death of Jack Dorsey
"I believe that there is great value in the products we build, whether it's Odeo or Twitter, but the old model doesn't deliver the success it's supposed to. New company, new structure, new model, I believe it's a good investment."
At the beginning of 2007, after Twitter opened its API to the world, the company entered a stage of rapid development. Other companies have developed Twitter-enabled software, such as Twitterific and TwitterVision, which display tweets in new and interesting ways, spurring Twitter's user growth. In addition, Twitter plans to log in to Japan, and the number of local users is growing rapidly, approaching the United States. China's Sina Weibo also copied Twitter's ideas and began to compete with it in the Asian market.
In March 2007, Twitter won an award at the South by Southwest conference, gained too much attention in an instant, and caused the website to crash for two days. Another month later, after Twitter became strong enough to become independent from Obvious Corp, 30-year-old Jack Dorsey officially became CEO.
Today, Dorsey is widely credited with successfully launching Twitter and another company, Square. At 36, he has accomplished so much that he is often compared to Jobs. But in April 2006, he was not well known to the world when he just took over as CEO of Twitter. Due to lack of experience, Dorsey's road to lead Twitter became extremely difficult.
In the summer of 2007, an earthquake hit Mexico City. There were 7 people present who updated their tweets for the first time. Their information was earlier than the US Geological Survey's earthquake report, and even an hour earlier than CNN's news. Since then, Twitter has evolved from a simple tool for showing friends what you're doing to a fast-moving platform for news.
Just this summer, Twitter raised $25 million in its first round of financing. In addition to several investors from Odeo, Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz, also participated in the investment. The addition of these new faces is particularly important to Twitter. Williams contacted Dick Costolo, an old friend of many years, to discuss investment matters. Williams emailed Costolo asking if he was considering investing $25,000 or $100,000 in Twitter. Costolo responded in just 3 minutes, agreeing to contribute $25,000.
After receiving more new financing, Twitter's development has also reached a new level. User tweets are not only increasing in number, but also richer in content. In August 2007, the "label" function was launched. In March 2008, the number of Twitter users exceeded 1.3 million. In May of the same year, another round of financing of $1,500 was completed, with investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Bezos.
On the one hand, Twitter is growing rapidly, while on the other hand, its management is disintegrating. Twitter has been in turmoil under Jack Dorsey. A person familiar with the situation commented: "Jack is a very smart product designer, but that's it. He doesn't have the ability to be a good CEO."
Dorsey struggled with the transition from engineer to leader. Unfortunately, he still failed to lead the team well, employees didn't want to work for him, and he didn't absorb new people quickly. The website crashed again and again, and the Twitter downtime symbol "stranded whale" (fail whale) even replaced the "blue bird" as the new mascot. In 2007, when Dorsey became CEO, Twitter experienced a total of six days of downtime. Frequent website crashes became a powerful strain.
Someone said: "At the board level, Jack is an influential founder; but at the operational level, his execution ability is far from enough." "He is very smart, but he is not good at leading. Compared with employees, he is very There are more incentives for investors.”
Dorsey has also had major missteps when it comes to fiscal spending. He signed a partnership with a text messaging company, but the fees were too expensive, and Twitter's monthly text messaging business expenses approached six figures. Not only that, but he's not all-in on Twitter: It's his dream to be a fashion designer, too, for which he often leaves work early, attends evening classes, or takes yoga classes. His overstuffed schedule created serious distractions. Finally, Williams had a showdown with him: you could either be a tailor or the CEO of Twitter, you could only choose one of the two.
In 2008, the unbearable Williams decided to be the CEO himself. As Twitter's largest shareholder, Williams owns three to four times Dorsey's shares. He has more money and more say. Therefore, when he made up his mind, there was no room for maneuver. Dorsey was eventually kicked out of Twitter. The outside world said that this was a "violent conversion", "Compared to Dorsey, Williams is a more qualified entrepreneur, and he has higher prestige."
Ostensibly, Williams blamed the board for Dorsey's departure, and they were involved. Two of the members, Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson, took Dorsey to breakfast and broke the bomb -- Dorsey would get $200,000, but at the cost of being the silent chairman, with Williams as the new CEO. On October 16, 2008, the news was officially made public.
Dorsey certainly knows who the real villain is. For the next four years, he and Williams hardly spoke a word. Dorsey even nearly joined Twitter's biggest rival, Facebook. He later told David Kirkpatrick of Vanity Fair:
"Being kicked out of my own company was like being punched in the stomach. Twitter carries all my hopes."
