

Evan Williams on leaving Twitter - starnix17
http://evhead.com/2011/03/obvious-next-step.html

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far33d
I'm likely to be on the wrong side of this argument, but part of my gets upset
every time I hear about a founder leaving their fast-growing company. Great
companies are built by the kinds of founders who don't just want to start
something, they want to build and scale it into something world-changing.

Imagine Mark Zuckerberg leaving FB to "start something new". Imagine Bill
Gates leaving MSFT early on to "experiment with some new ideas". Larry
Ellison, Page and Brin, Jobs, etc all evolved with their companies. Why does
it seem like this class of entrepreneurs is uninterested in seeing their
companies out?

~~~
qq66
It's clear that there have been a lot of power struggles at Twitter. It's not
clear how much of this departure is voluntary (i.e., the departure itself may
be voluntary, but the conditions leading to it might have been a loss of
control).

Finally, great companies have been built without their founders. Cisco and
Intel lost/forced out their founders relatively early.

~~~
akamaka
Intel lost or forced out its founders early?! Where did you get this from?

~~~
qq66
Founded by Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, led to juggernaut status by Andy Grove
(employee #3)

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ohkine
> After stepping down from CEO six months ago, my mind started to wander. The
> reason I left Blogger/Google when I did is that I felt it had reached a
> place where it was on solid ground and in capable hands (at the time, Jason
> Goldman’s as product manager). Though still an independent company, I
> realized Twitter may be at a similar point today.

Do people really mean it when they say this, or is it just a thing to say, the
same way disgraced politicians claim that they're retiring to 'spend time with
their family'?

I mean, i'm not suggesting that there's anything untoward going on, it's just
that with a few rare exceptions i find it hard to believe when people
(politicians, CEOs, message-board founders, or anyone else) claim that they've
left because they looked around and, like the Old Testament God, saw that 'it
was good', and decided that their job was done there. I have not ever been a
CEO or anything obviously, but the concept seems unlikely to me. 'I'm tired of
my responsibilities', 'the culture has changed too much', 'i don't like my co-
workers', 'i've got a more lucrative opportunity lined up elsewhere', 'i want
to raise my new child', whatever, i'd easily believe those. But that it's so
charitable and grandiose as deciding 'it's done' seems foreign to me.

~~~
vessenes
>deciding 'it's done' seems foreign to me.

Agreed. On the other hand, you can never say in a press release, "I'm bored, I
don't like managing a company this size, and the politics are sucking all the
life out of me."

Corporate inertia is real; I think it's easy to imagine a twice-successful
youngish entrepreneur wanting to try again, fix the old mistakes and get back
to working with a small team of scrappy folks. Especially when you don't need
the money any more; without the 'have-to-make-it' stress, startup life can be
pretty fun. A lot more fun than dealing with board-level powerplays, at least
for a product-type person.

------
staunch
Blogger supported 1400 characters. Twitter supported 140 characters. –––––er
will support 14 characters. Can't wait for the release!

~~~
citricsquid
shrtr?

~~~
barrydahlberg
shtr?

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webwright
What an amazing position to be in. Most people have to struggle to raise money
and attract talent. How big do you think the line is to fund and/or work at
Ev's next venture? G'luck, Ev!

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marcamillion
This is why I love this industry. This guy has created two
groundbreaking/historic companies in a decade and now he is stepping up to bat
for #3.

I don't know if he will succeed on the next one, or even on the one after that
- but I do know that I wouldn't bet against him.

Love/Hate Twitter, have to respect @ev for his contribution to communication,
the development of Rails and the evolution of the industry.

Look forward to seeing what comes next.

~~~
Herwig
I hate to see EV continue to use the word luck because it makes me think that
he just happened to be there and didn't really do anything. He needs to step
up and take credit. Hopefully in #3 he can do that. "Once your lucky, twice
your good" (Book title of Sarah Lacy's book about silicon valley's rise)

~~~
rabble
Once you're lucky, twice you're good. The thing is, Ev did it a LOT more than
twice. He started companies and products over and over and over again. Two of
them became widely used. One, Twitter, even managed to make money. He was in a
good place, at a good time, joined and supported projects that showed promise.

Ev was originally an angel investor in Odeo, then he decided to join and work
on it after we'd been at it for about three months. When Apple crushed us with
itunes podcasting integration, he and the rest of us were tinkering with
ideas. Jack had a good one, and Ev was able to create the space for that idea
to grow in to twitter. Is it luck that Ev invested in his neighbor, Noah
Glass's startup Odeo? Is it luck that Jack decided to do twitter has his
hackday project instead? His previous project was a universal js wrapper to
play audio on the web sans flash.

What Ev is really good at is seeing, oh this seems interesting, let's tinker
with it and help it grow. He places himself among interesting things and then
supports them. He's right for not taking credit, he participated and helped,
he was vital, but he wasn't the CREATOR.

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revorad
Next up: YC gets a new partner... :-P

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PanMan
It seems the folks at twitter want to give @jack a bigger role, especially
with @ev gone. However, I wonder if he doesn't want to focus on Square, which
seems to be doing great things on it's own.

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geoffw8
Best of luck to Ev. Very impressive, not only growing the businesses, but
knowing when to leave at the right moment.

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d2
It's been 5 years and 8 days since work on Twitter started on March 21, 2006.
Several other founding employees will be fully vested by now, so I'd expect a
few more departures, particularly now that Ev has made it OK to leave.

~~~
rabble
I think there are only three people left of the founding team who are
employees, @biz, @crystal (support), and @jeremy (ops). The oldest dev is @bs,
but very early on, but wasn't around when twitter was created.

Twitter's not the company it was 5 years ago. People move on. It's ok.

------
niketdesai
It's pretty amazing to be part of two incredibly successful companies. If
anything this is simply proof that you can get it done.

I'm sure it's tough to maintain control when companies become (or are acquired
into) behemoths. I can't imagine all of the emotional turmoil being successful
in entrepreneurial adventures can be in comparison to failure, quite frankly.

He can walk away knowing that he was at the VERY least part of game changing
contributions to the world. And that's pretty neat no matter what he decides
to do next.

And they say...3rd time is the charm.

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gromy
Any bets on what Ev will work on next?

~~~
gromy
A couple years ago Ev wished there was a better calendar to-do list
integration out there.

~~~
eelco
That was about three years ago, see <http://www.economist.com/node/10328123>

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citricsquid
<http://obviouscorp.com/> what happened to their site?

~~~
cobrien
Wrong domain -- it's <http://www.obvious.com> (and still around)

~~~
citricsquid
Ah. Seems he didn't update this post then: <http://evhead.com/2006/10/birth-
of-obvious-corp_25.asp> as it links to obviouscorp.com

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kmfrk
Twitter looks more like a company and less than a start-up for every day that
passes.

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ignifero
It's Obvious that his next step has something to do with Obvious Inc. Maybe
something that will remove everything that is obvious from the web

