0:00

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to

0:02

how I built this early and

0:04

ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus

0:06

in the Wondery app or on

0:08

Apple Podcasts. You only get

0:11

one chance to go public, and the stakes

0:13

are high. Deloitte's free IPO

0:15

Readiness tool will help you grade your

0:17

current state of readiness. Less

0:20

than 10% of companies using Deloitte's

0:22

free tool discover they're ready for

0:24

an IPO. While the IPO

0:26

market can be unpredictable, your company's readiness

0:28

plan doesn't have to be. Don't

0:31

miss your IPO window. Being ready

0:33

starts with getting ready. With

0:35

Deloitte's free and easy-to-use IPO

0:37

Self-Assessed tool, you can gauge

0:40

your IPO readiness, and receive

0:42

tailored insights on 9 areas of

0:44

focus in less than 30 minutes. Visit

0:47

deloitte.com/US slash HIBT and

0:50

launch your IPO journey

0:53

today. So we've talked a lot

0:55

on how I built this about AI. And

0:58

today, AI is no longer a plaything.

1:00

It's a business imperative. Your

1:02

team spends half their time writing, and

1:05

one confusing email can turn into 12

1:08

confused replies, and a meeting to get

1:10

back on the same page. Grammarly

1:12

is a trusted AI writing partner that

1:15

saves your company from miscommunication and all

1:17

the wasted time and money that goes

1:19

with it. I have really

1:21

found Grammarly to be super helpful to

1:24

save time with generative AI prompts. It's

1:26

also super easy to stay organized because

1:28

Grammarly works great with other programs

1:30

that I already use. Grammarly

1:33

works everywhere you work and integrates

1:35

seamlessly across 500,000 apps and websites.

1:40

No cutting, no pasting, no context

1:42

switching. When every word

1:44

your team writes is clear, concise,

1:47

and on-brand, everything gets

1:49

better. And

1:51

70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work

1:53

faster and hit their goals while keeping

1:56

their data secure. Learn

1:58

more at grammarly.com. There's

2:02

an art to making the complex feel simple.

2:05

Everything should be in sync so that

2:07

even the smallest part serves a bigger

2:09

purpose. Simplicity can

2:12

transform your business operations. That's

2:14

why Mercury powers your financial workflows

2:17

from the bank account so ambitious

2:19

companies have the precision control and

2:21

focus they need to perform at

2:24

their best. Buy in

2:26

minutes at mercury.com. And

2:56

together we'll answer your most

2:58

pressing questions about launching and

3:00

growing your business. Imagine

3:02

getting real-time branding advice from

3:05

Sunbum's Tom Rinks or marketing

3:08

tips from Von Weaver of Uncle

3:10

Muris Weske. If you'd like

3:12

to be concerned, send us a one-minute

3:14

message that tells us about your business

3:16

and the issues or questions that you'd

3:18

like help with. And make

3:20

sure to tell us how to reach you each week.

3:23

We'll pick a few callers to join us on this

3:25

show. You can send

3:27

us a voice memo at hibt

3:29

at id.wonder.com or you can call

3:32

1-800-433-1298 and leave a message

3:38

there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's

3:40

it. I hope

3:43

to hear from you soon and we are

3:45

so excited to have you come on the

3:47

show. And now, onto the

3:49

show. How

3:58

did you feel when you were in the audience? found out that

4:00

you were being, let go, a CEO. I

4:03

was devastated. I

4:06

was also shocked. I didn't even think it was

4:08

possible. I went from

4:10

owning 100% of this company to

4:14

being kicked out. At

4:16

the height of my success, I

4:18

was kneecapped, and it felt

4:21

like nothing I did before mattered

4:25

because I failed at the biggest thing

4:27

I ever did. Welcome

4:36

to How I Built This, a show about

4:39

innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and

4:41

the stories behind the

4:43

movements they built. I'm

4:48

Guy Roz, and on the show

4:50

today, a college dropout from Nebraska

4:52

moved to California, started two

4:55

major blogging platforms, and somewhere along

4:57

the way, co-founded

4:59

a little company called Twitter.

5:05

One day far in the future, there's

5:07

a possibility you'll find yourself in a

5:09

bookstore and come across a history book

5:11

about this time, about our era. When

5:14

that happens, thumb to the index section,

5:16

and I'm pretty sure you'll find lots

5:19

of entries under the word Twitter. Now,

5:22

just to get the elephant out

5:24

of the room here, I don't

5:26

think Twitter is entirely guilty of

5:28

the things that it gets accused

5:30

of. Misinformation, polarization, cancel culture, etc.

5:33

But I do think that over the

5:35

past 10 years or so, Twitter did

5:37

help to shape the politics and culture,

5:40

at least in the United States, in

5:42

good and bad ways. None

5:45

of this was anticipated by Ev

5:47

Williams. Twitter was never supposed to

5:49

do any of this, and it's

5:51

possible that Ev and Jack and

5:53

Biz and Noah, the original founders,

5:55

were just naive. And

5:57

the product they came up with, like many

5:59

successful products, wasn't even supposed to

6:01

happen. At the time, Ed

6:03

was pursuing, believe it or not, podcasting.

6:06

In 2004, Ev co-founded

6:08

a podcasting platform called Odeo. Now,

6:10

going into podcasting at that time

6:13

was a little like getting into

6:15

electric cars in the 1990s,

6:17

just a little too far ahead of its time.

6:20

So, not surprisingly, Odeo didn't

6:22

work out. But a

6:24

side project of Odeo, one that

6:27

was being worked on by Jack Dorsey,

6:29

did. And that side project

6:31

would become Twitter. Twitter,

6:33

of course, became Ev's best-known

6:35

brand. But he also founded

6:37

Blogger and later Medium, three

6:40

hugely influential products in the

6:42

era of social media. Along

6:45

the way, Ev learned what it

6:47

meant to be a really bad people person,

6:49

something he spent much of the past 10

6:51

years working to get better at. Now,

6:54

like a few well-known tech founders, Ev

6:56

Williams is a college dropout. He barely

6:58

made it through two years before striking

7:01

out on his own. Ev grew up

7:03

on his family's corn and soybean farm

7:05

in a rural part of Nebraska. It

7:07

was a tiny place, only about

7:09

400 people. I

7:11

feel very fortunate that that's where I grew

7:14

up. I think there's tons of great

7:16

stuff that I grew from

7:18

that, from a values and character

7:20

perspective that was just fundamentally ingrained

7:22

in me and

7:25

very fitting with being

7:28

an entrepreneur. To

7:30

a lot of people, the juxtaposition of

7:32

going from farm boy to tech

7:35

founder sounds weird, but the

7:37

things that are very aligned

7:39

are these ideas of independence

7:41

and self-reliance. And all farmers

7:43

are basically entrepreneurs. And that

7:46

ethos of figuring things out yourself,

7:48

actually having to be fairly innovative,

7:51

that was what I saw my

7:53

dad doing from birth. So

7:56

the idea of starting a company was

7:58

very natural to me because It was

8:00

just like, well, why would you go like

8:02

align with some institution? That seemed like a much

8:05

stranger idea. So in many ways, I adopted

8:10

those values and didn't

8:12

question them at all.

8:15

I think the part that I didn't resonate with

8:17

as much was really the culture. And

8:20

it was very sports-centric. Literally

8:23

every boy in my high school played

8:25

football except for me. And

8:28

that was, I was somewhat athletic,

8:30

but I was fairly small. And I just didn't,

8:32

I wasn't into it.

8:34

I didn't like it. I was like, yeah, that's not what I want

8:36

to do. So, all

8:39

right. So you're, and would you

8:41

describe yourself, obviously you're smart, but would you

8:43

describe yourself as a good student? Were you

8:45

a standout student in high school? No, I

8:47

was never a good student. I

8:50

wasn't rebellious in like I was getting in trouble with

8:52

the law or doing anything super dangerous, but I really

8:54

didn't want to do

8:57

what I was told or

9:00

in kind of an in-your-guard. Like I never lined

9:02

up to institutions or anything.

9:04

And I was like, I'm not

9:06

going to try hard and get good grades. I'm not, I

9:08

mean, I'm just not

9:10

going to do that. And

9:12

so I never did any homework. I

9:15

also, for some reason, I think I didn't sleep

9:17

at night and I fell asleep in every single

9:20

class in high school. So

9:22

yeah, it was a bad student. But

9:25

I read that you were, like growing up,

9:27

you were really into computers, right? And then

9:30

eventually when you went to college, I don't

9:33

think you majored in computer science or had

9:35

any specific kind of plan, right? In fact,

9:37

I think you dropped out. And

9:41

I guess you lasted about a year and a

9:43

half or so at the University of Nebraska. Why?

9:47

I mean, why did you drop out? I

9:51

was just in such a rush. The

9:55

whole time I was like,

9:57

I gotta do something in the world. I

10:00

thought I am not gonna get a degree

10:02

and go get a job. That's just not

10:04

me. I'm going to make something, I'm gonna

10:06

build something. And

10:08

for some reason I was in a tremendous

10:10

rush to do it. I

10:13

always had some scheme or something that I

10:16

thought I was gonna go do. I

10:20

was like, I was in a really

10:22

like embarrassing, get

10:25

rich mail order ideas. Like

10:27

drop shipping or like I'm

10:29

gonna, I

10:34

would read like Entrepreneur Magazine and order stuff out

10:36

of the back. Like or

10:38

Success Magazine. There were all these like.

10:41

Like multi-level marketing things? There

10:43

was, I probably got into

10:45

some multi-level thing but yeah,

10:47

there's multi-level stuff and mail order.

10:50

Mail order was really like

10:53

the get rich path that, but

10:56

I was like, oh, I could do that because you

10:58

can do it from home. You don't,

11:00

doesn't matter who you are. Sort of like

11:02

pre-internet. So when you dropped out,

11:04

what was the first thing you started to do to

11:07

support yourself? I actually

11:10

moved to Key West Florida and

11:13

because there was this marketing guru there

11:15

who I wanted to study under. So

11:18

I wasn't necessarily, I would just, I

11:20

knew I didn't know anything. I

11:23

had a very strong sense in my abilities

11:26

and again that like kind of fearless independence.

