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

by Nick Bilton

  “This is so fucking gross,” employees would say when they saw the ransacked fruit each morning.

  So it was decided: The mice had to be exterminated—with traps, poison, whatever it took. When Biz found out about the plan to have the mice killed, he arrived on the scene like a hostage negotiator at an elementary school.

  “You are not killing those mice,” he said. People looked at him, unsure if he was joking. “I’m not kidding; no one is touching them.”

  Everyone tried to reason with him that the mice were eating the fruit, that they were dirty, that …

  “I don’t give a shit. There is no fucking way we are setting traps and killing mice,” he said sternly, tears welling in his eyes, his hands shaking with anger, his fists clenched, baffled that anyone would harm an animal, especially one as small and helpless as a little mouse. “It’s not going to happen,” he repeated. “No one is killing the mice!”

  It was the first time anyone had seen Biz erupt like that. Though it wasn’t the last, over the next four years it would happen only a handful of times.

  On the morning of October 3, 2010, two days after Ev had been fired as CEO in the law offices, Biz woke from a groggy, post-Japan, jet-lagged sleep, and although he didn’t know it yet, it was about to happen again. This time it would be about protecting not mice but instead Ev, his boss and closest friend of nearly a decade.

  Biz tended to the pets in the house. Made his morning coffee. Kissed Livy good-bye, apologizing that he had to work on a Sunday, and set off into San Francisco.

  Twitter’s offices were still and windless in the early morning. The lights were off. Computers sleeping. Motionless. Outside, the occasional empty taxi passed by as early risers walked their dogs. Small, puffy clouds crept across the sky like sleepy turtles covered in cotton balls. A few blocks away AT&T Park was stretching awake, getting ready for game day, when the San Francisco Giants would take on the Padres.

  But the calm in the office was about to be broken, another storm about to erupt. In a couple of hours, Twitter would come alive with cursing and tension that the office had never seen before. And the first cracks of thunder could be heard in the distance, from New York, when an e-mail from Fred arrived in everyone’s in-box at 9:57 A.M., addressed to Ev but including the entire board and Biz.

  “Ev,” it began, “Peter, Bijan, and I will not be at the Company on Monday as we all discussed.” Then he highlighted six bullet points that should be communicated to Twitter employees and the media, most of which Ev already knew: Dick is becoming interim CEO; the board will eventually perform a CEO search to replace him; Ev will still be on the board, have an office at Twitter, represent the company externally, and contribute to product strategy. But there was a new addition to the announcement. “You will no longer have an operating role in the Company,” Fred wrote.

  Ev read the line a few times, confused. When he had agreed to step down on Friday, he had been told by Fenton that he would be the president of product at Twitter, ensuring the site continued on a design-based trajectory, not a money-minded one. Now, as he made his way into the office to plan the company announcement that he thought would simply state a change of roles, he was being told that there had been a bait and switch.

  Like Jack two years earlier and Noah two years before that, Ev was officially out of a job at Twitter. And like his two cofounders, he was completely powerless to do anything about it. Which the board knew. He had officially stepped down as CEO, so any previous deals that had not been inked on paper or pixelated over e-mail were null and void. The decision now lay with Jack, the executive chairman, and Dick, who was officially and legally Ev’s boss at Twitter.

  One by one, Ev, Dick, Biz, Goldman, Amac, and Sean Garrett, who ran the public-relations team, streamed into the office. The lights clicked on. Computers gasped for air as their fans whirred to life. The executive assistants arrived, ready to help their bosses.

  The meetings began.

  The executives shuffled in and out of three different conference rooms. And although they were holding meetings that would decide the fate of Ev, they looked like children who had come into an empty office with their parents and been left alone to play hide-and-seek.

  But the mood wasn’t jovial. There was no laughing. There was only tension that could have been sliced with a tweet and sadness, even among the winning team.

  Goldman was despondent as he sulked into the office, especially after reading Fred’s e-mail. They had lost, and Ev was out. It was over. All that was left to do was write the press release that would go into the history books describing a made-up version of how the battle ended.

  But Biz was genuinely confused. “I don’t understand how they can just throw away this guy’s entire career,” he said to Goldman as they talked about Fred’s e-mail. “Don’t these people have feelings?” Although Biz was a cofounder of Twitter, he had never really had much power at the company. He had never understood what drove the “money guys.” The e-mail from the board seemed utterly unfair.

  As they shuffled between the conference rooms, one of the public-relations employees sat on the couch in the hallway, her laptop open as she wrote different variations of the blog post that would go up on the site on Monday morning. The first version was going to announce that Ev was leaving the company for good and Jack, the exiled founder, was returning. But as the day progressed, the plan and blog post would change several times.

  Kris, Ev’s assistant, had been asked to go through Dick’s tweets, highlighting any that could be perceived as controversial. As she scrolled through his thousands of 140-character updates, she stopped midscreen and rolled her eyes as she called people over to look at the message he had jokingly sent a year earlier: “First full day as Twitter COO tomorrow. Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power.”

  First Ev went into the Puffin conference room with Dick and tried to pitch Dick on allowing him to stay at the company.

  “It’s not up to me, it’s up to the board,” Dick said.

  “You’re the CEO, you have to decide,” Ev pleaded.

  The conversation continued and then grew heated. “I’m not doing it,” people heard Dick yell from the hallway. “I’m not fucking doing it!”

  Moments later Ev emerged, his head hanging low. Biz walked into the room. “Ev just left here looking very disappointed,” he said to Dick. “What happened?”

