Insight
Founders should build for themselves unless exceptionally skilled at user research
“One of my fundamental rules, I can believe, is if, unless you are really good at user research, Build, build products for yourself.”
Disclosure
Williams claims he did not plan to take over as Twitter CEO
“He was pushed out, and then I became CEO, which It's hard to believe, but it wasn't actually my plan. I still didn't necessarily want to be CEO. And we talked to a few other candidates, but then I was like, okay, maybe I'm the best person to be CEO.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Twitter's conflict-averse board never gave Williams negative feedback before firing him
“Somewhat ironically, the board of Twitter had a lot of conflict aversion. Because they never, never gave me that feedback to my face. I didn't know I was going to be fired at all, because no one ever told me I was doing a bad job. So there was a whole culture …”
Insight
Williams recommends founders work at an established company before starting one
“Thinking, maybe you should work at a company before you start a company. Yeah. Which is a tip that I would recommend to most people.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Initial Twitter hackathon prototype included an audio feature that Williams removed
“I do remember a conversation where at first there was a version of what became Twitter presented that had audio, and I remember asking, what if it didn't have the audio piece?”
Insight
Williams: Intuitive product feeling matters significantly more than early usage metrics
“It felt like a thing, which has, I've come to realize, is the most important thing, and like, it's, feeling is much more important than metrics early on.”
Insight
Williams: Tech founders frequently over-index on data over intuition early on
“It's so easy to get Overwhelmed by data, especially in tech. And as soon as you have anybody using your product, the attention turns to numbers, and testing, and people try to be very scientific about it.”
Opinion
Williams defends Twitter's heavily criticized trust and safety staff as integrity-driven
“You know, the team over the years gotten a lot of flack on the trust and safety side, but those people are some of the most earnest, hardworking, Integrity-driven folks I've ever seen in, in the world of business”
Assertion Supported
Jack Dorsey had never been a manager before becoming Twitter's CEO
“Jack went from individual contributor, he had never been a manager, I believe, before he became CEO of this very fast-growing company,”
Insight
Williams warns founders against accepting executive coaches hired by venture capitalists
“It was my coach at the time, hired by a VC, which is a bad idea Bill Campbell, who told me”
Opinion
Williams: Late 1990s Silicon Valley fundraising was strictly a connections game
“And it was frustrating because everything you read is like, oh, it's so easy to raise money just rolling down the Sand Hill Road, and I didn't know anyone. Like, especially at the time, it's very, very much a connection game”
Disclosure
Williams preferred Blogger going out of business over an enterprise pivot
“And so, like, company blogging, I was like, fine, maybe we can make money, but I'd kind of rather go out of business. It's, that's not interesting. Let's, let's not do that.”
Insight
Williams: September 11 attacks forced mainstream journalists to take blogs seriously
“Nine 11 was actually a big moment for blogs, and it's when, the way I would describe it, it's when journalists started taking them seriously.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Williams suspects Google has lost money running Blogger for 20 years
“Blogger, I'm happy to say, 20 years later, is still running. And anything written on Blogger 20 years ago, unless the author took it down or it was like a violation, is still up on the internet for free, and Google has, you know, Paid for that, and you know, p…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Odeo's $5M pre-product seed round eliminated agility against Apple's podcast entry
“We made the mistake of actually raising too much money pre-product, really even pre-product, we raised five million dollars, which was a terrible mistake because it allowed us to grow the team to the point where We just weren't nimble enough to easily pivot”
Assertion Supported
Kevin Systrom and Jack Dorsey paired to build Odeo's desktop podcatcher
“We also had Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram. Was working for us as an intern. So, Kevin and Jack paired to write our, I think our installable podcatcher, as we called them.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Odeo board rejected Williams' offer to return remaining $3M in funding
“I actually went to the board. I think we had three of the five million dollars left. And said, I can't sell you on the future of this company. Maybe we should just give the money back and go away. And the board was like, well, we didn't invest in podcasting. W…”
Disclosure
Facebook offered $500M in stock for 30-person Twitter in 2008
“Facebook, of course, was private at the time, but based on their valuation, they could do a stock deal that may value us around Half billion dollars, and that was a lot of money, and we were maybe, no, we were we were 30 people at the time.”
Insight
Founders should only sell for burnout, imminent failure, or undeniable money
“I thought about it very deeply, and I came up with this, like, okay, why would you sell a company? I think there are three reasons, and none of these meet that criteria. Three reasons being, you don't want to do it anymore, and so you need someone to do it for…”
Insight
Social networks derive value from distribution and connectivity, not content hosting
“What we had learned from social networks was that
The value was in the connectivity. Like, if Twitter just did what Blogger did and posted your tweet to a webpage and didn't fan it out, if there wasn't this follow mechanism, it wouldn't be very interesting. I…”
Opinion
Williams: Tony Stubblebine is running Medium better than I did
“He's doing a great job, doing a better job than I was doing running Medium.”
Assertion Supported
Pyra Labs staff entirely walked out after Williams paused salary guarantees
“And then I sat everybody down and said, we don't have any money to pay you past this next pay period. So you're welcome to come back. I think this is on Friday. You're welcome to come back. I'm going to keep working. If you come back and work, you know, we'll …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Blogger's server costs dropped from $50,000 to $5,000 after staff departed
“Once everybody left, my costs went from 50,000 a month to 5000 a month still to pay for the servers, and I just wanted to keep building it, so I kept building it.”
Disclosure
Williams admits being conflict-averse and poor at relationship management at Pyra
“I would say, worse than that, I don't think I was good at relationships, which, even more fundamentally. I mean, management is a particular skill, but I wasn't good at relationships, i.e. How to deal with conflict, the most important thing, and I avoided confl…”
Ev Williams