11:28

Like I'll figure it out, but I was

11:30

aware I didn't know anything and I didn't

11:32

have any money. And

11:35

so there was this guy that I was like,

11:38

I'm gonna go work for that guy. I'm just gonna show up

11:41

and then I'll be able to do stuff. What was his

11:43

name? His name was Gary Halbert. Okay.

11:46

So I showed up

11:48

at Gary Halbert's office. And

11:51

he's like, who are you? And I told him I

11:53

was there. I was gonna, I wanted

11:55

to write. It's like I could write for you. And he's

11:57

like, Okay., You

12:01

gotta was joking. He was a understood

12:03

I've just looked him up. He was

12:05

a copywriter to sustain us copyright. Famous

12:07

Copywriter. Yep, he will copy for other

12:09

people. that's how he he he made

12:11

his name and then he started like

12:13

silliness own newsletter and seminars and stuff.

12:17

But I'm in retrospect as like

12:19

oh, that was really it's. Sketchy,

12:22

In, it's easy thing to be a part

12:24

of. But. I don't know

12:26

as farm boy from Nebraska. So yeah I

12:28

was just like I'm gonna. I

12:31

want to write for you are

12:33

with you or whatever and it

12:36

gives me an assignment to bring.

12:38

back. In the morning turns as

12:40

Memorial Day weekend south as close

12:42

for three days and so I'm

12:44

literally sleeping in my veins. Inky

12:46

was terrified, No money and the

12:48

first night I stayed up all

12:51

night to rights to do this

12:53

assignment. Finally bring back and Tuesday

12:55

and. Done. Again

12:57

he thought I was at he thought someone else did it.

12:59

He thought it was the like a. He

13:02

didn't believe I read it. And

13:05

then he is like okay

13:07

of are paid to write.

13:10

A A A Blessing and a Gary

13:12

Halbert and I mean his convalescence. A

13:14

youth said that I didn't know he

13:16

was but like apparently the most legendary

13:18

control of all time died two thousand

13:21

seven. But this was your first and

13:23

a mentor. Yes, the I'm sure. How

13:26

long did you end up staying in Key West? Southern.

13:28

Months. Ah case of

13:30

pretty relatively short time and I guess

13:33

I guess after that you go back

13:35

to Nebraska. Added to catch fire has

13:37

a couple businesses and kids. They don't

13:39

really pan out and then you you

13:42

land on this idea eventually. To.

13:44

Start a website businesses around suggests

13:46

the early nineties to to sort

13:48

of. Make web sites for

13:51

local businesses, is that right? Yeah

13:53

with my friend Paul and Craig

13:55

and we. And. We

13:57

figured I had a make web sites. So.

14:00

So that's when we really got started on the internet. 93

14:02

and 94 ended up doing

14:04

some website development for

14:08

companies in Lincoln. And

14:13

did that pan out? I mean, there's lots of, we've had

14:16

people on the show who started that way in the 90s

14:19

and really built successful

14:22

businesses that way. Totally

14:24

could have. I

14:28

think it was poor execution. Also

14:30

location wise, we

14:33

could have been selling website development

14:36

to anyone, but we were, because of where we

14:38

were, we were trying to sell it to local

14:40

businesses in Lincoln. And

14:44

they weren't really that into it. And

14:47

to their credit, they shouldn't have

14:49

been. Their customers weren't necessarily on the internet.

14:52

So we barely,

14:54

we were not paying the bills with that.

14:58

Was really broke the whole time. Was

15:00

very broke. But you're a young guy. You were

15:02

a young guy. I mean, you eventually moved to

15:05

the Bay Area in 97, I

15:08

think, and this was, you

15:10

were what, 25 at this point, maybe

15:13

a little older actually. No, it was 25. 25,

15:15

yeah. But no

15:17

degree. No degree. You

15:20

had a couple of failed ventures behind

15:22

you. So when you came

15:24

out to California, did you come

15:26

out with a job? Or did you just come

15:29

out and say, I'm gonna look for something? I

15:31

actually did get a job. So after we

15:33

really shut down that company in Lincoln.

15:36

There's the internet. The internet company, we

15:38

called Plexus, and then finally shut the

15:40

doors on that. I felt terrible.

15:43

Just felt like this big loser. And I went

15:45

back and I was living on the farm again

15:48

with my dad. And

15:51

my girlfriend, because of that company, she was

15:53

helping for a while, and then ended up

15:55

getting a job at another internet company in

15:57

Lincoln. And then they offered her

15:59

a position. or maybe she requested it in

16:01

San Francisco. And so

16:03

she moved to San Francisco and I had never even

16:05

been to California. But of course, by the time I

16:08

was like, I was

16:10

consuming every bit of information there was in

16:12

every magazine and on the web about Silicon Valley.

16:14

And I so wanted to be a part

16:16

of it, but I think

16:18

I was just scared. And it

16:20

was like, oh, and even though I was, I

16:23

was bold enough to start an internet company in Nebraska,

16:25

but I was terrified of moving to California and trying

16:27

to be a part of the real thing. Until

16:30

she moved and I actually drove

16:32

her out from

16:34

along that I 80 goes straight

16:36

from basically the farm

16:38

into the heart of San Francisco. Yep.

16:42

And then I drove

16:44

her of that Bay bridge and like, holy

16:46

shit, this is where it

16:48

all happens. Yep.

16:51

And then I went home and I was like, maybe

16:55

I could go. And

16:57

yeah, and so you do, you do eventually

16:59

you do move to the Bay Area and

17:01

get a job here. I

17:04

think you got a job at a software company called

17:06

O'Reilly Media, which is just

17:09

north of, about an hour north of San Francisco in the

17:11

town of Sebastopol, which I love, I know it very well.

17:14

And I think that you were hired to

17:16

do marketing, right? Like to write ad copy

17:18

and that kind of thing. So was

17:21

that good? Or was that interesting? Yeah.

17:25

So I found myself in this company, I

17:27

remember distinctly being in a meeting, this is

17:29

conference room with maybe like a dozen people

17:31

in it and thinking,

17:35

oh, so this is what a meeting is

17:37

like. Having spent

17:39

a couple of years trying to have meetings and

17:41

after studying at my own company and thinking, maybe

17:44

you should work at a company before you start

17:46

a company. Yeah. Which is

17:48

a tip that I would recommend to most people.

17:50

To buzz people. So that's very important

17:52

advice. And here you are 25 for the first

17:54

time you're working for a company rather

17:57

than your own startups. And how did... What

18:00

did you do in that environment? I mean, you described

18:02

yourself in high school as just kind of like an

18:05

outsider a little bit and somebody who

18:07

is not really good working

18:10

within the confines and structures of other

18:13

people's rules. And

18:16

so here you are now in a company. How

18:19

did you do in that environment? Not

18:22

great, not great. Unlike high

18:24

school, I tried very hard.

18:27

I worked my butt off the

18:30

first few months. Well, I was only there a few

18:32

months. I worked really hard. I

18:34

did good work, but I was not a good

18:37

employee. I was

18:39

rebellious and I would

18:41

have lots of opinions about what

18:43

the company strategy should be because

18:46

I'd read a bunch of business books and

18:48

I would write Tim emails or memos about

18:51

how we shouldn't be doing this or that.

18:53

There was some product that I didn't think was very

18:56

good that I was assigned to write copy for and

18:58

I sent an email to the

19:00

whole team saying why it wasn't good and

19:02

we shouldn't release the product. Everybody

19:06

love a 25 year old who does that.

19:08

Oh my God. The new employee. Oh my gosh, cringe. And

19:11

by the way, if you're listening to your 25

19:13

and you do that, do that. It's okay, there's

19:15

nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying that you

19:17

will piss everybody off, but that still doesn't, still

19:19

you should do it. All right, so you're like,

19:23

you're trying and while you were

19:25

there, I guess, something

19:27

else you started to do it on the

19:29

side for fun was

19:32

wasn't it called blogging, but

19:34

you were starting to like put your, I

19:37

guess you started your own website and you started to

19:39

just write your own thoughts

19:41

on it. Well, tell me what this website

19:43

was. It didn't quite overlap. I did have

19:45

my own website from even before

19:48

I moved to California and yeah,

19:51

I had written some essays. I had some

19:53

stuff on evhead.com. We called them personal

19:55

homepages at the time. There's

20:00

a couple essays I wrote

20:02

that were, the

20:04

only one I remember is why Amazon shouldn't

20:07

expand beyond books, obviously very

20:09

wise. Pressure,

20:11

pressure, whatever. I

20:14

don't remember, I think a lot of it, for a

20:16

short while I wrote just like

20:18

kind of newsy technology updates.

20:21

At this website, evhead.com. evhead.com.

20:24

And you would just post things, this is

20:26

before people use the word blogging, I think.

20:29

Yeah, there wasn't a ton of writing and there

20:31

certainly were probably even fewer readers,

20:34

but it wasn't quite a blog yet.

20:37

The big blogging innovations came

20:39

later where there's actually like a

20:43

chronological scroll of posts. And

20:45

so this was all hand rolled and

20:48

it was a little bit later and

20:51

it was actually after I started my next company that I

20:53

really turned it into a blog. Right,

20:56

I got it, okay. So by that

20:58

time I knew how to code, I

21:01

wrote software to do it. A lot of people were doing web blogs

21:04

by hand, like editing HTML and then

21:06

uploading. And I just wrote software

21:08

and I made it so I could go to my

21:10

own website, I could hit N and

21:13

a little form would pop

21:15

up and I

21:17

could type something and hit a button and

21:20

boom, it was at the top of my webpage. And

21:22

that was

21:25

just, I can still picture

21:27

that moment because that was

21:29

new and different. Like having

21:31

the thought and then putting

21:33

that on the worldwide web available

21:35

for the entire world. Of course,

21:37

no one's looking at it, but

21:39

just going from thought to something

21:41

published publicly in a matter of

21:43

moments felt

21:46

like an entirely new thing. So

21:48

meantime, okay, so that's happening, that's one

21:50

thing kind of happening, but

21:53

meantime, you would left O'Reilly and

21:56

you had some

21:58

programming experience. You

22:00

weren't, I think, by your own, even your own account.

22:02

You were a great programmer, but you were probably getting

22:04

better at it. And

22:07

you met this woman named Meg Horahan. This is

22:10

in the late 90s, and I guess she was

22:12

a developer and designer

22:14

living in San Francisco. You

22:17

meet her, and I guess

22:19

by chance, and the two

22:21

of you decide to start a business together. Tell

22:23

me about that. What happened?

