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Twitter COO Dick Costolo Takes Over As CEO From Evan Williams

114 points by aditya 16y ago

pclark 16y ago
http://www.quora.com/How-much-credibility-is-there-to-the-report-that-Dick-Costolo-is-being-groomed-to-take-over-as-Twitters-CEO http://www.quora.com/How-much-credibility-is-there-to-the-re...
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  Chris was referring to the "being groomed" part of this rumor as being dogshit. We all know Costolo has no hair with which to be groomed anyways. Funny
seldo 16y ago
Yowza. This surprises me. I thought Ev was interested in running the company and building a legacy, but this looks more like a plan for a big exit.
- skbohra123 16y ago
  Actually this may prove more fruitful in the line of Google and MS. I think Google guys did the great thing by choosing a third person as CEO. This gives them more time to think on strategies and decisions.
  - macrael 16y ago
    What does a CEO do besides think on company wide strategies?
    - rcoder 16y ago
      Recruitment, monetization, and investor relationships are all part of a CEO's core responsibilities, and totally unrelated to building products or attracting users. If Ev wants to focus on those activities, it seems totally reasonable to hand over the CEO role to someone else.
- staunch 16y ago
  I don't see how it foretells any plans to exit. Perhaps Ev just doesn't have the desire to be CEO of a 300+ person company. It's quite possible Costolo was hired as COO as a way of transitioning him into the CEO spot if he did well. That would certainly seem like a pretty smart strategy.
  - teej 16y ago
    >> It's quite possible Costolo was hired as COO as a way of transitioning him into the CEO spot if he did well. I'm quite sure this is what happened. Here's a detailed breakdown from Shervin Pishevar on how SGN did practically the same thing. http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Shervin-Pishevar-is-out-as-CEO-of-SGN http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Shervin-Pishevar-is-out...
  - points 16y ago
    OTOH, Having 300+ people at some silly little micro blogging fad with very little revenue, doesn't seem like a pretty smart strategy.
    - points 16y ago
      So you downmodders think 300 employees is a reasonable number for a yet to be proved no business model startup? Wow.
      - ErrantX 16y ago
        Their quarterly revenue is, I believe, estimated somewhere in the region of $X million. I suspect you got so many downvotes, though, because of the dismissive tone of your comment.
        points 16y ago
        Their revenue is from 1, or at best 2 'customers', who could stop being 'customers' at the drop of a hat.
- jsm386 16y ago
  http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo/ 'New Twitter was definitely a trigger for this,' Williams told me. 'Conveniently, I took over the CEO role just about two years ago - and brought Dick in just about a year ago. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a product guy, and New Twitter seems to work out well,' he continued. 'New Twitter was a moment of clarity for all of us here,' Costolo added. '[With this change] Ev can once again focus on product.'
jw84 16y ago
It's good this coincided with me ordering some care from the care factory. HP hiring a no-name for CEO was more interesting. These things don't impact hackers on a day to day. Let's float up the revenue sharing tidbit and discuss that.
jonknee 16y ago
The tidbit I found most interesting was that Twitter claims 300 employees. That's at least twice the size I thought they were: "In fact, there are 300 people working at Twitter today—compared to about 20 when I took the CEO job two years ago."
- yesimahuman 16y ago
  I wonder what the break down of technical/sales/etc. people is. I was shocked, and I believe rightfully so, that digg even had 70+ employees. It just seems wasteful to me. Then again I don't know what work they have to do behind the scenes.
  - andre3k1 16y ago
    Digg has 70+ employees? Interesting. Doesn't Reddit have less than 10? Someone please fact check that for me.
    - kloncks 16y ago
      Reddit has 6. Digg has 60+.
      - trickjarrett 16y ago
        Quality over Quantity. I went with my bosses to visit one of our competitors a few weeks ago; they invited us for a tour. The CEO of the competitor believed that employee count was a direct indicator of the strength of a business. He bragged about having a staff 3x my company's, but the fact is that based on sales data, we're far more efficient, doing a percentage of their sales larger than the ratio of staff sizes.
      - elai 16y ago
        Reddit was 4 until recently. They did say they felt like they couldn't really go forward anywhere with that kind of staff although. I don't know if the new 2 hires are enough.
adityakothadiya 16y ago
This makes me admire Mark Zuckerberg more as he is heading such a big empire at such a small age! Facebook for sure had lot more challenges than Twitter for their Privacy issues and many new releases. Mark stood strong in all those incidents, and didn't give up. I remember his talk from StarupSchool, and how he was so supportive of Mark Picnus's advice on why founders need to be CEOs of their company.
- lrm242 16y ago
  Why the down votes here? It is pretty damn amazing that not only has Zuckerberg maintained control but he has also been smart enough to bring in talent to help him, personally, scale. It would have been easy for Mark to simply say, "Eh, I need to hire a CEO", or for him to listen to the countless investors and advisors that are almost certainly hinting to him that he should do so. Why did Ev step down? No one really knows. It, almost certainly, is not because doing so will enable him to now focus on product. As CEO it is quite easy for him to delegate nearly all of those responsibilities he wishes to ignore to Dick. No, giving Dick the title of CEO almost undoubtably has beneath it many more subtle reasons, some of which might simply be that Ev convinced himself he needed to do this for personal reasons. We'll never know, but IMO the "so I can focus on XXX" reason is never the real reason.
  - adityakothadiya 16y ago
    Exactly, that was the point. Even Mark Zuckerberg primarily focuses on Product and Platform, whereas COO Sheryl Sandberg focuses on other Biz Dev things. (From: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html) "Ms. Sandberg has focused on building the business, expanding internationally, cultivating relationships with large advertisers and putting her polish on things like communications and public policy. That has freed Mr. Zuckerberg to focus on what he likes best: the Facebook Web site and its platform."
- omfut 16y ago
  I totally agree with you on this. Its been remarkable how Mark is handling one of the best companies on planted today. I have been working in startups for more then a decade, and i know how difficult it is to run the show with ups and downs almost everyday. Hope Mark will write a book about how he managed the show.
DanielRibeiro 16y ago
Interesting tweet from the new CEO (a RT from @avibryant, http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/3962807808 http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/3962807808), likely to be a joke at the time (Sep 13, 2009): First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power
Nova1 16y ago
Speaking of CEO's has anyone here seen this wackjob? http://twitter.com/fahrenheit815 http://twitter.com/fahrenheit815
barmstrong 16y ago
"profitable" was mentioned a few times in there. Would be interesting if this means a bigger focus on making money for Twitter.

