Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

by Nick Bilton

  Twitter employees stood to the side as the group made its way through the cubicles, Biz’s feet moving with the speed of an infirm ninety-year-old man, doing his best to slow the inevitable arrival in the cafeteria, where the first tweet was scheduled to leave American soil.

  They continued strolling, slowly. Very, very slowly. They walked past some of the artwork Ev and Sara had chosen for the office, at one point catching a glimpse of one of Ev’s favorite pieces of art, which sat in a black frame and, in a bit of irony, was hung upside down. It read: “Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.”

  Ev loved that poster. He had tweeted about it when it first arrived in mid-December, late on a Thursday afternoon, showing off a picture to his Twitter faithful with the title “New sign at Twitter HQ.” But with the site down and the Russian president just a few feet away from the cafeteria, they could do without today’s mistake. Or tomorrow’s.

  Goldman dripped with sweat as he paced behind the engineers, who were doing everything they could to get the site back up, frantically talking to servers and code consoles. “What’s going on, guys?” he said. “Talk to me; tell me we’ve got the site back online.” The engineers were trying every trick in the book, trying desperately to figure out what was wrong.

  Upstairs, Biz and Ev were unable to hold off the president any longer. They walked into the cafeteria unsure of what they’d find on the computer. It all happened in slow motion, the pops of flashes from the media in tow as the president approached the podium, his fingers reaching out to touch the keys of a laptop set up for the first tweet. Ev looked over at Biz, who had no idea what was going to happen. Would the site work? Would this be the biggest embarrassment possible for the company, a media storm from San Francisco to St. Petersburg calling Twitter and American technology a joke?

  Then the gods intervened. “We’re back!” an engineer yelled as he leaned back in his chair, looking at Goldman. A sigh of relief enveloped the room.

  “Hello everyone!” Medvedev typed slowly in Russian into the Mac computer at the podium, “I’m on Twitter, and this is my first tweet.” Ev had a microphone in his hand, narrating to the employees and the media what was happening. As Medvedev pressed “send,” he looked up to the projector in front of him and smiled. The president then gave a thumbs-up with his left hand, beaming like a child who had just figured out a complicated puzzle. Biz, who was standing behind them both with his hands cupped in his jeans pockets, smiled as the screen’s reflection glimmered on his glasses.

  “Holy fuck,” he whispered to Ev as the president walked forward to talk to Mayor Newsom. “That was close.”

  Secret Meetings

  The front door to Jack’s apartment swung open and Dick walked in. He wandered down the hallway to the kitchen, which opened out onto the living room, then continued around the corner and over to the fridge. He pulled the handle back and then nodded as he peered inside. “Yep, just as I figured,” Dick said to Jack with a smile as he looked back at the fridge, empty except for a couple of bottles of water and beer. “It looks like a bachelor pad, all right.”

  As Jack laughed, Dick turned and strolled into the living and dining area to shake hands with Fenton and the few others who were in attendance, including an outside public-relations consultant Fenton had hired to help with any media-related issues that might arise from the meeting they were about to have.

  Jokes then ceased as the meeting got under way.

  It was the second of two private meetings that had taken place in Jack’s Mint Plaza loft over the summer of 2010. It had been a few months since Jack had started to convince the board and senior Twitter employees that it was Ev’s turn to be fired as the CEO of Twitter.

  Jack had had no problem convincing Fenton that Ev was the wrong person to run the company. Fenton had happily slurped up the Jack Kool-Aid since day one. But Jack had found it much more difficult to convince the rest of the board.

  Yet after Abbot, Ali, and other senior staffers complained to the board about Ev’s recent management choices, the near miss with the Russian president, Ev’s slothlike decision-making process, and his insistence on hiring friends, the tide had turned.

  Ensuring that the right things landed in the right people’s ears, Jack had spent the summer moving people around like pawns in a chess match against his nemesis. The problem was, Ev had no idea he was playing. These private meetings taking place at Jack’s apartment, at Blue Bottle Coffee, and at Square’s offices? Ev had no clue of their existence.