22:27

So when I left O'Reilly, actually,

22:30

I'd gotten paid

22:32

enough. By the way, when I got to O'Reilly,

22:34

I was in debt to

22:36

the IRS because I didn't pay payroll taxes

22:38

at my first company. But

22:41

I made enough money to pay off the

22:43

$10,000 or whatever it is, which seemed insurmountable

22:45

before that. And then, and

22:47

I had learned enough more programming that

22:49

they actually hired me as a

22:51

contractor at O'Reilly after I quit

22:54

as an employee in marketing. And

22:57

so I rolled that into some other

22:59

contract programming jobs. I ended up working

23:01

through agencies. That's when

23:03

I met Meg. I had already decided to start a

23:06

new company. I knew what it was, and

23:08

we started what we call Pyra

23:10

Labs. We

23:13

called it Project Management or Productivity

23:15

App that was web-based collaboration

23:18

project management,

23:20

that space. How did you

23:22

finance that? I mean, this is the end of

23:25

1998, I think, and this is the height

23:27

of the dot-com boom. Was there,

23:30

I mean, as a 20,

23:32

I don't know, now a 28, 26-year-old, was it easy for

23:34

you to

23:36

raise money? No, it was. And

23:38

it was frustrating because everything you read is like,

23:40

oh, it's so easy to raise money just rolling

23:42

down the Sandhill Road. And I

23:45

didn't know anyone. Like especially

23:47

time is very, very much

23:49

a connection game. So

23:51

I was like, I don't know. Like people say, money is

23:53

easy. Where do I go? Whose door do

23:55

I knock on? But it

23:58

was, that's why I was doing that. the contract

24:00

programming. So that's how we paid

24:02

for it. Entirely bootstrapped and

24:06

so was able to then Meg and then Paul who

24:08

joined later were able to do some of the programs.

24:10

Paul, this is your high school friend. My high school

24:12

friend, yeah. He moved out. Yeah. So

24:16

and did you ever find any

24:18

customers to sell this software to?

24:21

No. And we never charge for

24:23

it. Yeah, there was just a

24:25

handful of users. It was very

24:27

beta. And so from

24:29

what I understand, fairly early

24:31

on in the company, you made a pivot.

24:33

You moved away from project collaboration,

24:36

project management software to

24:39

this other thing, which was this side thing

24:41

that you've been working on, which was basically

24:43

web logging. Yeah. So Paul and

24:46

Meg and I were all into,

24:48

we all had our own web logs.

24:50

I had that moment I told you about

24:52

where I turned my own, I just wrote

24:54

code to easily post my site.

24:57

And that gave me the idea. I was like, this could be a

24:59

product, but it's too simple. That's

25:01

what actually told myself. And we talked about it

25:03

as a team. It's like, it's too simple. It's

25:06

not interesting. Anybody could do that. Our

25:09

collaboration thing was not simple at all.

25:11

It's very, very complex. And

25:13

I don't, I didn't appreciate at the time

25:15

the power of simplicity, but

25:19

eventually we didn't pivot at first.

25:21

We just created another product as

25:24

a three person company that was bootstrapped and also

25:26

doing outside stuff. And the

25:28

product was, what was the product called? It's called Blogger.

25:31

Blogger. Yeah. Yeah. So

25:33

you go to blogger.com, create an account,

25:36

put in where your website was, and then easily

25:39

post. I'm

25:42

actually that the word blog or

25:44

blogger was, was

25:46

not yet popularized at that point.

25:48

No, not at all. Especially blog.

25:51

Even web blogs were, were quite

25:53

niche. And I remember

25:55

for a few years, the hardest thing

25:58

about blogger was the explaining what it

26:00

was. Okay, this, I guess

26:02

on the strength of this, you did

26:05

manage to raise some money

26:07

for it, about half a million,

26:09

half a million dollars. We did, we raised half

26:11

a million dollars in I think April of 2000,

26:15

which was technically right after the stock market

26:17

crash from the dot com. It was the

26:19

beginning of the crash, but

26:22

we were still able to get the money. I think

26:24

the crash took a while to reverberate. So

26:27

you raised half a million dollars. The

26:29

crash happens. And that's

26:32

probably not gonna be enough money to

26:34

keep this company going for that long.

26:36

So did you go out and

26:39

try and raise more money? I mean, in that

26:41

environment? Yeah, although half a

26:43

million dollars was more money than I'd ever seen

26:45

in my life. So it wasn't clear. I was

26:47

like, we can do anything on a half a

26:49

million dollars. I mean, that was gonna last us

26:51

forever. Of

26:54

course, we stopped doing the contract programming. We

26:56

hired a few people. I think we got

26:58

up to six or seven people. And then

27:00

you're right, in like six

27:02

months, we're running out of money. Because

27:05

you had no revenue. You weren't selling this.

27:07

You were just giving it away for free. What

27:10

was the business plan? How are you gonna make money?

27:12

This is why it took us a while to drop

27:14

the collaboration tool, because we thought we could charge money

27:16

for that. We didn't think we

27:19

could charge money for a blogger necessarily. I'm

27:22

not sure what the plan was. I think the

27:24

plan was to raise more money. And then it

27:26

was like, oh yeah, I figured

27:28

out this maybe. And then it was in the fall of 2000

27:31

when things started getting really bleak. And

27:35

then we started getting nervous. And I

27:37

think a ton of companies did, ton

27:39

of consumer internet companies did at that

27:41

time was pivot to enterprise. We'll

27:43

take our product built for consumers and we'll go sell

27:45

it to businesses. And then there

27:48

was a moment where Meg and

27:50

I really had to come to Jesus. Because

27:54

it was bothering me. I didn't like that

27:56

path. And I think this in retrospect was

27:58

a very important moment because. I

28:01

was just like, I don't want to build

28:03

that. That's not why,

28:06

by that time I had gotten very

28:09

excited about this

28:11

idea that anyone in the world can

28:13

share their ideas and knowledge to

28:16

the internet was a very powerful

28:18

idea. And it's what really got me most excited

28:20

about the internet in the first place. And

28:23

so I loved what we

28:25

were doing. And I loved the idea of bringing

28:27

that to millions of more people. And

28:30

so like company blogging,

28:32

I was like, fine, maybe we

28:34

can make money, but I'd kind

28:36

of rather go out of business. That's

28:38

not interesting. Let's

28:41

not do that. I

28:43

guess you did basically get close to

28:45

going out of business, right? Because at

28:48

a certain point, Pira, you

28:50

stopped being able to pay employees. That

28:53

was a very stressful time. Basically, we

28:57

didn't pivot to enterprise. We didn't get

28:59

any customers. We still didn't have any revenue. And

29:02

then eventually it just got to point. I was like,

29:04

look guys, we're not going to be able to, I

29:08

think there was even a payroll we

29:10

missed. And then I sat

29:13

everybody down, said, we don't have

29:16

any money to pay you past this next pay

29:18

period. So you're welcome

29:20

to come back. I think this is on Friday, it was

29:22

your welcome to come back. I'm going to keep working. If

29:25

you come back and work, we'll pay

29:28

you when we make money, but we're

29:30

out of money. And

29:32

then the next Monday I came back and

29:35

I was the only one there. When

29:38

we come back in just a moment, how

29:40

Ev brings blogger back to life and

29:43

then heads into a whole new

29:45

venture, which does not go anywhere

29:47

until it turns into Twitter. Stay

29:51

with us. I'm Guy Raj, and you're listening to how I

29:53

built this. Successful

30:02

companies don't happen overnight. It

30:05

takes an awful lot of grit,

30:07

determination, and teamwork. Our sponsor,

30:09

Atlassian, knows this better than anyone. Their

30:11

team has spent over 20 years

30:14

creating software that powers collaboration for

30:16

teams around the world. By

30:18

creating software like Jira and

30:20

Confluence to improve companies' workflow,

30:22

Atlassian is on a mission

30:24

to make impossibility a reality.

30:27

And now, they're ushering in the

30:29

next era of teamwork with Atlassian

30:31

Intelligence. When you think of

30:33

AI, pizza may not be the first

30:35

thing that comes to mind. But global

30:37

pizza chains are actually using AI to

30:39

scan their pies and make sure they

30:42

meet their quality standards. From

30:44

space exploration to making pizza to producing

30:46

podcasts like the one you're listening to

30:48

right now, Atlassian thinks there's

30:50

a lot about AI that companies should

30:52

be excited about. Atlassian

30:55

Intelligence transforms teamwork

30:57

by empowering AI-human

30:59

collaboration. Atlassian's AI-powered

31:01

software can help you glean

31:03

new insights from your data,

31:05

boost individual productivity by eliminating

31:08

menial tasks, and help

31:10

your team make faster, more informed

31:12

decisions to produce the best results

31:14

for your customers. And the best

31:16

part? With Atlassian Intelligence in

31:18

your corner, you can trust

31:20

that your work is protected and

31:22

kept confidential. Which isn't just

31:25

a small step. It's a giant leap in

31:27

accelerating work. Atlassian AI-powered

31:29

software like Jira and Confluence

31:31

help teams accomplish what would

31:33

otherwise be impossible alone. Because

31:36

individually, we're great, but together we're

31:38

so much better. Learn

31:41

how Atlassian AI can help

31:43

power high-performing teams at atlassian.com.

31:46

That's a-t-l-a-s-s-i-a-n.com.

31:51

Atlassian. This episode is brought

31:53

to you by State Farm. Are you in

31:55

the market for small business insurance? State

31:58

Farm knows that your business is... your

32:00

life. In fact, State Farm agents

32:02

are small business owners too, so

32:04

they know what it takes. And

32:06

they can help you create a

32:09

personalized insurance plan that fits your

32:11

small business needs. Small business

32:13

insurance from State Farm. Like a good

32:15

neighbor, State Farm is there. Talk

32:18

to your local agent today. Okay,

32:21

some quick math here. The less

32:23

your business spends on operations or

32:25

multiple systems, the more margin you

32:27

have and the more money you

32:30

keep. So to reduce

32:32

costs and headaches, smart businesses

32:34

are using NetSuite by Oracle.