114 points by aditya 16y ago

http://www.quora.com/How-much-credibility-is-there-to-the-report-that-Dick-Costolo-is-being-groomed-to-take-over-as-Twitters-CEO http://www.quora.com/How-much-credibility-is-there-to-the-re...

ivankirigin 16y ago
Chris was referring to the "being groomed" part of this rumor as being dogshit. We all know Costolo has no hair with which to be groomed anyways. Funny

seldo 16y ago

Yowza. This surprises me. I thought Ev was interested in running the company and building a legacy, but this looks more like a plan for a big exit.

skbohra123 16y ago
Actually this may prove more fruitful in the line of Google and MS. I think Google guys did the great thing by choosing a third person as CEO. This gives them more time to think on strategies and decisions.
- macrael 16y ago
  What does a CEO do besides think on company wide strategies?
  - rcoder 16y ago
    Recruitment, monetization, and investor relationships are all part of a CEO's core responsibilities, and totally unrelated to building products or attracting users. If Ev wants to focus on those activities, it seems totally reasonable to hand over the CEO role to someone else.
staunch 16y ago
I don't see how it foretells any plans to exit. Perhaps Ev just doesn't have the desire to be CEO of a 300+ person company. It's quite possible Costolo was hired as COO as a way of transitioning him into the CEO spot if he did well. That would certainly seem like a pretty smart strategy.
- teej 16y ago
  >> It's quite possible Costolo was hired as COO as a way of transitioning him into the CEO spot if he did well. I'm quite sure this is what happened. Here's a detailed breakdown from Shervin Pishevar on how SGN did practically the same thing. http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Shervin-Pishevar-is-out-as-CEO-of-SGN http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Shervin-Pishevar-is-out...
- points 16y ago
  OTOH, Having 300+ people at some silly little micro blogging fad with very little revenue, doesn't seem like a pretty smart strategy.
  - points 16y ago
    So you downmodders think 300 employees is a reasonable number for a yet to be proved no business model startup? Wow.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      Their quarterly revenue is, I believe, estimated somewhere in the region of $X million. I suspect you got so many downvotes, though, because of the dismissive tone of your comment.
      - points 16y ago
        Their revenue is from 1, or at best 2 'customers', who could stop being 'customers' at the drop of a hat.
jsm386 16y ago
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/04/twitter-ceo-dick-costolo/ 'New Twitter was definitely a trigger for this,' Williams told me. 'Conveniently, I took over the CEO role just about two years ago - and brought Dick in just about a year ago. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a product guy, and New Twitter seems to work out well,' he continued. 'New Twitter was a moment of clarity for all of us here,' Costolo added. '[With this change] Ev can once again focus on product.'