  After Jack had left a year and a half earlier, Fred and Bijan had believed that Ev was the right person to run Twitter. And Ev had quickly proven himself to them. But now, with revenue growing slowly and an entirely new set of problems having arisen with the massive growth spurts Twitter had experienced through 2009, the first investors were both questioning whether he was the right leader to take Twitter to the next level, which would include making the company consistently profitable—then, if all went according to plan, taking Twitter public. Their fears had been heightened when Jack had indirectly whispered in their ears that they could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in investment money with Ev at the helm.

  Of course, Ev didn’t have a chance to assuage anyone’s fears. As far as he knew, everything was just fine at Twitter. He held his weekly meetings with Campbell, receiving his boisterous pep talk. “You’re doing a fucking great job!” Campbell would bellow. At board meetings Campbell would appear to listen to Ev’s presentations on the state of the company. After Ev’s sermons were done, the coach would clap loudly and hug his protégé, proclaiming again to everyone in the room that Ev was “doing a fucking great job!” and asking them to clap (none of this was a usual occurrence in a corporate board meeting). Then, after Ev left the room, proud that his mentor thought he was doing such a great job, Campbell would shout at the group: “You gotta get rid of this fucking guy! He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing!”

  For some of the senior Twitter staffers, including Ali, the entire ordeal had come down to one major issue that could take Twitter out at the knees.

  Over the past year a company called UberMedia had been building and buying a number of third-party Twitter applications, including some big-name Twitter apps called Echofon and Twidroyd. UberMedia was managed by a shrewd businessman, Bill Gross, who was on the verge of buying another app, arguably one of the largest, called TweetDeck. But Gross had a much bigger plan in mind than just buying up third-party Twitter clients.

  Gross’s plan was to build a Twitter-network clone that could be used to divert people away from Twitter to an entirely new service, one where Gross could make money on advertising. He had also developed a business relationship with Ashton Kutcher and hoped to bring him into this new venture.

  When Ali and Dick found out about the TweetDeck deal, they realized that such a sale would give Gross ownership of 20 percent of all Twitter clients. Ali and others at Twitter wanted to buy TweetDeck before UberMedia did. But Ev couldn’t make a decision. He wondered if the tens of millions of dollars TweetDeck would cost would be worth it. One moment Ev agreed to buy the app, and the next he changed his mind, stalling the decision again.

  At Jack’s loft during the first of the private meetings, the group that met had made a pact on three things: first, that they would agree to stand together against Ev and Goldman no matter what happened; second, that they would remove Ev as CEO; and third, that they would ask Dick to become the interim CEO until they found a suitable replacement. Finally, they would bring Jack back to the company. Although Jack wanted to be CEO, he knew he couldn’t do it while running Square at the same time, but just returning would be enough. At least for now.

  Then there was the second meeting, where they told Dick part of the plan. He was being picked, they explained, because the employees trusted him and he could help as a transitional CEO until they found a permanent replacement. This they couldn’t do until Ev was out.

  Back at the Twitter offices, Ev was oblivious to the coup.
He was brimming with pride about the latest Twitter numbers: People were sending more than two billion tweets a month on the service, and millions of new accounts were being created each week. He was also exhilarated by the new and improved, redesigned version of Twitter he was planning to launch on September 14, 2010; it had been code-named Phoenix internally. Externally it would be called #NewTwitter and would take short snippets of media and embed them directly within a tweet. No more clicking off to other Web sites to see photos, videos, or links people were sharing; they would all exist within Twitter in little side panes. The 140-character tweet was becoming an envelope with more information inside.

  Although Twitter was now making more money with its advertising products, Ev wasn’t as concerned with the revenue side of the operation, which was more fuel for the board’s desire to oust him as CEO. Dick, on the other hand, had been leading the charge to make Twitter profitable, which contributed to the board’s decision to ask him to be the interim CEO when they thrust Ev out of the company.