32:37

NetSuite is the number one

32:39

cloud financial system, bringing accounting,

32:42

financial management, inventory, HR into

32:44

one platform and one source

32:46

of truth. With NetSuite,

32:49

you reduce IT costs and

32:51

cut the cost of maintaining

32:54

multiple systems. You improve efficiency

32:56

by bringing all your major

32:58

business processes into one platform,

33:01

slashing manual tasks and errors.

33:04

Over 37,000 companies have already made

33:07

the move, so do the math. By

33:09

popular demand, NetSuite has extended

33:12

its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program

33:14

for a few more weeks.

33:16

Head to netsuite.com/built

33:19

today. Learn more

33:22

at netsuite.com/built.

33:24

Again, that's

33:26

netsuite.com/built. Hey,

33:35

welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raj.

33:38

So it's around 2001 and Ed Williams is

33:41

determined to get blogger up and running, even

33:43

if he has to do it alone.

33:47

Yeah, I couldn't

33:50

imagine stopping.

33:53

Once everybody left, my costs went

33:55

from 50,000 a month to

33:57

5,000 a month. Still, to

34:00

pay for the servers and

34:02

I just wanted to keep building it. So

34:04

I kept building

34:06

it. And just

34:08

by yourself working on this site, updating

34:10

it, trying to improve it. Yeah. It

34:14

was both really sad

34:16

and very freeing. And

34:19

it was sad because, I mean, you

34:21

reached that point in the company. There

34:23

has been a lot of stress and

34:25

a lot of angst. And, um,

34:27

I think that's just natural. And my company

34:29

was also my social life. And so there

34:32

was this overlap with my

34:34

roommate didn't work at the company, but

34:36

David, someone who did and brother worked

34:38

at the company. And so. And

34:41

everyone was mad at me at the end. And

34:46

I felt really bad because I felt like I failed. They were

34:48

mad at you. They were mad at you when it failed. They

34:50

were mad at me when it failed. Yeah. And

34:53

we had been fighting and all my

34:56

friends went away. It wasn't just my employees went away. My

34:58

friends went away. I felt

35:00

really guilty. I

35:03

didn't wasn't talking to anybody, but

35:06

I was able to show up at work every day

35:09

and not explain anything to anybody, not

35:12

have to argue. I was just like, I am

35:14

going to build whatever the heck I want. And

35:17

that felt great. And that feeling

35:19

of creation was really

35:21

what always drove me. And

35:24

so that was that was very

35:26

liberating and very fun. Did

35:29

you this

35:32

is, you know, this is a

35:34

little bit complicated, but I think that at the

35:36

time, some of the people

35:38

who had left, Pira felt like burned.

35:40

Right. Your view was, well, I stayed.

35:42

I kept running this thing. So

35:45

like, what do you expect? But some of

35:47

the people said, Ev doesn't know how to

35:49

manage teams. And by the way, I say

35:51

this is somebody who still struggles to manage

35:53

people. It's really hard. But you

35:56

were criticized. Was that

35:58

a fair criticism that you just were not good? I

36:01

don't know, at managing teams? I

36:04

would say worse than that. I don't think

36:06

I was good at relationships, which

36:08

even more fundamentally. I mean, management is

36:10

a particular skill, but

36:13

I wasn't good at relationships, i.e.

36:16

how to deal with conflict, the most

36:18

important thing. And I avoided

36:21

conflict, especially in those days, and

36:25

I, at the time, really considered

36:27

the people part of company

36:29

building a necessary evil. And

36:32

so I didn't invest in relationships, I

36:34

didn't know how, I never had any

36:37

model for that, I never, because

36:39

I never worked at companies, I never saw,

36:41

so yeah, I was terrible, terrible, in

36:43

those days, at dealing

36:46

with people, for sure. I

36:48

mean, Blogger eventually started to gain

36:50

traction. What started to happen? I

36:53

mean, you know, within

36:55

a year, I mean, this is 2001, and

36:57

of course, we know

36:59

what happens in 2001, September 11th, I

37:03

wonder if that had something to do with

37:05

more people using it, more people

37:07

going to blogs, what happened? Yeah,

37:10

so blogging was kind of growing

37:12

the whole time, despite the.com boom,

37:14

and bust, and that

37:16

was part of the reason that I didn't want to give up,

37:19

like it was, the

37:21

numbers were good. And then, yeah, 9-11 was

37:23

actually a big moment for blogs, and

37:28

it's when, the way I would describe

37:30

it, it's when journalists started taking them

37:32

seriously. Actually, 9-11,

37:35

the day 9-11 happened, I

37:38

actually spent the day aggregating, because

37:41

there wasn't really real time search, and of course,

37:43

there's no Twitter or anything, but people were writing

37:45

about their experiences, including a lot

37:47

of people in New York, and

37:50

it was hard to find out, hard

37:53

to find this on the ground information, so I

37:55

actually spent the day calling

37:57

these posts, as they're coming in from

37:59

database, put up special pages

38:01

about that. And some

38:04

really big blogs emerged after that time that

38:06

were really covering the news. And then of

38:09

course, newspapers and magazines started

38:11

creating their own blogs around, probably

38:14

after that time. And

38:16

then, yeah, we continued to see

38:18

growth for sure. So

38:21

by 2002, you were able to

38:23

actually start charging for

38:25

Blogger and it started to bring in

38:27

some revenue. Like you guys were getting

38:29

people paying money to use it. Yeah,

38:33

it's somewhere along the line. We offered to host

38:35

blogs, but we had ads on them. And the

38:37

ads never made any

38:39

money to speak of. There's like a very

38:41

tiny trickle of money, but then the first

38:43

thing I started charging for was you could

38:46

remove the ads from your blog. That

38:48

was the first thing. And that made a surprising amount of

38:51

money for me at the time. Maybe I could pay my

38:53

rent. And then I launched

38:55

what I call Blogger Pro. And

38:58

yeah, people paid for it. Of

39:00

course, many people who know this story know where

39:02

this is going because it attracted Google's attention and

39:05

they made an acquisition offer to you. And

39:07

in February of 2003, they bought Blogger

39:09

from you. And

39:14

here you are, you're 31,

39:16

and you come into some money. Yeah,

39:20

that was pretty amazing. All

39:23

right, so you go to work for Google.

39:26

You become a Google employee because they acquired

39:28

Blogger, which was a really

39:30

big deal at the time. Was

39:33

it clear to you soon after you arrived to

39:35

Google that you were not fit to

39:38

work in a big organization? Yeah, I felt like

39:40

a stranger in a strange land. And

39:43

I was employee number 800 at Google, so

39:45

it's laughable how small it was. Same

39:48

size as the high school I went to.

39:52

And it felt similar. Well, it

39:54

felt like a college. But yeah,

39:56

I didn't know how to operate. And they

39:58

didn't know what to do with me. either because

40:01

they had not done any acquisitions. We

40:03

were literally their first acquisition

40:05

that involved people. They had bought some

40:08

IP, but we're the first group of

40:10

employees to come in who were Googlers

40:13

but not. And so we

40:15

were just kind of plopped in there and

40:20

trying to figure out how to survive. And to

40:22

their credit, a lot of tons

40:24

and tons of big companies bought these tiny internet

40:26

things at the time and then they

40:28

would just die. It killed them. Blogger,

40:31

I'm happy to say, 20 years later, is

40:33

still running. And anything written

40:35

on Blogger 20 years ago, unless

40:39

the author took it down or it was

40:41

a violation, is still up on the internet

40:43

for free and Google has

40:46

paid for that and probably

40:49

lost money that entire time. Yeah.

40:51

So that's amazing and super lucky to have

40:54

felt that. But I didn't know how to

40:56

operate within Google. And so,

40:58

yeah, after Google

41:00

went public, I left. All

41:03

right, so 2004, you leave Google and

41:08

you start to noodle

41:10

on a new idea because

41:12

you made some money from Blogger and

41:16

the new idea would become, you

41:19

started a podcast platform in 2004 called

41:21

Odeo, which

41:24

must have been, I mean, this is before Apple

41:26

Podcasts. This is like out of the one of

41:28

the first podcast. What

41:31

even was, did you call it podcasting?

41:33

Did you say, hey, let's make an

41:36

audio platform? Tell me about this idea.

41:38

Yeah, it's funny how this came about.

41:41

I had this neighbor named

41:43

Noah Glass who was

41:46

a fun, boisterous entrepreneurial

41:48

guy who invented a

41:51

way to call a telephone number

41:54

and leave a voicemail that would end up

41:56

on the web. And

41:58

then, Biz Stone,

42:01

later co-founder of Twitter, he

42:03

worked with me, a blogger. And

42:06

we were driving home from

42:08

Google one day and

42:10

just kind of brainstorming about it. It

42:13

was one of those moments of independent

42:15

invention, kind of to help Noah, because we're like,

42:17

no one's, you know, it's cool you can record

42:19

these, but no one's going to listen to these

42:21

things on their desktop computer. What if you get

42:23

them on their iPad? And we were thinking about

42:25

what the technical solution is to that. And

42:28

then we started looking into it, it

42:30

was like around the same time, people

42:33

like Adam Curry and Dave Weiner

42:35

had started talking about podcasting. Adam

42:37

Curry, the former MTV VGA, a

42:39

lot of people don't know, is truly

42:41

the pioneer of podcasts. Yeah, Adam

42:44

Curry was doing like a daily show, I

42:46

think around that. When nobody was listening to,

42:48

I mean, who knew even knew how to

42:50

connect your iPod to the computer to download

42:52

this stuff. Exactly. And so we find out

42:54

these guys are talking about it, but

42:57

there's no software to do it. And so

42:59

then the idea was obvious, like

43:01

make it easy to do this, make it

43:03

easy to listen, make it easy commercialize this

43:05

idea. And it's another

43:07

democratizing media, anyone can have a

43:10

radio show that seemed obvious. And

43:13

so I was really encouraging Noah to do

43:15

that, to take audio blogger and create a

43:17

podcasting company. I didn't want to

43:19

create a podcasting company, but I thought Noah should.

43:23

And I didn't have a job then. And

43:25

it was, I was determined to take some

43:27

time off, but Noah kept arriving at my

43:29

door. So I

43:31

fell into it. So that was it. Yeah.

43:34

And so we built a audio,

43:36

I know was, I was determined to take some time

43:39

off, but Noah kept arriving at my door. So

43:42

I fell into it. So that was it. Yeah.

