
How a spare server turned into Twitpic, the $1.5M+ a year startup - merrick33
http://mixergy.com/twitpic-noah-everett/
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moe
That whole story is just one big WTF to me.

It seems most things sailing in the wake of twitter simply defy all logic and
common sense. There have been literally dozens of picture sharing services
before twitpic. The only difference I can see is the name ("look, we're for
twitter!") and that he basically integrated an url-shortener.

The entire site looks like about a week's worth of work. 700k in annual
profit? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

~~~
abstractbill
_The entire site looks like about a week's worth of work. 700k in annual
profit? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry._

Laugh. Be happy. Learn from this that you don't have to make something people
want _that nobody else could make because it's so complex and you're awesome_.
You _just_ have to make something people want.

~~~
axod
The other takeaway for me is that it was an insanely risky bet.

Twitter could easily have built the functionality to share pictures into
twitter (Like facebook did). Heck - then they might have a reasonable revenue
stream.

If Twitter had done that, twitpic would have been stomped on.

~~~
abstractbill
Right, but if the entire site really was about a week's worth of work (or
anything like that order of magnitude) then I wouldn't say this was insanely
risky, I'd say "why the hell would I _not_ try this?" ;)

~~~
gridspy
Of course he was solving his own problem in the process - so worst case
scenario : An educational programming experience that leads to a useful
personal tool.

~~~
wisty
I wish I could vote twice, just occasionally.

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noaheverett
Thanks for the comments everyone! I hope that you will find the information in
the interview useful in some way.

Feel free to hit me up on Twitter (@noaheverett) if you have any questions.

~~~
Skeuomorph
Is "O-off" a subtle dig at OAuth, or an audio transcription typo?

~~~
rythie
Typo, it's fixed in the Etherpad version

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fizx
> Noah was recently offered 10 figures for the business

Bullshit.

~~~
icey
There were a few times in this interview that my BS detectors went off. Andrew
asked a question regarding which VCs Noah had spoken with and Noah said he
couldn't respond due to NDA. After some probing the story changed to say that
only some of the VCs required NDA at the point of discussing monetary figures.
Andrew did a nice job by continuing to ask questions like "what did they want
you to do with the money?" and Noah again vacillated. It just struck me as odd
that he couldn't remember what the discussions were about, it seems like
something that should be really easy to remember. Of course, he could have
just been nervous as well, but it really smelled fishy to me.

 _Disclaimer: I don't know Noah, I have never used TwitPic, I have nothing for
or against Noah and / or TwitPic, so take all of this with an ENORMOUS grain
of salt since this is nothing more than pure speculation_

~~~
tannerburson
I've met Noah on at least one occasion. He's a very nice, and very bright guy.
But he is a completely accidental entrepreneur, so I'm not surprised at all
that he struggled in an interview like this. In fact, this might be the first
big real-time interview he's done.

My reading of the situation tells me that he's just really uncomfortable
talking about the conversations he's had with VCs, and doesn't know how to
convey that without being awkward.

That said I've never really understood his motivation for handling TwitPic the
way that he does, but that's definitely not my place to criticise.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
most companies are started by accidental entrepreneurs. steve jobs was a
hippie basically, larry+sergey were doing phd work, zuck wanted to get laid at
harvard instead of studying for finals, etc.

~~~
crocowhile
In fact, it seems to me most of the succesful folks are motivated by the fact
they are going to do something cool and have fun and not necessarily by the
idea of making billions. That is the one thing I cannot stand about mixergy:
it's always about millions, billions and gazillons.

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robryan
I would have sold, at any time twitter could basically undermine his business,
actually the more successful it becomes the more likely twitter would be to
integrate it.

~~~
jfarmer
To wit, Twitter switched the default URL shortener from tinyurl to bit.ly, and
now bit.ly is the largest URL shortener on Twitter.

This is what happens when your business is a commodity (and you're not the one
who commoditized it).

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anApple
Lucky guy. Twitter could have killed him in a glimpse by just offering an
image/video storing site themselves.

~~~
slig
Yeah, right after building their own URL shortener.

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tennisman120
This is just one of those pot-luck ideas. It was already out there, he just
hit the jackpot.

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dusklight
Question for noah, if he's willing to answer it:

You said that currently you have $1.5M+ revenues, and margins of 70%. What are
the current cost breakdowns right now? Other than salary, what other ongoing
costs do you have?

~~~
ynniv
You have to serve a _lot_ of content to make $1.5M in advertising.

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alexro
2010 turns out to start full of good news about small teams. First Balsamiq
story, now this one. Anticipated is a new wave of optimistic first-time
entrepreneurs with financial projections built on these cases :)

