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Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

evhead.com

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Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#41

Post by billmcneale »

qq66 wrote: post #24
far33d wrote: post #21

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…

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.

As did Apple.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#42

Post by jaredmck »

Herwig wrote: post #33
marcamillion wrote: post #2

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 for…

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)

Perhaps you're thinking about luck wrong: of course he did things, but people who are looking for credit are probably more likely to make wrong moves than people who are willing to admit that not everything is in their hands.

Luck is way, way more important than most like to admit.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#43

Post by billmcneale »

Herwig wrote: post #33
marcamillion wrote: post #2

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 for…

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)

I'm pretty sure the book actually spells it correctly ("you're").

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#46

Post by prawn »

far33d wrote: post #21

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…

I don't really find it upsetting, more so exciting to see what they do next and whether they can hit another home run.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#47

Post by subbu »

billmcneale wrote: post #41
qq66 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As did Apple.

But it slumped. It had to call back Jobs to become successful.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#48

Post by vessenes »

ohkine wrote: post #22

> 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,…

>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.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#49

Post by rabble »

Herwig wrote: post #33
marcamillion wrote: post #2

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 for…

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)

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.

Re: Evan Williams on leaving Twitter

#50

Post by rabble »

d2 wrote: post #36

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.

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.

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