The thing that's interesting to me is both Blogger and Twitter focus on simple, straight-forward human to human communication. Neither are complex or try to solve abstract, confusing problems.
By the measure of Blogger and Twitter's popularity, Evan is obviously skillful, regardless of whether or not Twitter is purchased by Google or some other entity. He focuses on an area relevant to all humans, communication. He makes his services easy for everyone to use. He has the foresight to see potential value in something unexplored, and he has the tenacity to work problems long enough for the results to prove if his hunches are right.
But perhaps most important he tries over and over, failing more often than he succeeds. That seems to be the real lesson here, it's not that Evan just luckily makes some mistakes and comes out on top, it's that he tries over and over.
Success has very little to do with luck, a bit more to do with circumstance and mostly to do with trying, and trying and trying some more.
Is it just me or did this article seem underwhelming? Twitter has gotten some incredible publicity lately, so much so that my mom asked me what Twitter was.
So perhaps that is why the Times asked Evan Williams write a sort of autobiography. But nothing was really all that meaningful.
He could have talked about why he believed giving investors their money back was the right decision. He could have talked about why Twitter was worth investing more time in. He could have even talked about what he learned from his previous failures.
Evan Williams doesn't sound like that interesting of a person, but props to him for developing one of the next big things in online communication.
I actually thought this was one of the best articles I've read in a while.
A lot of entrepreneurs I know try and try again and always come up short(myself included, though the success rate has steadily improved). This can be really discouraging because after a few attempts you start to wonder if you have the right characteristics necessary to create a successful startup. It's not like basketball where if you're 5'8" you
can quickly figure out you're not going pro and can move on to other things. So in this story you've got a guy who "was broke for 10 years", made a ton of mistakes, then went on to start 2 really really successful companies.
I thought that's really inspiring and I'm glad he shared.
I'm pretty sure it's also one of those small interviews they have in the business section of the nytimes.. it looks more appropriate in the 'print' version.
Incredible publicity. The daily show has mentioned it nearly every day for a week, sometimes in several minute segments. I wondered it was paid placement.
The one thing that is very interesting about Evan Williams is the ability to pull off TWO possible companies that were Google aquire capable. Blogger he already sold. Twitter he may.
Another way to look at it is, Twitter may have been already acquired by Google had not Evan Williams already had one company bought by Google. This may have stopped it from getting to the point it is now judging by some companies success after that event.
One major success is probably lucky, TWO is probably skill, or else a complete craziness by consumers. But what it is looking like is Evan Williams has created 2 successful companies in one bubble and coming out the end of the bubble it appears twitter might have some of the best value built in.
Yeah, after reading that article and watching Schmidt on Charlie Rose, I feel that he's a little out of touch with technology. His idea of monetizing youtube involves micropayments of a few cents per view, and his idea of the 'next thing at google' is some weird wikipedia mashup on mobile phones.
After seeing that headline (I'll admit I skipped the article) - I figured that Google was either making a play for twitter behind the scenes - or had been rebuffed by them.
Ev admits he has a hard time staying focused, so it makes total sense that he built two of the biggest attention suckers of the last decade while he was supposed to be working on something else. Makes total sense.
I think when Ev said that he was either being self-deprecating, or judging himself against his own lofty ambitions, or both. I've worked for him and would actually characterize him as extremely focused.
Blogger was close to the brink and only survived because of his dedication. I think Twitter is another example of him getting more focused over time.
Maybe he's not overly engaged by mediocre opportunities, but that's a long way from saying he isn't able to focus.
I just wanted to point this out in case there were any potential founders who thought their ADD was an asset.
Maybe this is kind of the point you were making, but I think it's very likely that Ev wasn't trying to claim he "lacked focus" during the Odeo epoch, with or without false humility. It sounded like he was contrasting the more recent part of his career with the earlier period in which he lacked focus, discipline, and people skills.
I first met him in 2001, at Blogger's low point, so I don't know what he was like four years earlier.
You're right, he only said that the first company (pre-Pyra) was unfocused.
I filled in the rest based on the comment above and on memories of people calling Odeo unfocused. I just wanted to kill any notion that Ev's successes come from being unfocused. Really, it was Ev's focus, keeping us from getting tied down by biz dev deals and refusing to settle for a middling success even when we got positive feedback, that set the groundwork for Twitter.
"Right now, anything we would do to make money would take our time away from acquiring more users. "
We'll lose money on each unit sold, but make it up on volume!!
What I fail to see, is how twitter won't be replaced by some open source library that does the same thing. Just as you can install blogging software on your own server and use aggregators to aggregate.
But they're the current dotcom darling, so they can do no
wrong.
I recently read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" which describes how the economics of subsidies available to farmers mean that corn and soybeans are crowding out every other crop. It was talking about Iowa mostly but I assume that the same economics apply to Nebraska.
By the measure of Blogger and Twitter's popularity, Evan is obviously skillful, regardless of whether or not Twitter is purchased by Google or some other entity. He focuses on an area relevant to all humans, communication. He makes his services easy for everyone to use. He has the foresight to see potential value in something unexplored, and he has the tenacity to work problems long enough for the results to prove if his hunches are right.
But perhaps most important he tries over and over, failing more often than he succeeds. That seems to be the real lesson here, it's not that Evan just luckily makes some mistakes and comes out on top, it's that he tries over and over.
Success has very little to do with luck, a bit more to do with circumstance and mostly to do with trying, and trying and trying some more.