I'm likely to be on the wrong side of this argument, but part of my gets upset every time I hear about a founder leaving their fast-growing company. Great companies are built by the kinds of founders who don't just want to start something, they want to build and scale it into something world-changing.
Imagine Mark Zuckerberg leaving FB to "start something new". Imagine Bill Gates leaving MSFT early on to "experiment 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?
It's clear that there have been a lot of power struggles at Twitter. It's not clear how much of this departure is voluntary (i.e., the departure itself may be voluntary, but the conditions leading to it might have been a loss of control).
Finally, great companies have been built without their founders. Cisco and Intel lost/forced out their founders relatively early.
It didn't call back Jobs to get Jobs. It bought NeXT to be the foundation for their next OS. They chose NeXT over BeOS, and Jobs was NeXT's founder. Jobs didn't become active in Apple until later.
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.
Actually I think it's usually the case where a company is founded by 2 or 3 really passionate people. Typically, there's one who's passion stays with the company for the test of times. With Microsoft, it was Bill Gates with Paul Allen leaving. With Apple, it was Steve Jobs with Wozniak no longer there. With Twitter, it Dorsey staying (after having been pushed out) with Evan leaving.
Almost all (if not all) entrepreneurs thrive on the creation process, but not all thrive on the nurturing part once a company reaches a certain level. Sometimes, the creative process just isn't a big enough part of the process anymore when the day-to-day stuff starts to take over a bigger part of a founder's time. Better to leave openly than to stay and not really have your heart in it.
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.
The person who starts a company may not be the best person to lead it when it's worth billions. I admire people like Craig Newmark of Craigslist for stepping out of the way, and people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook for continuing to lead.
Different people, different strokes. What is wrong with that? I also wouldn't put Mark Zuckerberg in the "class" of entrepreneurs you mentioned. If anything, he is a counter example to your argument.
Could you expand on why Mark Zuckerberg is not in the same "class" as the others? I'm not sure what makes him so different in the example, other than Facebook is not yet so old as the other companies.
Because ~99% of internet companies seem to either fail or be acquired, it's the nature of the beast. Only a handful of companies (like you mentioned Oracle, Google, Apple, Amazon) live long enough for a founder to even stay there.
Maybe they leave because they don't have the skill sets or experience to do so? It's one thing to get something going and make it successful, it's totally something else to make it huge and successful.
> After stepping down from CEO six months ago, my mind started to wander. The reason I left Blogger/Google when I did is that I felt it had reached a place where it was on solid ground and in capable hands (at the time, Jason Goldman’s as product manager). Though still an independent company, I realized Twitter may be at a similar point today.
Do people really mean it when they say this, or is it just a thing to say, 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.
The term "serial entrepreneur" is in common use around here and definitely describes a certain class of people. While you may be right, this is one case where you may be wrong. Unlike politicians leaving to "spend more time with family".
What an amazing position to be in. Most people have to struggle to raise money and attract talent. How big do you think the line is to fund and/or work at Ev's next venture? G'luck, Ev!
While Ev certainly deserves plenty of credit for Twitter's success, I think you're giving him a little too much in this case.
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.
I hate to see EV continue to use the word luck because it makes me think that he just happened to be there and didn't really do anything. He needs to step up and take credit. Hopefully in #3 he can do that. "Once your lucky, twice your good" (Book title of Sarah Lacy's book about silicon valley's rise)
Once you're lucky, twice you're good. The thing is, Ev did it a LOT more than twice. He started companies and products over and over and over again. Two of them became widely used. One, Twitter, even managed to make money. He was in a good place, at a good time, joined and supported projects that showed promise.
Ev was originally an angel investor in Odeo, then he decided to join and work on it after we'd been at it for about three months. When Apple crushed us with itunes podcasting integration, he and the rest of us were tinkering with ideas. Jack had a good one, and Ev was able to create the space for that idea to grow in to twitter. Is it luck that Ev invested in his neighbor, Noah Glass's startup Odeo? Is it luck that Jack decided to do twitter has his hackday project instead? His previous project was a universal js wrapper to play audio on the web sans flash.
What Ev is really good at is seeing, oh this seems interesting, let's tinker with it and help it grow. He places himself among interesting things and then supports them. He's right for not taking credit, he participated and helped, he was vital, but he wasn't the CREATOR.
Perhaps you're thinking about luck wrong: of course he did things, but people who are looking for credit are probably more likely to make wrong moves than people who are willing to admit that not everything is in their hands.
Luck is way, way more important than most like to admit.
It seems the folks at twitter want to give @jack a bigger role, especially with @ev gone. However, I wonder if he doesn't want to focus on Square, which seems to be doing great things on it's own.
It's been 5 years and 8 days since work on Twitter started on March 21, 2006. Several other founding employees will be fully vested by now, so I'd expect a few more departures, particularly now that Ev has made it OK to leave.
I think there are only three people left of the founding team who are employees, @biz, @crystal (support), and @jeremy (ops). The oldest dev is @bs, but very early on, but wasn't around when twitter was created.
Twitter's not the company it was 5 years ago. People move on. It's ok.
It's pretty amazing to be part of two incredibly successful companies. If anything this is simply proof that you can get it done.
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.
No idea what it will be when he starts it, it almost doesn't matter - but by the time he is done it will probably be awesome.
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.
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?