
A Little Guide To Startup Success (Courtesy Facebook And Twitter) - stangeek
http://www.stangeek.com/a-little-guide-to-startup-success-courtesy-fa
======
tonystubblebine
I was there for the entire birth of Twitter and in the management meetings.
This whole "evil Ev" meme doesn't jive with the reality I saw.

Charitably, I think the people who are complaining now have spent five years
wondering what could have been and have forgotten most of what was.
(Uncharitably, a lot of this is being driven by an explicitly cynical media
that's trying to create a Winklevossian story line).

Here's what I saw:

\- Ev went out of his way to be charitable with the investors. They knew about
Twitter, had used Twitter, and could see by Ev's actions that it was
worthwhile enough to him to buy. The price he offered was universally right
for them. No investors put up a fight and several said that it was an
unnecessarily generous gesture. Plus many of them whiffed on a second chance
to invest after Twitter was spun out.

\- Ev was pretty generous with the Odeo employees as well. Everyone who didn't
stay got nice severance packages and support for their next thing. Ev
immediately invested in @Adam's travel startup (now Trazzler), for example.

\- The Odeo employees who stayed on at Twitter got way-above-market options.
There was a period where Twitter was 100% privately owned by Ev. So he had the
opportunity to replace that team or just pay them with salary.

\- Nobody knew this was going to be big. Look at the TechCrunch and Hacker
News archives for the first two years. It was touch and go. It seemed like a
worthwhile project, but nobody working on it had any indication that it could
become a pivotal internet company. Remember, Ev thought he was launching an
incubator (Obvious) and Twitter was just one of the projects.

\- Jack is the true founder of Twitter. He had hand drawn wireframes from
years before Odeo. He chose Ev and Biz as co-founders. Why didn't he ask for
Noah to stay or give him more credit in the story? That's a good question. A
lot of that team formulation just came down to who worked well together and
who could fill in for necessary job functions.

\- A lot of Ev's success has come from people who are loyal to him and respect
him. A big chunk of Odeo/Twitter people were people that worked with him at
Google. I'm sure he has made serious mistakes, but it also seems like the
lesson he learned from those was to try not to make those mistakes again.

~~~
stangeek
Thanks for this very long and interesting comment. All your points sound
valid, and I won't say I don't believe you. There is one point which you agree
on: why did Ev fire Noah, and why was he never ever been mentionned in the
"official" twitter story ? Even the guy who designed the first twitter logo
got huge credit for it. I understand Noah convinced Ev et al. to allocate some
time on twitter - he also came up with the name, he probably influenced the
vision (away from pure status sharing)... And no mention of him ? It smells
fishy to me, but I might be wrong...

~~~
tonystubblebine
What does fishy even mean? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy theory?
Noah got bought out of his Odeo shares at the same price as the rest of the
investors and then later got a piece of Twitter (even though he only worked on
that for 3-5 months and thus wouldn't have even met the standard qualifier of
a one year vesting cliff).

He's a great guy and I can see how this was painful. He wanted in and wasn't
allowed. But that's not the same as it being unfair or him getting screwed.

Why leave him out of the story? They left a lot of people out of the story
because otherwise it would be a catalog of Odeo employees. Every one at Odeo
has some story about how they contributed (including this here Engineering
Manager) but there's a big difference between those of us who merely did our
jobs and those who really took on the responsibility for making Twitter
happen.

In the end I think the right people got the credit.

------
erin_bury
Love this article, mostly for the snark. The first three are literally spot-on
- I've signed up for more Launchrock pages in the last few weeks than I can
count. I don't advocate being evil, but if it's as tried-and-true a success
tactic as coverage on TC...then so be it.