43:45

And so we built a audio.com was

43:47

a directory of podcasts. We were basically collecting

43:50

all the feeds. We were making them easy

43:52

to find. You could listen to individual episodes

43:54

on the web, but then there's a piece

43:56

of software that you could install on your

43:58

desktop that would. whatever podcast

44:00

you subscribe to onto your iPod.

44:03

So you built this entire platform to

44:05

make it easy. There was nothing like

44:08

it. Okay, so you've spent the time

44:10

and money on building this and

44:12

then Apple comes out with their

44:15

own podcast service on

44:18

iTunes and what did that mean for

44:20

your business? It basically obsoleted everything we

44:22

had done for the last six months

44:24

that we raised money to do. We

44:27

made the mistake of actually raising too much

44:29

money pre-product,

44:33

really pre-product. We raised $5

44:35

million, which was

44:37

a terrible mistake because it allowed

44:40

us to grow the team to the point

44:42

where we just weren't nimble enough

44:44

to easily pivot. And

44:47

so we thought, we told ourselves as

44:49

every small company does when a big

44:51

company was in their space, oh, we

44:53

can compete. We'll do it better or

44:55

whatever. But they had an insurmountable advantage.

44:57

Like people, they had the

44:59

software. Yeah. So

45:03

when that happened, what

45:05

did you do? I mean, you raised $5 million to start

45:07

a podcast company and all of a sudden the big 800

45:10

pound gorilla is like, actually, we'll take it

45:12

from here. Yeah. And so

45:15

what did you do? We

45:17

tinkered for a few months. Like I said,

45:19

we were like, okay, maybe we'll create tools

45:21

for podcasters. And that was another

45:24

big lesson for me because I

45:26

listened to podcasts, but I'd never

45:28

created podcasts. And one of my fundamental

45:30

rules I've come to believe is, unless

45:34

you are really good at user

45:37

research, build products for

45:39

yourself. I had no sense

45:42

of, because I didn't create podcasts,

45:44

I had no sense of what the tools

45:46

needed were or how the software should

45:48

work. That's where I think

45:51

great products come from, is feeling that. And

45:54

so we took some stabs at

45:56

that, but our product wasn't good. All

45:59

right. this company,

46:01

Odeo, that

46:03

you started with Noglass,

46:06

there was a guy you hired. And

46:08

I guess he kind of approached you. He

46:11

had written to you and sent you his resume, and he

46:13

was a young programmer

46:18

named Jack Dorsey. And

46:20

I guess you hired him on the strength

46:22

of his resume. Tell

46:24

me about him and what he was

46:26

doing at Odeo. Yeah,

46:29

we hired Jack just as a programmer, and

46:31

we liked him. I

46:36

think around the same time, we also had

46:38

Kevin Sistram, founder of Instagram,

46:41

was working for us as an intern. So

46:44

Kevin and Jack paired

46:46

to write our, I think our

46:48

installable, like, podcatcher, as we called

46:51

them. And I guess

46:53

Jack, on

46:56

the side, had some kind of idea that he

46:58

was talking about that was

47:00

intriguing to him, that was more

47:02

about, like, not audio blogging, but

47:05

microblogging? Uh, sort

47:07

of. That evolved... I'm not sure how long

47:10

Jack had been thinking about this, but basically we

47:12

came to a point where I

47:14

didn't have faith in the original plan of Odeo.

47:17

I actually went to the board, I think

47:19

we had three of the five million dollars

47:21

left, and said, I

47:24

can't sell you on the future of this company.

47:26

Maybe we should just give the money back and

47:29

go away. And

47:31

the board was

47:34

like, well, we didn't invest in podcasting,

47:36

we invested in you. So you come

47:38

up with something. You have other ideas? And

47:41

I always prided myself on having lots of ideas.

47:44

But we were still, I think, fairly attached

47:46

to audio. And so there's

47:48

a lot of... Basically

47:51

we had a two week, what we call

47:53

a hackathon, where we divided into teams and

47:55

just let people come up with ideas to

47:57

find the new course of the company. And that's... when

48:03

Jack presented what

48:05

he had been thinking about, I guess,

48:07

this idea for a while of like

48:09

a status update service. And

48:13

the first version that I heard, it

48:15

was actually attached to audio, like, I

48:17

do remember a conversation where at first there

48:19

was a version of what became Twitter presented

48:23

that had audio. And I remember asking, what

48:25

if it didn't have the audio piece? And

48:28

I don't remember the first form and I don't want to

48:31

take credit from anybody. Jack

48:34

had an idea, which I didn't probably even see the

48:36

very first version of. And he

48:38

started working with biz. And so they

48:40

were a team is this biz also

48:42

had worked with you on blogger. Right.

48:45

Biz came over to audio fairly early

48:47

from Google. And so Jack

48:49

and biz were working on saying there was maybe three

48:51

or four teams. And

48:53

then Noah, the

48:56

original founder of audio. So

48:59

the thing that we saw in one

49:01

stage of the hackathon

49:03

that was intriguing was the ability to

49:06

send a message with your phone, and

49:08

it would arrive on other people's phones. So

49:11

instead of just why would you just send them a direct

49:13

text message? Because I guess it costs money. Well, you could

49:15

send it to multiple people at once. That

49:17

was that was harder to do at the time. It's

49:19

harder to do there were a couple of services that

49:21

let you do that create groups. I

49:24

know there was a lot of conversation around the time, we

49:26

all used AOL instant instant

49:28

messenger on our desktops. And

49:31

there's this status line,

49:35

which is just like, you know, not a message,

49:37

but it's like what you're doing and you could

49:39

update it. Facebook had the same feature, like update

49:42

your status, like say like, okay, going to the

49:44

park might be your status. And you can see

49:46

your list of friends, you could see them up

49:48

in the order updated of their status. And

49:51

that was the whole thing. And

49:53

we knew everyone kind of had

49:55

a sense that mobile computing was the future. But building

49:57

things for phones was a pain in the butt. And

50:01

so we thought, well, SMS is ubiquitous. You

50:03

don't have to install any software on the

50:05

phone. That would be

50:07

pretty amazing if we could leverage that. So

50:10

at a certain point, this seems

50:12

like – I mean, you

50:15

guys had to make a decision like, well, let's pursue

50:17

this thing. So even

50:19

when it debuted, because I think it was like

50:21

March of 2006 when it was

50:23

like – it went live, but it was still tiny. It

50:27

was just a part of the podcasting business still.

50:29

It wasn't – okay. And you

50:31

guys had already called it Twitter by this point.

50:34

Twitter, in my opinion, one of the

50:36

best names – may

50:39

it rest in peace – for this,

50:41

for a tech product. I think

50:43

Noah came up with that on a list of

50:45

names. Noah Glass, he came up with that. Yeah.

50:47

I remember seeing an email where he

50:49

had been brainstorming names, and it was on a list.

50:52

I'm like, ooh, Twitter. He always

50:54

explained it. It was like, what's that feeling when you

50:56

feel your pocket buzz? And it's like a twitch. And

50:58

he looked up Twitch in the dictionary, and next to

51:00

that was Twitter, which is a dictionary word.

51:03

Another good name. Twitch was also good. It could

51:05

have been Twitch. Yeah. So

51:08

yeah, we called it Twitter, but Odeo still existed. So

51:11

when – the end of the

51:13

hackathon, the two weeks officially, we declared

51:15

– it probably

51:17

wasn't named Twitter yet, but we

51:20

had an internal joke name called Friendstalker.

51:23

And it was sort of like, yeah, you're

51:25

stalking your friends. So you're seeing what they're

51:27

up to all the time. Right.

51:29

Okay. But we still had Odeo.

51:31

And Biz said this very wise thing, I

51:33

think, at the time, which was, even

51:36

though we were only a dozen people, it's like Twitter was such

51:38

a nascent idea. It's like

51:40

if we put everyone on this idea – it's like a –

51:43

this idea is like a small ember that if

51:45

it gets too much oxygen, it's just going to

51:47

go out. And so we

51:49

need to keep the team on Twitter

51:51

small while we develop it. So

51:54

most of the team went back to Odeo, and

51:57

Twitter was another side project. Yeah. And

52:01

people still think Twitter is a dumb

52:03

idea. Imagine the very first, very

52:06

first days, like what, that makes no

52:09

sense. And okay, so

52:11

what are the numbers, even after we launched

52:13

publicly, it was like, oh, there's like 500

52:15

people using it, and we know 200

52:17

of them. And so

52:20

it didn't look like a thing. It felt like a

52:22

thing, which has, I've

52:25

come to realize is the most important

52:27

thing, and it's feeling

52:29

as much more important than metrics

52:31

early on. Why did it

52:34

feel like a thing to you? It

52:36

felt like a thing because once we had a

52:38

handful of people on it, most

52:40

of whom we knew, and we're using it

52:42

through our phones, to get

52:45

and send these real time updates. We

52:47

used the term real time a lot

52:49

then because the internet wasn't real time.

52:53

Email was asynchronous, the

52:55

web got updated kind of

52:58

slowly. And so it

53:00

was the first thing we felt where you could send a

53:02

message and buzz a bunch of

53:04

people's pockets, it would

53:06

update, and that was new. And

53:09

it was such a unique and

53:11

immediate sensation. When

53:15

we come back in just a moment, however

53:17

makes the right moves to grow Twitter, but

53:20

then fails to realize that he's

53:22

no longer the right guy to

53:25

run it. Stay with us,

53:27

I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built

53:29

This. On

53:37

our podcast, we love to highlight businesses that

53:39

are doing things a better way so that

53:41

you can live a better life. That's

53:44

why when I found Mint Mobile, I

53:46

had to share Mint Mobile ditched retail

53:48

stores and all those overhead costs, and

53:51

instead sells their phone plans

53:53

online and passes those savings on

53:55

to you. For a

53:57

limited time, they're passing on even more

53:59

savings. with a new customer offer

54:02

that cuts all Mint Mobile plans

54:04

to $15 a month when you

54:06

purchase a three-month plan. That's unlimited

54:09

talk, text, and data for

54:11

$15 a month. Before I

54:13

switched to Mint Mobile, I was paying a

54:16

lot more money every month for my old

54:18

wireless plan. And the service was, wasn't

54:20

that great? But with Mint Mobile,

54:23

every plan comes with unlimited talk

54:25

and text, plus high-speed data delivered

54:27

on the nation's largest 5G

54:30

network. To get this new

54:32

customer offer and your new three-month

54:34

unlimited wireless plan for just $15

54:36

a month, go

54:38

to mintmobile.com/built. That's

54:41

mintmobile.com/built.