Dorsey also learned one of the most fundamental lessons about startups the hardest way:Proposing an idea does not mean that you can control the entire company.
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Part 3. Evan Williams Drives the Rapid Development of Twitter
Dorsey's insouciant management style has thrown Twitter into disarray internally, but from the outside, Twitter looks rosy. Dorsey has accomplished the company's mission to make Twittera flysoaring. When he first became CEO, there were only a few thousand registered users; a year and a half later, when Williams took over as CEO, the number of users had crossed the 1 million mark, and millions of tweets were sent out every day.
Still, the short three years that followed, from mid-2008 to mid-2011, were a huge ordeal for Twitter. There's a saying: "When the number of users grows, the site goes down. The market cap goes up, and so does the pressure. In short, there's never a down time."
Williams admitted frankly that he also made many mistakes when he was CEO, whether it was in personnel management, product development, or business decisions. But, more importantly, Twitter's user base has exploded under Williams' leadership, and the company is headed in the right direction.
Williams was a poor decision maker, which caused headaches for the board and subordinates. Whenever it comes to recruitment, his rhythm will drop instantly, and he tends to hireuserPeople or friends, but they are often not the best candidates. Moreover, the same problem that plagued Dorsey has been repeated in Williams-under Williams' control, the frequency of Twitter's website crashes has decreased, but downtime still occurs from time to time.
In fact, as long as Williams sells Twitter, all problems can be easily solved, and he can also make a lot of money.
In the fall of 2008, Facebook approached Twitter on its own initiative, offering $500 million (cash plus shares) to acquire Twitter. Previously, Twitter's financial valuation reached $98 million, so the acquisition price of $500 million was very attractive. Williams alone would have made a pretty decent sum.
Facebook and Twitter have had discussions for weeks. Even though the acquisition was Facebook's own initiative, they're not big enough to be all-inclusive—Twitter isn't profitable yet, and SMS fees will cost Facebook $75 million a year. And at the same time, Twitter also believes that the value of Facebook's shares is inflated.
Before formally accepting the offer, Twitter got an overnight consideration time. The next day, Twitter's board members woke up to find a long, eloquent email from Williams in their inbox. In the letter, Williams asked when would be a good time to sell the company and expressed his intention not to let go of Twitter. In fact, Williams didn't need to ask at all, and he didn't need to convince the board of directors. The email was just a courtesy greeting, because he still held the most equity in the company. This decision shows that Williams is full of hope for the company. He did not sell Twitter for $500 million, and it is also the wisest decision he made as CEO.
Under Williams' leadership, Twitter has made a series of strategic acquisitions. That included a search company called Summize, which was one of Twitter's first and most important initiatives because it really solved the site's sporadic downtime and "stranded whales" problem. The acquisition took place during Dorsey's tenure, but was led by Williams.
As CEO, Jack Dorsey signed the paperwork to acquire Summize. The outside world believes that this acquisition is crucial. Twitter needs technical support to maintain the website, and Summize's employees are undoubtedly good helpers. Their search engine is excellent, and to a certain extent, not only saved Twitter, but also opened up a new search architecture for it, which in turn promoted the growth of user numbers.
During Williams' tenure as CEO, Twitter maintained rapid growth, thanks in part to the addition of stars. Oprah Winfrey signed up for an account and amassed 100,000 followers in just 24 hours. In 2009, the registration of Ashton Kutcher brought a large number of Hollywood stars to flock to it.
In the same year, Twitter also transformed the media and released the first news. On January 16, 2009, a US Airways plane made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Although no one was injured, all passengers had to climb out of the cabin and wait on the wing for rescue. A Twitter user took and uploaded the photos at the time, and for a while, the news spread wildly on the Internet. Soon, the Hudson River crash was picked up and reported by the mainstream media. Twitter is also lauded for being the first to break news.
That's when Jack Dorsey realized the great potential of Twitter, not just as an update on "what I'm doing," but as an important way to spread news.
At the same time, Williams is trying to lobby Twitter's executive team to build its own mobile terminal. Until 2010, Twitter still relied on apps developed by third parties, but Williams believes that in the long run, this will create brand confusion, and eventually, Twitter will become an irrelevant product and gradually die. On April 10, 2010, at Twitter's first Chirp conference, Williams announced the first round of acquisitions. It acquired Tweetie's parent company, AteBits. At the time, Tweetie was the #1 Twitter app in the Apple App Store.
