Twitter

Whenever a company gets acquired or goes public, there is often a fancy closing dinner. It’s usually at a nice restaurant in a private room. The wine is expensive and the toasts are many. The people in the room are the founders of the company, the executives, the board members, other major investors, the lawyers who worked on the deal, and the investment bankers – if any were involved. I’ve been to more of these than I can remember. They were fun at first, but now they feel strange to me. The group celebrating is often a very small subset of the people who were involved in helping the company reach its success. I can have a exotic, over the top dinner with friends anytime I want, so it often feels like a burden to me to do yet another fancy dinner. If I’ve been deeply involved in a company, I always look around the room and notice at least one key person missing. Enough time has passed that the celebration seems a little stale. ...

There will be a lot of books written about the story of Twitter. As far as I know, there have now been two, but there are probably 71 more coming out soon. Biz Stone’s new book, Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind is outstanding. I’ve read two really awesome books in the past month that combine first person startup accounts with personal philosophy and advice. Biz’s is the second. Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is the other. ...

FSA (Feld Service Announcement) – my version of a “public service announcement”: Moz is on the hunt for a VP of UX and Design . This role is one of our most crucial hires this year. The ideal candidate will come to us with experience and examples to show of very complex, technical projects that s/he made simple and fun. I would love for you to share this job description with your network or if you have anyone in mind I would love for you to send them our way. ...

I turned 48 on December 1st. I took a week off the grid (from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving until the Wednesday after my birthday) – part of my quarterly off the grid routine with Amy. We had a very mellow birthday this year, spent it with a few friends who came to visit us in San Diego at the tennis place we love to hide at, and basically just slept late, played tennis, read a lot, got massages, ate nice food, and had adult activities. ...

I was in a reading mood this weekend so I read Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal after reading No Better Time on Saturday. I finished it just before I walked the dog and then went to bed. I slept very poorly last night and woke up thinking about the book. I woke up several times in the night (I’m getting older – that’s part of the drill – anyone over 45 knows what I mean) and each time I had something about the book in my brain. ...

Did you know Twitter is going public? Of course you did – it’s all the mainstream media could seem to write about last week after the now infamous twitter tweet about it. We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale. — Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013 After all the speculation about valuation, who owns what, what it’ll price at, how much money will be made, is Twitter growing or shrinking, what is a tweet after all, will their stock symbol be TWIT?, and all the other nonsense that seemed to consume the business press, I noticed a perplexing thread from some people expressing how indignant they are they Twitter is going public in secret. ...

Two of the public policy things I care about are patent reform and immigration reform. I believe our patent system – especially with regard to software and business method patents – is completely and totally broken. And our immigration system – especially concerning immigrant entrepreneurs – is an embarrassment. There is suddenly a lot of focus and attention on both of these issues. That’s good, and I’m hopeful that it will result in some meaningful positive changes. It pains me to see other countries – such as Canada, the UK, and New Zealand – be more progressive, open, and forward thinking around entrepreneurship and innovation than the US. There are days when I’m discouraged by our political system, but as I’ve gotten older and spent more time with it the past few years, I’m getting to a zen state of not being discouraged, but rather accepting the reality of the process and just being consistent and clear about what I think is important and how to fix it. ...

Today’s guest post from Chris Moody , the COO of Gnip , follows on the heels of the amazing Big Boulder event that Gnip put on last Thursday and Friday. To get a feel for some of the speakers, take a look at the following blog posts summarizing talks from leaders of Tumblr, Disqus, Facebook, Klout, LinkedIn, StockTwits, GetGlue, Get Satisfaction, and Twitter. Transition at a Massive Scale with Ken Little of Tumblr From Monologue to Dialogue with Daniel Ha and Ro Gupta of Disqus Measuring Engagement on Facebook with Sean Bruich Measuring Influence Online with Joe Fernandez and Matt Thomson of Klout Data Science at LinkedIn with Yael Garten Industry-Focused Social Networks with Howard Lindzon of StockTwits Distributed vs. Centralized Conversations with Jesse Burros of GetGlue Engaging with Customers Online with Wendy Lea of Get Satisfaction Creating the Social Data Ecosystem with Ryan Sarver and Doug Williams of Twitter The event was fantastic, but Chris sent out a powerful email to everyone at Gnip on Saturday that basically said “awesome job on Big Boulder – our work is just beginning.” For a more detailed version, and some thoughts on why The Work Begins When The Milestone Ends, I now hand off the keyboard to Chris. ...

Irony alert: A lot of this post will be incomprehensible. That’s part of the point. I get asked to tweet out stuff multiple times a day. These requests generally fit in one of three categories: 1. Something a company I’m an investor in wants me to tweet. 2. Something a smart, respected person wants me to tweet. 3. Something a random person, usually an entrepreneur, who is well intentioned but unknown to me wants me to tweet. Unless I know something about #3 or are intrigued by the email, I almost never do anything with #3 (other than send a polite email reply that I’m not going to do anything because I don’t know the person.) With #1 and #2, I usually try to do something. When it’s in the form of “here’s a link to a tweet to RT” that’s super easy (and most desirable). ...

There is this magical moment that happens when a startup finally puts the key components together to build a successful business. After months or years of iterating and pivoting, they finally have the right product for the right market at the right price. At this point, the company has to shift gears and change their mindset a little. They need to stop looking for gold and start mining as fast as possible. My friend Chris Moody , President/COO at Gnip , refers to this as the execution phase of a business and there is no better example of execution in our current portfolio than the team at Gnip. ...