54:44

Cut your wireless bill to $15 a

54:47

month at mintmobile.com/built.

54:50

Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.

54:52

See Mint Mobile for details. There's

54:55

a lot to say when buying a new home

54:58

or car, but only one thing to say that

55:00

can help you protect them. Like a good neighbor,

55:02

State Farm is there. And just like

55:04

that, a State Farm agent

55:06

will be there to help you

55:09

choose the coverage you need, no

55:11

matter where you are in life.

55:13

When you need coverage options, your

55:16

State Farm agent is there to

55:18

help on the phone or in

55:21

person. Like a good neighbor, State

55:23

Farm is there. Hey, welcome back to

55:25

How I Built This. I'm Guy Roz. So it's

55:28

around 2006 and Ev Williams and

55:30

his partners are juggling a few things. Odeo,

55:33

a struggling podcasting service, and

55:35

Twitter, a site that only

55:37

a few hundred people are

55:39

using. And Ev realizes that

55:42

for Twitter to get off the ground, he

55:44

has to change how the company

55:46

is run. There's a board meeting where it

55:49

was assumed we were just going to decide to

55:51

give the remaining money back to investors. Twitter wasn't

55:53

growing. We didn't believe in Odeo. I made

55:56

an offer and I said, well, I'll

55:59

actually buy it.

56:02

And that was obvious was the name

56:04

of the company that I bought Odio

56:07

with. Right. And just to clarify,

56:09

you buy it and obvious is the

56:12

company you form that includes both

56:15

Odio and Twitter. And yeah,

56:17

I mean, very smart decision on your

56:19

part. I mean, I think probably

56:21

some investors wish that they could have been a

56:23

part of it, you know, maybe some were eventually

56:26

but did you know

56:28

in your mind, did you have an

56:31

inkling that Twitter I mean, you

56:33

say there was an energy that there

56:35

was a feeling you had. Did you already

56:37

in 2006

56:40

feel like okay, this thing

56:42

I think could be the next blogger could

56:44

be bigger. I think there's

56:46

part of me that felt that I think

56:48

today, I would

56:50

value that part of me much more strongly

56:52

than I did at the time. I think

56:56

one of the things that I've

56:59

learned through my own efforts

57:01

and watching others is that that's why

57:03

I mentioned that feel being more important

57:05

than the numbers. I

57:07

didn't trust that enough at the time. It's

57:11

so easy to get

57:14

overwhelmed by data, especially in

57:16

tech. And as soon as

57:18

you have anybody using your

57:20

product, the attention turns to

57:22

numbers and testing and

57:24

a and people try to be very scientific

57:27

about it. If

57:29

you're in those conversations that no, but it really

57:31

feels like something. And as someone

57:33

who really has gone

57:35

by feel and has that intuition, you

57:39

just kind of you downplay that it's

57:41

like, ah, well, there's no evidence to back up

57:43

what I'm feeling. Yeah. And

57:46

so I can't defend it. But

57:48

yeah, there's enough. I feel enough that I'm going

57:50

to keep investing in it. So

57:53

you basically now are

57:55

the owner of this new

57:57

company. And Twitter

58:00

is this thing that you really

58:02

start to pursue. I think by the end of 2006, you had about

58:07

60,000 users. And it was initially,

58:09

right, it was like a status update. Like

58:11

the question was what are you doing, right?

58:13

That was the first thing. And then you

58:15

would just populate it with I'm

58:17

at the grocery store, whatever it is. But this is, and

58:20

it's still before the iPhone comes out. So

58:22

people are doing this on, most

58:25

people are like, I'm sitting at my desk working on

58:27

my computer. Yeah, or here's

58:29

the link. And

58:32

this whole time we're tweaking, we're changing

58:34

how the system works. And even though

58:36

the original idea that it

58:38

was going to be through our phones and via SMS,

58:41

which is why messages were

58:43

or what became known as tweets were

58:45

limited to 140 characters, I

58:48

think it was in late,

58:51

it was a few months in that we made

58:53

it easier to use on the web. And

58:56

that's when we saw our first

58:58

real bump of growth, because people were

59:00

our audience, especially was sitting at their

59:02

desktop all day. Yeah. I

59:06

guess the turning really the turning point

59:08

happens in March of 07, which is

59:10

South by Southwest, right? You take Twitter

59:13

to South by South. It becomes a

59:16

turning point for many companies, Airbnb, and

59:19

others later on. But in 2007,

59:21

you go to South by Southwest. And

59:24

what did you do to attract attention there?

59:27

We did something kind of unusual, because

59:30

we had a sense that that was

59:32

our audience. And I knew from experience

59:34

that going

59:37

in the trade show floor is not where

59:39

you wanted to be. And that everyone hung

59:42

out in the hallway, I spent

59:44

many hours hanging out in the hallway. South

59:46

by Southwest. So we contacted the

59:50

organizers there and said, Can we actually

59:52

set up a screen in the hallway?

59:56

A screen, TV screen. There's

59:59

a screen that that had these little

1:00:02

tweets floating by of people just

1:00:05

scrolling, tweets scrolling up. Yeah, they were

1:00:08

like, I think moving across the screen

1:00:10

from people who were there. And so

1:00:12

that was pouring gasoline on

1:00:14

the fire because it had the density, like

1:00:17

classic network building, you need density. And,

1:00:20

and there was also

1:00:22

the real time nature was very valuable because

1:00:24

people were walking around and didn't want to, you

1:00:27

know, pull out their their computers to know what

1:00:29

was going on. And

1:00:31

so what happened? I mean, people people

1:00:34

started to see other people basically everybody,

1:00:36

everybody there got on Twitter. And

1:00:39

you know, it's a few thousand people and again,

1:00:42

lots of journalists, lots of bloggers. And

1:00:44

so then they talked about it and

1:00:46

wrote about it. It was a moment

1:00:48

we just capturing lightning in a bottle

1:00:50

amongst that community. It was the perfect

1:00:52

thing at the perfect time with enough

1:00:54

density to reach a tipping point. Wow.

1:00:58

And and so when you left

1:01:01

South by Southwest, how big did it

1:01:03

grow? I don't know the

1:01:06

numbers. I know like

1:01:08

the shape of the charts was very,

1:01:10

very hockey stick. The service

1:01:13

definitely started falling down.

1:01:15

I mean, getting overwhelmed and we

1:01:17

were running into scaling issues immediately.

1:01:20

But it's certainly

1:01:23

still tiny. I mean, South by Southwest

1:01:25

was, it's, it's not even

1:01:27

at the time, I don't know, maybe

1:01:30

a few thousand people were using

1:01:32

it, but they were using it a lot. And

1:01:35

I have to imagine that that what happened

1:01:37

at South by Southwest starts to attract a

1:01:39

lot of attention. And so did

1:01:41

you start to get investors kind of

1:01:43

banging on your door, wanting to get

1:01:46

involved? We did, we did. We

1:01:49

got a lot of investors knocking on our door.

1:01:51

I still owned 100% of

1:01:53

it at that time through

1:01:55

obvious, but it was clear that we

1:01:57

needed to grow. We needed to money.

1:02:00

So we started taking those

1:02:03

conversations. Can I ask

1:02:05

you about the broader

1:02:07

idea of Twitter? As

1:02:10

you started to see this thing really

1:02:12

grow, and I've seen you talk about it

1:02:14

like at the time, already at

1:02:17

the time, saying things like, this

1:02:19

is going to be a way for people to

1:02:22

really build community and connect, and if there's like

1:02:24

an earthquake in San Francisco, like

1:02:27

this is a way, and some of

1:02:29

that happened, a lot of that happened,

1:02:31

like there was an idealized division of

1:02:33

what this was going to bring to

1:02:35

the world, that it was going to

1:02:37

bring the world closer together and make

1:02:40

us all happier and friendlier and kinder,

1:02:42

but it really has been a force

1:02:46

for division too. Did

1:02:50

you in any way anticipate that

1:02:52

that would happen, that Twitter would

1:02:54

actually exacerbate

1:02:56

division and tension? I

1:02:59

did not. Certainly not in those very

1:03:01

early days. You know, the team over the

1:03:03

years has gotten a lot of flack on

1:03:05

the trust and safety side, but

1:03:08

those people are some of the most earnest,

1:03:10

hardworking, integrity

1:03:12

driven folks I've ever

1:03:15

seen in the world

1:03:17

of business, and

1:03:19

we didn't realize, it's sort of like, in

1:03:23

some ways, like when we figured out processed food

1:03:25

manufacturing and we're like, oh, this

1:03:27

is an easy, cheap way to get calories,

1:03:29

not realizing all the implications of that, you

1:03:32

know, let's keep working on it. Tell

1:03:36

me a little bit

1:03:38

about, because basically

1:03:42

you were running ODO, but it

1:03:44

was clear that Twitter was the

1:03:46

product now in this bigger company,

1:03:50

and Jack was, I think he

1:03:52

had been named the CEO of

1:03:54

Twitter, and you were the chairman of

1:03:56

Twitter, and this is a little tricky, I understand,

1:04:00

talking about personalities and big personalities and

1:04:02

people who were friends and, you know,

1:04:04

and had falling outs.

1:04:06

But how did your relationship with Jack Dorsey

1:04:09

begin to change? Because I know, I mean, this

1:04:11

is no secret, it's been written about, there was

1:04:13

a falling out. Yeah,

1:04:15

so the course of events

1:04:18

was Twitter and Odeo were just

1:04:20

products inside of Obvious, which I ran.

1:04:23

And so, and I had, around

1:04:25

this time also sold Odeo. So Twitter is the only

1:04:27

thing we had, but I had lots of other ideas.

1:04:29

And so it's like, I just kind

1:04:31

of want to tinker and invent new things.

