A Little Guide To Startup Success (Courtesy Facebook And Twitter)

Charitably, I think the people who are complaining now have spent five years wondering what could have been and have forgotten most of what was. (Uncharitably, a lot of this is being driven by an explicitly cynical media that's trying to create a Winklevossian story line).

Here's what I saw:

- Ev went out of his way to be charitable with the investors. They knew about Twitter, had used Twitter, and could see by Ev's actions that it was worthwhile enough to him to buy. The price he offered was universally right for them. No investors put up a fight and several said that it was an unnecessarily generous gesture. Plus many of them whiffed on a second chance to invest after Twitter was spun out.

- Ev was pretty generous with the Odeo employees as well. Everyone who didn't stay got nice severance packages and support for their next thing. Ev immediately invested in @Adam's travel startup (now Trazzler), for example.

- The Odeo employees who stayed on at Twitter got way-above-market options. There was a period where Twitter was 100% privately owned by Ev. So he had the opportunity to replace that team or just pay them with salary.

- Nobody knew this was going to be big. Look at the TechCrunch and Hacker News archives for the first two years. It was touch and go. It seemed like a worthwhile project, but nobody working on it had any indication that it could become a pivotal internet company. Remember, Ev thought he was launching an incubator (Obvious) and Twitter was just one of the projects.

- Jack is the true founder of Twitter. He had hand drawn wireframes from years before Odeo. He chose Ev and Biz as co-founders. Why didn't he ask for Noah to stay or give him more credit in the story? That's a good question. A lot of that team formulation just came down to who worked well together and who could fill in for necessary job functions.

- A lot of Ev's success has come from people who are loyal to him and respect him. A big chunk of Odeo/Twitter people were people that worked with him at Google. I'm sure he has made serious mistakes, but it also seems like the lesson he learned from those was to try not to make those mistakes again.