At the same time, Williams also aggressively expanded the team. By the end of 2010, the number of employees in the company had increased from 20 in the Dorsey period to 300. He also doesn't forget product iterations and innovations, such as optimizing the retweet process, introducing short chains for Twitter, and fixing the @reply message operation.
He also managed to convince his friend Dick Costolo to join Twitter full-time as an independent board member. On the board, the two of them worked closely together. The rest of the board also appreciated Costolo's many comments and insights. As a result, Williams decided to let Costolo have a deeper cooperation with Twitter. At a party in 2009, Williams offered Costolo the COO job, which he jumped at.
Subsequently, Costolo formed the finance and sales department for Twitter. He was mainly responsible for business development and began to develop international strategy. Twitter's early advertising strategy was also formulated by him. By mid-2010, Twitter had 160 million users. Other executives such as Ali Rowghani and Adam Bain have also joined. Rowghani serves as CFO, and Bain is responsible for revenue (President of Revenue).
However, as Twitter grew, Williams became more and more tired of running Twitter, and the enthusiasm of the early days of the startup was gradually fading. The board and other executives saw this too, and at the same time, they saw Costolo's excellent performance as COO in their eyes.
We have no way of knowing whether Williams resigned as CEO on his own initiative or was forced by the board of directors. In 2010, Bill Campbell, a Twitter advisor and emeritus member of the board, was open with Williams in 2010, saying the board wanted Dick Costolo to succeed him as CEO, according to The New York Times' Nick Bilton. Costolo may have been uncomfortable replacing his referrer, but he agreed to serve as interim CEO after a compromise between the parties. Eventually Williams pushed the envelope to make this "transition" position permanent.
On October 4, 2010, Dick Costolo officially became Twitter's third CEO.
Twitter finally successfully listed, closing at $44.9 on the first day of opening, an increase of nearly 72%. Twitter, which has a market value of more than $30 billion after the market close, has also become the largest listing of a technology company since Facebook's listing last year. if onlySpotlight on Twitter's Bullish IPOsuperiorsuperior|first level title。
Part 4. Dick Costolo: Clean up the company and make money
Those who know Costolo describe him as "funny," "directive," "disciplined," and "manageable without alienating his people." Now, he needs more positive thinking in order to clean up the Twitter mess. This confusion continued until 2011.
Costolo's first mission is to clean up Twitter's board. I don't know when, the board of directors was overstaffed, full of uninvited bystanders, and too many rumors inside Twitter were inexplicably leaked to the media.
When Twitter announced that Costolo was replacing Williams, the site miraculously crashed. Because, Twitter's director of communications Sean Garrett "accidentally" heard the news in Dick Costolo's office.
In fact, Twitter's board includes Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson, Benchmark Capital's Peter Fenton, Williams, Dorsey, and Costolo. Interestingly, far more than a few of them are involved in board meetings. “There are always bystanders who show up, and sometimes the room is so full that it doesn’t look like a meeting, it looks like a party.” One by one, Costolo had to find unofficial board members and ask them not to Join the meeting again. No one knows how he did it, but everyone knows that these strange people have since disappeared.
While Costolo is cleaning up the board, two longtime directors have voluntarily asked to step down. Because Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures own a large amount of shares in Twitter, which is not conducive to the balance of the two VCs' investment portfolios, the transfer of shares has become their urgent need. And Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet also worry that if they sell their shares and stay on the board, it will be easy to cause misunderstandings.
In the end, Costolo complied with the wishes of the two investors and agreed to their resignation from the board. They each resold a small stake to Rizvi Traverse, a small company that has quietly collected shares outside Twitter, which already owns 15%. Evan Williams also reportedly sold a stake in the company. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital became Twitter's second-largest outside equity holders, each with a share higher than Benchmark Capital's 6.7%.
After the departure of Wilson and Sabet, only 7 real members of the board remained: Costolo, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Benchmark's Peter Fenton, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, DoubleClick's David Rosenblatt, and Peter from Currie Capital Currie. McCue also opted out when Twitter had a conflict of interest with Flipboard.
With the board in order, Costolo is ready to go. But there is still a lack of discipline within the company. One Twitter employee who lived through the Williams-Costolo transition said there was so much "politics" in those days that it might have been part of the corporate culture. In those years, many executives were fired, and many people resigned voluntarily. In October 2011, Mike Abott, Twitter's deputy director of engineering, left; in June 2012, Satya Patel, product director, also chose to leave. At Google and Facebook, similar oddities only happen at the top. But at Twitter, the phenomenon has trickled down to middle management.