  For Ev life was going according to plan. He and Sara were starting to try for a second child. He had cashed out a small amount of his Twitter stock, giving him millions of dollars to buy a new house in San Francisco and a second home in Tahoe, three hours northeast of the city, to go skiing with his family. Ev had continued to try and help the people close to him, giving money away in undisclosed ways. At a friend’s art opening, he anonymously purchased the artist’s work. He had also started to give vast sums away to charities, secretly donating hundreds of thousands of dollars. And taking care of his friends and family by paying off debts for those closest to him.

  Ev didn’t know anything about the private meetings or his lieutenants talking to the board or that his conversations with his coach would make their way back to Fenton and then Jack.

  As far as Ev knew, he was “doing a great fucking job!”

  The Clown Car in the Gold Mine

  It was mid-September 2010, the sun shining brightly through the window as Ev stood in his office, scribbling Twitter-related ideas on his whiteboard. Outside his office door, rows of cubicles were pulsating with the quiet murmur of keyboard taps and mouse clicks. The street below bustled with cars floating by.

  He looked up to see Campbell filling the doorway like a linebacker.

  Ev smiled, happy to see the Coach for their weekly session. Ev was in particularly good spirits; #NewTwitter was garnering good reviews from the tech critics. He was especially looking forward to a party planned that evening to help celebrate the employees’ months of hard work. The New York Times was also working on a large Sunday business profile about him: the billionaire farm boy who helped invent Blogger and Twitter. The man behind two companies that had changed media and the way people communicate.

  But Campbell looked troubled. “Have a seat,” he said solemnly to Ev. “This is going to be hard. We’re going to have a hard conversation.”

  Ev fell onto the couch, not sure what he was about to hear from Campbell. His mind started to race with possibilities. And then, like the thud of a bird flying into a clear glass window, Campbell told him. “The board wants you to step up to the chairman role.”

  Ev was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “The board is going to make Dick CEO,” Campbell said. “They want you to step down.”

  At first Ev thought Campbell was kidding around, and he laughed nervously. But Campbell wasn’t joking.

  “You’re being serious?” Ev asked, his heartbeat revving up. “I’m confused. What, what are you talking about?” he said, the smile now completely erased from his face. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  Then Campbell said it again. “The board doesn’t wasn’t you to be CEO. They want you to step down. They want you out.”

  Campbell continued talking, rambling about the board’s decision, about their belief that Ev wasn’t the right person to run Twitter. That he took too long to make decisions. That he couldn’t execute. “Look, these fucking guys. These fucking New York investors,” Campbell said, trying to show he had nothing to do with the decision.

  As Ev started to grasp that what he was hearing was actually real, he interrupted Campbell. “Are you for this too?” Ev asked. “Do you agree with the board?” Campbell started hemming and hawing, looking away from Ev, unable to properly answer him. “And are you for it too?” Ev asked again in a fierce tone, his disbelief now turning to anger.

  Again Campbell dithered, cursing about the board, the investors. “These fucking guys!” he said.

  Eventually Ev had heard enough and asked Campbell to leave so he could call the board and find out what was going on. He quickly started dialing.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry, man,” Bijan said. He sighed and told Ev that he thought he was a great CEO. “We want you to stay on in a product-advisory role,” Bijan said. “We don’t want you to leave the company. We think you’re really valuable to Twitter.” But, he explained, the company needed a new type of CEO who could focus on revenue and take Twitter public.

  Ev was stunned at what he was hearing. He hung up. He then called Fred Wilson, who was not remotely as friendly or apologetic as the others had been. Fred told him bluntly that he believed he had always been a terrible CEO, that he had no product sense. Fred said he hated the new Web site design, that it was the wrong direction for the company.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Ev said to Fred, his voice now shaking. “This is how VCs fuck up companies.