1:04:33

So that was the time when

1:04:35

we spun it out into Twitter Inc. that

1:04:38

offered Jack the

1:04:41

job of CEO. And

1:04:43

I again, like, Jack is not

1:04:45

here and others aren't here to take this

1:04:47

as an documentary show. It's a one person's

1:04:49

perspective. The story that

1:04:52

I've read is that he

1:04:54

became frustrated because you

1:04:57

were, you know, I don't know,

1:04:59

maybe you were frustrated with his leadership when

1:05:01

he was CEO, he was frustrated with your

1:05:03

meddling. That's a that's a that's an old

1:05:05

story that's happened in every company. Yeah, I

1:05:08

think, yeah, I think we were frustrated with

1:05:10

each other and goes

1:05:13

back to what I said earlier about being not

1:05:15

good at relationships. I didn't know how to deal

1:05:17

with that. And I didn't do a good

1:05:19

job of dealing with that. I

1:05:21

was senior to Jack in age and

1:05:23

experience. So I should have

1:05:25

been the one to really work on what I

1:05:28

said earlier about being not good at relationships. I

1:05:30

didn't know how to deal with that. And

1:05:32

I didn't do a good job of dealing with that.

1:05:35

I was senior to Jack in age

1:05:37

and experience. So I should

1:05:39

have been the one to really work

1:05:41

on lead working on the relationship. And

1:05:45

stress gets high when you have something stress

1:05:48

is very, very high, because we

1:05:50

had something we knew was working. And

1:05:52

it felt incredibly precarious. Twitter

1:05:55

always felt precarious. Our

1:05:57

stuff kept breaking, like we couldn't handle the growth.

1:06:01

Facebook was always looming over us and feeling,

1:06:03

felt like they could eat our lunch at

1:06:05

any time and they were trying to. And

1:06:08

it was, so the

1:06:11

stress was incredibly high. And

1:06:15

Jack went from individual contributor.

1:06:19

He had never been a manager, I believe, before he

1:06:22

became CEO of this very fast growing company. I

1:06:25

wasn't a great manager, but I had a few

1:06:27

years on him. You

1:06:30

had some experiences with failure to say the

1:06:32

least. For sure, and so

1:06:34

yeah, we didn't see eye

1:06:36

to eye. We're

1:06:40

very different actually. We

1:06:43

both desperately, desperately wanted it to succeed and

1:06:45

both thought we were correct and we didn't

1:06:47

talk about it in a healthy way. Yeah,

1:06:50

all right. So

1:06:52

eventually the frustration got to

1:06:54

a point where you asked

1:06:56

the board to relieve him

1:06:59

of his duties and he was, this

1:07:01

is well known, he was basically kind

1:07:03

of pushed out. And that, I'm

1:07:05

assuming, was that the end of your relationship? Was

1:07:07

that more or less kind of the

1:07:09

break? That was the break, oh yeah,

1:07:11

that was the break for sure. And

1:07:14

again, I would handle that

1:07:16

very differently because I hadn't been giving

1:07:18

him clear feedback and it

1:07:20

looked, he was pushed out and then I

1:07:22

became CEO, which is

1:07:25

hard to believe, but it wasn't actually my plan.

1:07:27

I still didn't necessarily want to be CEO and

1:07:30

we talked to a few other candidates, but

1:07:32

then I was like, okay, maybe I'm the best person

1:07:34

to be CEO. So it really looked like it was

1:07:36

just, oh, this thing is successful, I'm gonna push him

1:07:38

out and take over. So

1:07:42

understandably, he was

1:07:44

hurt and upset about that. Have

1:07:46

you guys ever talked

1:07:49

since then or repaired your relationship or not

1:07:51

really? Yeah, we've talked, I

1:07:53

was, you know,

1:07:56

long story in the Twitter saga, as you know, he

1:07:58

eventually came back as CEO. and

1:08:00

you were on the board. And I was on the board,

1:08:02

I had gotten pushed as CEO, and

1:08:05

I was on the board for multiple

1:08:08

years, and he was also on the board the

1:08:10

whole time. Even after he left as CEO, he

1:08:12

was still on the board. And

1:08:14

so we were on the board together for a decade.

1:08:18

And so, yeah, and we were, yeah, we were

1:08:21

fine. We're friendly, we have

1:08:23

dinner, but yeah, we're not

1:08:25

best friends. Yeah. So

1:08:28

he left, you

1:08:30

became the CEO, and

1:08:32

this would be kind of a two year stint for you.

1:08:38

You didn't know that at the time. You

1:08:41

also, I guess, were approached

1:08:43

in 2008 by Mark Zuckerberg

1:08:45

to buy you out. Yep. I

1:08:49

mean, what happened? What was

1:08:51

the story? Because from what I understand, you guys

1:08:54

said, well, you know, we think we're worth half

1:08:57

a billion dollars and Mark

1:08:59

Zuckerberg was like, okay, yeah, that

1:09:01

sounds right, but the sale never

1:09:03

happened. What happened? There's

1:09:07

a story that Biz tells about Biz and I going

1:09:09

down to Palo Alto and meeting with Mark.

1:09:12

And it was just Mark and Biz

1:09:14

and I in a room with

1:09:16

soft seating. And it was

1:09:19

very awkward and strange, but

1:09:22

wanted to hear him out. And I felt, I

1:09:25

had no interest in selling, but

1:09:27

you got to listen to these things.

1:09:29

And Facebook, of course, was private at the time, but

1:09:31

based on their valuation, they could do a stock deal

1:09:33

that may value us around a half

1:09:36

billion dollars. And that

1:09:38

was a lot of money. And we were maybe, no,

1:09:41

we were 30 people at the time. Wow.

1:09:47

So yeah, that

1:09:49

was serious. We had to take that seriously.

1:09:51

We of course didn't know what Facebook would

1:09:53

become either. Eventually that half

1:09:55

billion would be, who knows? Like,

1:09:57

I don't know if you did the math on that. But

1:10:00

I went to the board and

1:10:02

I thought about it

1:10:04

very deeply and I came up with this like, okay, why would you

1:10:06

sell a company? I think there

1:10:09

are three reasons and none of these meet

1:10:11

that criteria. Three reasons being

1:10:13

you don't wanna do it anymore. So

1:10:16

you need someone to do

1:10:18

it for you or you're in trouble.

1:10:22

So there's famous cases like YouTube

1:10:24

sold to Google, obviously amazing acquisition

1:10:26

for Google, but YouTube

1:10:29

was really a lot of trouble

1:10:31

both with copyright

1:10:33

infringement and the scaling and infrastructure

1:10:35

costs. If YouTube really needed this,

1:10:39

the shelter that Google could provide and lost money

1:10:41

for years and years and years. And

1:10:44

so I thought that was another reason that didn't seem to

1:10:46

apply to us. And third was

1:10:48

that if just from

1:10:50

a fiduciary perspective, if the offer

1:10:53

clearly was a no brainer from a

1:10:55

financial perspective, then you might be inclined to do as well.

1:10:58

And so my letter to the board was, I think these are the

1:11:01

reasons to sell. I think none of them apply. And

1:11:04

so we shouldn't sell. And so that was the end

1:11:06

of conversation. All right, I

1:11:08

wanna go back to your leadership. And just

1:11:10

to point out, being CEO, Twitter is like

1:11:13

being an Italian Prime Minister, right? Like you

1:11:15

don't last that long, okay? And

1:11:18

that just was the theme. Like it's a hard

1:11:21

horse to ride. You're just not gonna last that long. But

1:11:24

there was a wrap on you. And I say

1:11:27

this not to make you feel

1:11:29

bad or criticize you, but I'm

1:11:31

curious just from a self-reflective perspective

1:11:33

on what you think about

1:11:35

it and whether you learned from it if

1:11:38

it's in retrospect helpful. But the wrap

1:11:40

on you was, you're too slow to

1:11:42

make decisions. And also

1:11:44

you were prone to hiring

1:11:46

people you knew, which is

1:11:48

a big no-no for some people. Again,

1:11:51

not saying that's right or wrong,

1:11:53

that was the criticism that's, massive,

1:11:58

sad group. millions

1:12:00

of column inches have been written about Twitter, that's

1:12:03

come out. Do you think that's fair? I

1:12:06

think both are fair. I

1:12:08

was not a great CEO

1:12:12

by any stretch. And I think

1:12:15

I was getting better. What

1:12:18

I was very good at was product

1:12:21

and knowing, in

1:12:23

my opinion, products and strategy and knowing where

1:12:25

to take the company, what we should

1:12:27

build. But the company got to

1:12:30

a size where lots and lots

1:12:32

of other things were important for the CEO to

1:12:34

do. Certainly management,

1:12:38

finances, leadership, giving confidence to

1:12:40

the entire team. But

1:12:43

I think in a lot of cases, I was

1:12:45

slow to make decisions because I was avoiding conflict.

1:12:49

I didn't want to make decisions that other people disagree

1:12:51

with. I didn't have, if

1:12:54

I felt something intuitively, but

1:12:59

the evidence or the data or the logic,

1:13:01

everyone was arguing something else, then

1:13:03

I would just, I got frozen. Or

1:13:06

if the decision was about a person, and

1:13:11

I was lacking the confidence to really

1:13:17

upset people. And that was a

1:13:19

huge weakness for sure. And

1:13:21

so how did you overcome

1:13:24

that? Or did you ever over, we'll go

1:13:26

on to your next company. I got better.

1:13:29

Having conflict aversion is,

1:13:33

for some people, it's a character trait. And

1:13:36

what I respect, because I identify with it.

1:13:39

Yeah, it's not like embracing

1:13:41

conflict is a great character trait

1:13:44

either. But I think

1:13:46

conflict aversion comes from fear. Fear

1:13:49

of what? Fear of rejection. I

1:13:52

think, especially if you have imposter

1:13:54

syndrome and look, I'm

1:13:56

a farm boy from Nebraska who was in

1:13:58

this company. I was like. I'd never

1:14:00

had a job where I

1:14:03

rose to the ranks. Even with the

1:14:06

success that you had and

1:14:08

the psychological kind of, let's

1:14:11

say, foundation of wealth that

1:14:14

you had built, you still have that? For

1:14:16

sure, for sure. That didn't really change anything. And

1:14:18

I hadn't really done any work

1:14:20

on myself at the time. And I

1:14:22

think this is, like

1:14:24

for entrepreneurs, so,

1:14:26

so important to realize what is driving

1:14:29

you and where are your blind spots,

1:14:31

I had no idea.