Someone said: "At Google, you will see the same group of people who have been working for the company for 15 years. If you find that there is a dispute between the superiors and someone is fired, you will have a sense of crisis and try to take the leadership to keep it. So, you keep trying new businesses. At Twitter, we all wait and see where the people who get fired go. Honestly, no one has ever seen so many top people get fired at the same time in a short period of time.”
There was instability at the top, and trust among Twitter employees was low. Many colleagues will say what you want to hear, but maybe 30 minutes later, they will be in another meeting and say something completely different from everyone else. Some managers try to tolerate everything, but that's not how to lead successfully. A good leader should have strict standards and know how to treat everyone equally.
Perhaps Twitter's confusing and rebellious culture comes from growing up. "Every startup, privately, is a mess. In those years, Twitter grew rapidly and made millions of profits. Just like adolescents, they always blame their parents. This is a normal phenomenon."
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Part 5. Men who make money
In April 2010, with the help of CFO Ali Rowghani, Twitter officially launched its first paid product: Promoted tweets. Advertising Age also became the first sponsor.
Promoted Tweets can push advertisers' informationGive likesTarget users who are not on the sponsor's fan list. The second product, Promoted Accounts will be used to increase fans for brands or individuals. The third product, Promoted Trends, helps advertisers insert key brand information into the top of the list of hot topics to increase ad exposure. Currently, Promoted Tweets has become one of Twitter's highly sought after products.
Rowghani had worked with Jobs at Pixar, so his management style was more or less influenced by him, and he has a great reputation at Twitter. Says one former employee: “Ali is my favorite, he doesn’t mince words, he tells you what he thinks. He’s intuitive, empathetic, tech-savvy, and knows how to help a company grow from 200 people to 2,000 people."
The outside world describes Rowghani like this, quiet but not introverted. He is logical and thoughtful. During meetings, he seems to get into your head, asking the toughest questions and capturing the most useful information.
Rowghani and CEO Dick Costolo complement each other perfectly. Costolo is decisive, if sometimes reckless, in his decisions; Rowghani is cautious. The two have a clear division of labor, one for the outside world and the other for the inside. Costolo also placed a high degree of trust in Rowghani.
On December 19, 2012, Costolo appointed Rowghani as Twitter's COO. Since then, Rowghani has helped Twitter build a relationship with Apple. Since then, Twitter has not only been deeply integrated with the iPad and iPhone operating systems, but has also been implanted into Apple TV. When a TV show is widely discussed on Twitter, it attracts other users to tune in as well. Plus, brands are willing to spend big bucks on TV ads, which led Twitter to come up with the idea for such a business. Earlier that year, Rowghani helped Twitter acquire BlueFin Labs, a social TV analytics company.
There is another outstanding person who has to be mentioned, Twitter's sales force: Adam Bain. Ali and Adam are Twitter strategic mindseasy to matchfiles, while being great leaders in their respective teams. Thanks to the joint efforts of Rowghani, Bain and Costolo, Twitter's profit growth is gratifying:
• 2009: $0
• 2010: US$28 million• 2011: US$106 million
• 2012: $317 million
• 2013: From US$600 million (estimated)
In addition to Rowghani and Bain, there are two other people who have also contributed to Costolo's outstanding performance. They are the two former CEOs of Twitter who are both enemies and friends: Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams. Although Williams' tenure wasn't perfect, he found a qualified CEO for Twitter -- Costolo.
An insider put it this way: "50% of Dick's success came from ability, and 50% from Bole Ev. People seem to forget Ev's contribution. When he first took over from Dorsey, Twitter was just a fragmented product. Everything he does is critical to the company."
In 2011, Dorsey quickly returned to Twitter and found new ways to assist Costolo. There is no substitute for Dorsey's keen sense of smell when it comes to finding new technologies for Twitter. For example, in April 2012, Dorsey pushed hard for Twitter to acquire Instagram. Coincidentally, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom was an intern for Dorsey and Williams. All along, Dorsey has given Systrom great support, including investing in Instagram in his own name.
In 2012, at the Allen & Co. conference in Arizona, Dorsey and Ali Rowghani spent a lot of time chatting with Systrom. The three sat around a campfire at the Ritz Carlton resort, where Dorsey and Ali Rowghani offered Systrom to buy Instagram for $500 million plus Twitter.