jw84 16y ago

It's good this coincided with me ordering some care from the care factory. HP hiring a no-name for CEO was more interesting. These things don't impact hackers on a day to day. Let's float up the revenue sharing tidbit and discuss that.

jonknee 16y ago

The tidbit I found most interesting was that Twitter claims 300 employees. That's at least twice the size I thought they were: "In fact, there are 300 people working at Twitter today—compared to about 20 when I took the CEO job two years ago."

yesimahuman 16y ago
I wonder what the break down of technical/sales/etc. people is. I was shocked, and I believe rightfully so, that digg even had 70+ employees. It just seems wasteful to me. Then again I don't know what work they have to do behind the scenes.
- andre3k1 16y ago
  Digg has 70+ employees? Interesting. Doesn't Reddit have less than 10? Someone please fact check that for me.
  - kloncks 16y ago
    Reddit has 6. Digg has 60+.
    - trickjarrett 16y ago
      Quality over Quantity. I went with my bosses to visit one of our competitors a few weeks ago; they invited us for a tour. The CEO of the competitor believed that employee count was a direct indicator of the strength of a business. He bragged about having a staff 3x my company's, but the fact is that based on sales data, we're far more efficient, doing a percentage of their sales larger than the ratio of staff sizes.
    - elai 16y ago
      Reddit was 4 until recently. They did say they felt like they couldn't really go forward anywhere with that kind of staff although. I don't know if the new 2 hires are enough.

adityakothadiya 16y ago

This makes me admire Mark Zuckerberg more as he is heading such a big empire at such a small age! Facebook for sure had lot more challenges than Twitter for their Privacy issues and many new releases. Mark stood strong in all those incidents, and didn't give up. I remember his talk from StarupSchool, and how he was so supportive of Mark Picnus's advice on why founders need to be CEOs of their company.

lrm242 16y ago
Why the down votes here? It is pretty damn amazing that not only has Zuckerberg maintained control but he has also been smart enough to bring in talent to help him, personally, scale. It would have been easy for Mark to simply say, "Eh, I need to hire a CEO", or for him to listen to the countless investors and advisors that are almost certainly hinting to him that he should do so. Why did Ev step down? No one really knows. It, almost certainly, is not because doing so will enable him to now focus on product. As CEO it is quite easy for him to delegate nearly all of those responsibilities he wishes to ignore to Dick. No, giving Dick the title of CEO almost undoubtably has beneath it many more subtle reasons, some of which might simply be that Ev convinced himself he needed to do this for personal reasons. We'll never know, but IMO the "so I can focus on XXX" reason is never the real reason.
- adityakothadiya 16y ago
  Exactly, that was the point. Even Mark Zuckerberg primarily focuses on Product and Platform, whereas COO Sheryl Sandberg focuses on other Biz Dev things. (From: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03face.html) "Ms. Sandberg has focused on building the business, expanding internationally, cultivating relationships with large advertisers and putting her polish on things like communications and public policy. That has freed Mr. Zuckerberg to focus on what he likes best: the Facebook Web site and its platform."
omfut 16y ago
I totally agree with you on this. Its been remarkable how Mark is handling one of the best companies on planted today. I have been working in startups for more then a decade, and i know how difficult it is to run the show with ups and downs almost everyday. Hope Mark will write a book about how he managed the show.

DanielRibeiro 16y ago

Interesting tweet from the new CEO (a RT from @avibryant, http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/3962807808 http://twitter.com/#!/dickc/status/3962807808), likely to be a joke at the time (Sep 13, 2009): First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power

Nova1 16y ago

Speaking of CEO's has anyone here seen this wackjob? http://twitter.com/fahrenheit815 http://twitter.com/fahrenheit815

barmstrong 16y ago

"profitable" was mentioned a few times in there. Would be interesting if this means a bigger focus on making money for Twitter.