1:14:33

So when I would hear, I got a little bit

1:14:35

of feedback. And by the way, somewhat

1:14:38

ironically, the board of Twitter had a lot

1:14:40

of conflict aversion because

1:14:42

they never gave me that feedback to my

1:14:45

face. I didn't know I was

1:14:47

gonna be fired at all because no

1:14:49

one ever told me I was doing a bad job. So

1:14:53

there was a whole culture of conflict aversion. And

1:14:56

my execs who were complaining about me

1:14:58

to the board also weren't

1:15:00

telling me, everyone was avoiding

1:15:02

conflict. But yeah, I

1:15:04

had a lot of, I had a ton

1:15:06

of fear. And I had both a lot

1:15:08

of confidence about what

1:15:11

I was good at and a ton of fear

1:15:13

and that I

1:15:16

didn't think I actually even could be ousted. So

1:15:18

it wasn't that, it was just really about being

1:15:20

called out for not knowing what I was doing.

1:15:23

How did you feel when you found out that

1:15:25

you were being let go

1:15:27

as CEO, were you devastated? Was

1:15:29

it a dark time? I was

1:15:31

devastated, devastated. I

1:15:33

can't like describe

1:15:36

how, I

1:15:40

was also shocked. I didn't even think it

1:15:42

was possible. And I went from

1:15:44

owning 100% of this company to

1:15:48

being kicked out. That

1:15:50

was my own fault. I had like

1:15:52

why I didn't get the legal

1:15:54

protections. There's no way I had to lose control

1:15:56

of the company. I just trusted my investors. And

1:16:00

and the board and I was like, oh, we're all on the same

1:16:02

side. And so I

1:16:05

knew, you know, I was barely keeping things together,

1:16:07

but it's also the nature of fast growing companies.

1:16:09

The company grew 10X and

1:16:12

users and employees and valuation in the

1:16:14

two years I was CEO. So I'm

1:16:17

like, guys on paper, this

1:16:19

isn't going that badly. And

1:16:21

so I had a meeting,

1:16:24

it was my coach at the time

1:16:26

hired by a VC, which is a bad

1:16:28

idea, Bill Campbell, who told

1:16:30

me, and I was just like, what? What are you

1:16:33

even, what? What?

1:16:36

Couldn't believe it. And then I was

1:16:38

very upset and very mad, went through all

1:16:40

the stages of grief. Yeah.

1:16:45

It's interesting because from one

1:16:47

perspective, people might say, well, who

1:16:50

cares? You're gonna walk out of this rich

1:16:52

guy and who cares? But

1:16:54

personally, it felt like a failure. Like

1:16:56

you had not succeeded

1:16:58

as burning this thing. Yeah,

1:17:01

it felt like the huge failure. And so

1:17:03

much of me, I

1:17:05

honestly thought that it was gonna destroy the

1:17:08

company. And so

1:17:11

I was really sad about that, but it was also terribly

1:17:14

embarrassed. And like I spent

1:17:16

years trying to prove myself

1:17:21

and like, and this at the height of

1:17:23

my success, I was knee capped

1:17:26

and every, it

1:17:28

felt like nothing I did before

1:17:30

mattered because

1:17:32

I failed at the biggest thing I

1:17:35

ever did. Okay,

1:17:38

so this chapter of your

1:17:41

life is over, but you

1:17:43

clearly, you have an energy and

1:17:45

a drive and you clearly

1:17:48

were gonna do something else, which you did,

1:17:50

it's no secret to people listening. It was

1:17:52

gonna be medium, which

1:17:55

is kind of amazing because it's like the first

1:17:57

really, the thing that you first really

1:17:59

had success. which was blogging, you

1:18:01

kind of go back to that. It's like a 360 return. Tell

1:18:05

me about, what did you want it to

1:18:07

do? The

1:18:09

seeds of Medium were really planted

1:18:12

while I was still at Twitter. And

1:18:16

the initial genesis is Biz and I,

1:18:18

Biz who came over from Twitter, he

1:18:23

and I were talking, one of the things we learned

1:18:25

at Twitter, which we really believed in, was this idea

1:18:27

of constraints. We're

1:18:29

like, what if we created a

1:18:31

writing platform that wasn't so short as Twitter,

1:18:33

but still was not too

1:18:36

short, not too long. I

1:18:38

walked up to the whiteboard and I wrote Medium. I

1:18:40

was like, I don't know what it is, but we should call it

1:18:42

that. And then

1:18:44

the idea

1:18:47

was essentially, what we

1:18:49

learned from social networks was that

1:18:51

the value was in the

1:18:53

connectivity. If

1:18:55

Twitter just did what Blogger did and

1:18:57

posted your tweet to a webpage and

1:19:00

didn't fan it out, if there wasn't this

1:19:02

follow mechanism, it wouldn't

1:19:05

be very interesting. It would essentially just be Blogger.

1:19:07

So it's the distribution system that

1:19:09

created all the value. And

1:19:11

that's why I call my companies obvious. It

1:19:13

was obvious to me that that should exist.

1:19:16

So the idea of Medium was

1:19:19

basically to... I mean,

1:19:21

how was it going to be different from what

1:19:23

Blogger was? It was the network. It

1:19:26

was giving people a place to

1:19:28

write these longer things, but connecting them

1:19:30

so they could be discovered. And

1:19:34

that's what Blogger wasn't. There was no

1:19:36

network to Blogger. You create a webpage,

1:19:38

you couldn't follow the webpage. And there's

1:19:40

no real reason to write on

1:19:43

Blogger versus anywhere else because there's no audience on

1:19:45

Blogger. So tell me

1:19:47

about how the

1:19:49

rest of your life and career unfolds.

1:19:51

And you have no idea. But

1:19:55

you're not old. I mean,

1:19:57

you're in your early 50s. You

1:20:00

know, you've achieved incredible

1:20:02

success and built amazing

1:20:04

well-known brands, blogger, Twitter,

1:20:07

medium. I mean, very few people can

1:20:09

say that. You obviously,

1:20:12

as a result of that,

1:20:14

became incredibly wealthy. You

1:20:16

can't possibly spend a fraction of the money

1:20:18

that you earned in your lifetime. How

1:20:21

do you imagine the rest of your life

1:20:24

unfolding? I mean, starting more

1:20:26

businesses, investing. How

1:20:29

do you think it's going to go? So

1:20:34

after I stepped down from Medium, which is almost,

1:20:37

it's coming up on two years, a

1:20:39

guy named Tony Stubblebein, also

1:20:41

someone who I've known for a very long time.

1:20:44

And I hired him to run that company.

1:20:46

He's doing a great job, doing a better

1:20:48

job than I was doing running Medium. Medium's

1:20:50

going great. I co-founded another

1:20:52

company recently. It's

1:20:55

a company called Mozy, which is a social app.

1:20:58

It's another social app, but it's not a social media

1:21:01

app. It's really about relationship building

1:21:03

and getting people together in real

1:21:05

life. And

1:21:08

so I'm starting that, but

1:21:11

I didn't want to run another company. I am

1:21:13

not running it. I'm really getting

1:21:15

more and more just into the creative side

1:21:18

and just like, and by creative side, I

1:21:20

mean of life being like, as

1:21:23

I recently got divorced, I have two kids trying to

1:21:25

create a great environment

1:21:27

for them. I'm working on some art

1:21:29

projects. I do

1:21:31

a little philanthropy and

1:21:33

other than that, I don't know,

1:21:35

could be music, could be events,

1:21:38

but that's what I'm focusing on right now. When

1:21:41

you look back on your career so far,

1:21:43

because so far you still have a long

1:21:46

life out of you. How

1:21:49

much of where you got to do

1:21:51

you attribute to the work you

1:21:53

put in, the grind, and how much do you think

1:21:55

happened because you were lucky, you were here at the

1:21:57

right place at the right time? A

1:21:59

whole lot. A whole lot of both, for

1:22:01

sure. And I think

1:22:04

anyone who has success, who

1:22:07

doesn't mention luck

1:22:09

is fooling themselves. And

1:22:12

it's like everyone says, you can increase your

1:22:14

chances of luck. I worked incredibly

1:22:17

hard from those

1:22:19

first days of

1:22:21

those first companies to the extent

1:22:23

where I didn't sleep. I worked too much, to

1:22:26

the point of decreasing returns, for

1:22:29

sure, but I learned everything

1:22:32

I possibly could about what I was

1:22:34

doing, and I kept trying

1:22:36

stuff. And again, I attribute

1:22:39

maybe my upbringing, maybe the way I was

1:22:41

wired, but that sense of, I have to

1:22:43

completely rely on myself, and I'm not gonna

1:22:45

give up, certainly put up.

1:22:51

That's Ev Williams, founder of Blogger

1:22:53

and Medium, and co-founder of Twitter.

1:22:57

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show

1:22:59

this week. Please make sure to click the follow

1:23:01

button on your podcast app, so you never miss

1:23:03

a new episode of the show, and as always,

1:23:06

it's free. This episode was produced

1:23:08

by Kerry Thompson with music composed by

1:23:10

Rontine Arablui. He was edited by Neva

1:23:12

Grant with research help from Carla Estes.

1:23:15

Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Josh

1:23:17

Newell. Our production staff

1:23:19

also includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini,

1:23:21

Casey Herman, JC Howard, Sam

1:23:23

Paulson, John Isabella, Catherine Seifer, and

1:23:26

Malia Agadello. You've

1:23:28

been listening to How I Built This. If

1:23:40

you like How I Built This,

1:23:42

you can listen early and ad-free

1:23:45

right now by joining Wondery Plus

1:23:47

in the Wondery app or on

1:23:49

Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen

1:23:51

ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you

1:23:53

go, tell us about yourself by

1:23:56

filling out a short survey at

1:23:58

wondery.com/survey. Is there

1:24:00

anything more satisfying than finding something that perfectly

1:24:02

lines up with your taste and checks all

1:24:04

the boxes? Like a suit from Indochino.

1:24:07

Their suits are made to measure and totally

1:24:09

customizable with endless options. Choose

1:24:12

the cut, fabric, lining, and more for the suit

1:24:14

of your dreams at a surprisingly affordable

1:24:16

price. Go to indochino.com

1:24:18

and use code PODCAST to get 10% off

1:24:20

any purchase of $3.99 or more. That's

1:24:24

10% off at i-n-d-o-c-h-i-n-o.com

1:24:28

with code PODCAST.