Hatching Twitter

This book reinforces the San Francisco founder spirit:

Most founders are no more exceptional than you are.

Hatching Twitter is about the origin story of the company and its founders.

Not knowing anything about the lore, I was surprised to learn how tumultuous the entire journey was, from the original idea to constant fighting between its founders, Game of Thrones style:

• Multiple people ousted as CEO; so much backstabbing that the founders probably don't talk to each other anymore
• Disagreement around what Twitter "should be" as it grew (is it a micro blogging platform? Is it about my status? Or what's happening in the world?)
• The poorly engineered system that would barely keep up with exploding demand

While the book overall was entertaining, there was nothing ground breaking about business (I've read too many startup memoirs at this point). But it was still pretty interesting to learn how everything unfolded behind the scenes.

For example, I didn't realize that they started as a podcasting platform for 2 years until Apple ultimately forced them to pivot with the iTunes launch. Success doesn't happen overnight, as much as TechCrunch wants us to believe!

I talk to a lot of founders and pivoting is pretty normalized, so it was funny seeing them go through it as well. One of the perks of living in SF - pivoting is embraced!

Even then, the story of how Twitter got its first few hundred users shows it wasn't an obvious path: going to parties and begging people to sign up. I actually found this endearing and relatable because it shows that there isn't a secret sauce on how to go viral, other than good old fashioned hustling. Yes, it was an idea at the "perfect" time (internet boom, a couple of years before mobile apps blew up with the iPhone), but there were enough obstacles along the way that didn't make it obvious.

The most disappointing revelation was about Jack Dorsey. While he was part of the founding team, he got fired as CEO for performance reasons. This caused him to go on a publicity tour claiming he was the solo founder and had dreamed up Twitter since childhood - none of which was true.

I found it disappointing because I respect him and his accomplishments, but the way he treated people close to him was really poor form. I guess that's a bitter lesson - the winners write history!

If anything, it taught me that I should market myself more (without burning bridges)!