Given that Instagram is only a year and a half old, the $500 million acquisition was a piece of cake. However, Systrom has other options. Facebook CEO Zuckerberg is also courting Instagram. But Systrom at the time hoped to operate Instagram independently, so he rejected them, and quickly received $50 million in financing from Sequoia Capital. Unlike Twitter, Facebook's Zuckerberg never took a "no." He spent another week persuading Systrom to reconsider, and he succeeded: Facebook bought Instagram for $736.5 million, including $300 million in cash.
The missed opportunity was fatal for both Twitter and Dorsey. But it can be seen that Dorsey's intuition for Instagram is sensitive and correct, and this round of failure has inspired Dorsey's fighting spirit. In the summer of 2012, just a few months after Facebook acquired Instagram, Dorsey set his sights on Vine, a fledgling startup.
At that time, the video application Vine had not yet been officially launched. It was completed by three young New Yorkers Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll. People who have seen the prototype will quickly fall in love with it. "People who have used it say it's unique," says an investor in Vine.
David Lee of SV Angel, an investor in another Dorsey company, Square, showed Dorsey the video app at a dinner in California. Dorsey knew right away that Vine was just what Twitter needed. Dorsey sprang into action, flying to New York to persuade Vine's founders to join Twitter. When the founders of Vine met Dorsey for the first time, the three young men were first struck by, and quickly intimidated by, his intelligence.
Dorsey first stabilized their mood and emphasized that Twitter would not create a new brand or shut down Vine. Instead, Vine would become part of Twitter's long-term development; he then made an attractive offer that was hard to refuse. Twitter agrees to buy Vine for tens of millions of dollars.
For the founders of Vine, they never dreamed that they would join Twitter and enjoy a share of the company. But it was a nightmare for Vine's investors, who were eager to see the app go live. Many investors tried to block the acquisition and were willing to launch a new round of financing. This time, though, Dorsey won: Vine's founder accepted Twitter's offer. The three founders Hofmann, Kroll and Yusupov are all involved in the operation of Twitter and hold important positions.
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Part 6. TWTR
In the past year and a half, Twitter's infighting has gradually come to an end. Even old rivals Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams let go of their differences and spoke up.
This year, Twitter is gearing up to go public. (9:30 am on November 8, US time,Twitter finally goes public on the NYSE. ) But those familiar with Twitter know that there is still a long way to go. Although, Twitter has more than $500 million in revenue this year, it is still not profitable.
Twitter is also trying to attract more mainstream users. In the second quarter of this year, Twitter's growth in new individual users across the United States slowed to just 1 million. With 250 million daily active users, Twitter is only a quarter the size of Facebook.
Some shareholders have also expressed concern about the listed company. "Twitter tried a lot of products, but they all ended in failure. Because they have always adhered to the concept of 140 characters, Twitter has not been as innovative as other technology companies, as everyone expects."
Twitter was a simple product, and despite its large user base, it was still easy for competitors to imitate and copy. Instagram, which came out halfway, quickly became a threat to Facebook, and Twitter will encounter the same situation. Says one Twitter shareholder, who asked not to be named: "There's this one thing that everyone avoids - all achievements evaporate overnight. Twitter didn't do something that other startups couldn't, as long as one company did it better." Better yet, our $15 billion market cap will evaporate quickly.”
Paul Graham is a godfather figure in the American Internet industry, and he founded the Y Combinator start-up incubator himself. He often said that a start-up company should be like a cockroach that cannot be killed. Although it is ugly, it is strong enough. In fact, Twitter is like that.
Compared with the concerns of some shareholders, others are full of confidence and believe that the good show has just begun. A few days ago, Twitter is increasingly regarded as the first platform for breaking news. It reported the death of Whitney Houston and the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing in the first place. Therefore, the attitude of shareholders and investors is very optimistic. Even after the IPO, they will not sell their shares.
Twitter's chaotic history also contributed to its eventual success. It's not a one-man battle: Dorsey's passionate idea ignites Twitter; Glass brings it to life and prompts Williams to invest; Williams sees more in Twitter and accelerates its growth; Costolo cleans up and monetizes Twitter Introducing this blockbuster product.
Even more convincing is that both Dorsey and Williams were ousted CEOs, but put away their pride and pain and chose to return in order to make Twitter stronger.
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Twitter: From Wilderness to IPO (Part 1)
