Evan Williams on leaving Twitter
evhead.com
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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?
Finally, great companies have been built without their founders. Cisco and Intel lost/forced out their founders relatively early.
These types of people don't have the DNA to run big companies long-term. But it's always interesting to see where they go next.
I've noticed that few people can be both a "starter" and a "maintainer". And even fewer actually enjoy it. There's a reason why only the really big names stay on for so long.
The people who start the company usually get bored when it comes time to go into stabilization mode. The people who maintain the company once it has stabilized usually don't like the uncertainty that comes with building a new idea.
In short, I don't think there's any reason to lament the new way of doing things. It's better for the company and it's better for the founders.
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.
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.
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.
Sure, it might not have been @ev specifically, but Twitter sure did. Hence @ev did.
Twitter actually started out as a Rails project because Florian Weber (who worked at Odeo with Jack on the initial implementation) was a member of the Rails Core team. Jack was originally going to develop it in Python, C, and Ocaml. I don't believe that Ev ever had anything to do with the decision to use Rails.
Luck is way, way more important than most like to admit.
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.
"My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I’ve always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.
Twitter's not the company it was 5 years ago. People move on. It's ok.
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.
Guys like Ev just need to start with something, they are adaptable enough to find what works. Put him in a room with a dozen people, $5M and let it simmer for a few years.