  “Where is this coming from? Every time I ever gave a product presentation to the board, you were always like, ‘Yeah, this is amazing, this is awesome,’” Ev said to Fred. “I know we weren’t executing well, but …” He paused, lowering his voice, and solemnly stated, “I really don’t know how you can do this to a founder of a company.”

  “I never considered you a founder,” Fred responded snidely, offended by Ev’s slur against VCs. “Jack founded Twitter.”

  Ev’s eyes widened. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he said. “You fucking fired Jack! This is insane. This is. Fucking. Insane.”

  “This is not a discussion,” Fred said. It had been decided by the board. Ev was not going to be CEO anymore.

  Ev was infuriated. He had no idea whom to trust. How long ago had the board decided to fire him? Could they fire him? After all, Ev still owned the largest majority stake in Twitter and owned two voting board seats.

  Ev tried several times to reach Fenton, repeatedly hearing his voice mail rather than his voice. He wanted to talk to Goldman and Biz. Were they in on this too? Campbell, Fred, Bijan, and Fenton all wanted him gone as CEO—that much was clear amid the fog of confusion—but what about “his boys”? Dick, his friend of many years, had to be a part of the coup if he was being made CEO, Ev reasoned.

  But not Goldman? or Biz? Ev thought, there was simply no way. Ev rushed out the door of his office and headed toward the third floor. He kept his head down to avoid talking to employees.

  “You okay?” Goldman said as Ev walked up, a worried look on his face. Ev pointed to the rear conference room. As they went inside, Goldman closed the door behind them and sat at the table, looking up at his best friend and boss inquisitively. There were no windows, just dim lights shining down from the ceiling. Outside the room, hundreds of employees buzzed away. Ev leaned back against the wall and told Goldman what had just happened. It was immediately apparent that Goldman had not been in on the boardroom rebellion.

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Goldman said in confusion. “What did they say?”

  Ev walked him through his conversation with Campbell, then the phone calls with Fred and Bijan, broadly explaining what each had said.

  Goldman was shocked.

  It was dark outside as the rain pelted Dick Costolo’s car relentlessly. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, trying to concentrate on the dark road. He was exhausted after the long flight from Indianapolis, where he had been speaking at a conference about Twitter.
A few more miles, he thought, and I’ll be home, out of these wet clothes.

  He had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and begun navigating the dark, winding roads that led to his home in Marin when his phone rang. He fumbled to answer it with the Bluetooth in his car.

  Ev and Goldman were sitting in another windowless conference room at Twitter on the sixth floor when the speakerphone finally clicked on. “Dick speaking,” they heard over the sound of buckets of water smacking the window and roof of the car.

  “What the fuck, Dick!” said Goldman. “So you’re going behind Ev’s back to be CEO of the company! I can’t believe—”

  Dick cut him off. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who is going to be CEO?”

  Ev slowly leaned in to the phone. “The board tried to fire me today and said they’re putting you in charge to run the company,” he said in a placid tone, then repeated: “They told me to step up to the chairman role and that you’re taking over.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? That’s news to me,” Dick said, sounding as surprised as Ev had been when he had heard the same news from Campbell earlier in the day. “Was anyone going to tell me?” he joked, his deep laugh bouncing from his car into the Twitter conference room.

  “You mean you didn’t know about this?” Goldman asked.

  “Noooo!” Dick said, shocked. “This is literally the first I’ve ever heard of it.” This wasn’t completely true, but it wasn’t completely untrue, either.

  Although the board had asked Dick to become interim CEO earlier that summer, Dick had asked that they execute it in a tactful way and that they determine how to tell Ev so it didn’t seem that Dick was pushing him out of the company to take control, which he was not. That plan had vanished into a plume of smoke when Campbell had shown up in Ev’s office earlier that day and delivered the wrong speech. Campbell, who had known about Ev’s approaching ousting for months (even during the coaching sessions), had suggested to the board that he tell Ev to step down, but he wasn’t supposed to mention the Dick part of the equation. That was supposed to come later.