  Dick explained that Ev had proposed taking a lead product role, with Dick’s becoming the permanent CEO, but he once again refused to accept the proposal, telling Biz, “I’m uncomfortable doing it because it will look like I did a trade to get this position.”

  Biz shook his head, defeated like Ev, and walked out.

  Dick had been told by the board to stand firm in the decision that Ev was out of a job. Even if Dick wanted to keep Ev in the company, the verdict was out of his hands; the people above him had already made their decision.

  People talked on phones to board members. There were private meetings about private meetings. And then they all shuffled into the main conference room—Dick, Sean, Amac, Goldman, Biz, and Ev—to hash out how Monday would transpire.

  “So here’s the deal,” Dick said. “Ev’s out and I’m interim CEO …” He continued to talk, explaining what the messaging to the world would say. Ev sat silently, helpless in the company that two days earlier he had been running.

  “And then Jack will be here …,” Dick continued as he spoke about the plan, which included Jack being present at the announcement that Ev was leaving the company.

  Then Biz quietly interrupted in a sort of whisper. “I’m sorry, but I’m confused. Why can’t we just say Ev’s going to be in charge of product?” Biz asked Dick as he sat across from him.

  “I’m not doing that,” Dick said matter-of-factly.

  “Why not?” Biz asked, genuinely bewildered by what was happening.

  “I’m not going to do a trade; I’m not going to have it come out later that the only reason I’m CEO is because I horse-
traded,” Dick said, slamming his fingers repeatedly on the table as he spoke. Biz again looked at him with confusion, partially because he didn’t understand what the term “horse-trade” meant but also because he couldn’t comprehend that the board was capable of just pushing Ev out of Twitter without compromise. Dick repeated himself: “I’m not going to have my whole thing be that the reason I’m CEO is because I did a deal.”

  Biz’s face twitched slightly as he listened.

  “Everybody stop for a second!” Biz said as he held his hand in the air like a traffic cop. “Just stop, for one second.” He looked directly at Dick as everyone sat silently and watched Biz, whose voice was now shaky.

  “Dick!” he said loudly. “Please explain to me—let me see if I have this right—you will not agree with the idea that Ev is head of product and you are CEO because you’re uncomfortable?” Biz said.

  “That’s exactly right,” Dick replied tersely.

  “Well!” Biz started to shout. “Well! How about you fucking be uncomfortable in reference to the entire fucking career of this guy?” Biz said, his arm now pointing at Ev. “How about you be fucking uncomfortable?”

  The room was dead silent. Not a squeak as Biz glared directly at Dick. Then Biz lowered his voice, hopelessness in his tone. “You can’t be uncomfortable for the sake of Ev’s entire career?”

  Everyone looked at Biz, stunned expressions on their faces. Biz sat there, half-irate, half-exhilarated by his own outburst.

  Dick stared back at him, silent for a moment, his brain weighing the ethical decision versus the business one. “All right, fine,” Dick said. “Fine. I’ll do it. Fine, fine, fine.” He stood up and walked out of the room as he spoke. “I’ve gotta go call Fenton and talk to him.”

  Dick walked into the cafeteria as he put his cell phone to his ear, leaning against the window of the cavernous, empty room, where in less than twenty-four hours employees would greet him as the new CEO of Twitter.

  Biz and Goldman followed behind, cutting in the other direction and heading into a different conference room. The executive assistants in the hallway watched in confusion as people zigzagged all over the place. Kris sent a series of text messages to Sara, who was home with the baby, and gave her updates about what was going on.

  Biz’s hands were shaking with adrenaline as he called Bijan, who was greeted by a confident, forceful Biz on the other end of the line as Biz laid into him. “Look, if Ev doesn’t come in on Monday, I’m not coming in on Monday!” Biz said emphatically. “And you can deal with this announcement on your own, without me, without Goldman, and without Ev, which is going to be a giant fucking disaster.”

  Goldman sat quietly as he listened to Biz talk to Bijan as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Bijan didn’t need much convincing. He felt bad about the way things had transpired but also knew that the investors needed to ensure they didn’t lose the hundreds of millions of dollars that were at stake if Twitter failed. Like Dick, he was caught between morality and business interests. As Bijan started to speak, Biz cut him off. “And you guys need to make Dick the full-time CEO—none of this ‘interim’ bullshit.” He explained that the company and its employees had already been through enough, and the current plan, which would mean firing one CEO, bringing in an interim CEO, and then searching for a third CEO, would destroy the employees’ confidence in Twitter.

  “Okay, I get it, I get it,” Bijan said. “Let me call Fred and Fenton and talk to them.”

  After the calls wrapped up, they all reconvened back in the conference room and put together what would be the final plan—a plan that Jack was not happy about, as it meant he would not be in attendance for the Monday-morning announcement; a plan that would allow Ev to keep a job at the company as director of product. But Jack knew it was a plan that would last only a little while. Ev did not.

  October 4, 2010, 10:43 A.M.

  The Twitter Office

  “Get out,” Ev said to the woman standing in his office doorway. “I’m going to throw up.”

  She stepped backward, pulling the door closed, a metal clicking sound reverberating through the room as he grabbed the black wastebasket in the corner of his office with hands that were now shaking and clammy.

  It was Monday morning, forty-seven minutes before Ev would deliver his speech to the company. A company that, outside that door, had no idea what the day would bring.

  The office had opened as usual. The coffeepots were filled. Employees trundled in thinking it was just another Monday morning at Twitter. Maybe a celebrity would arrive unannounced again. Or a politician. Maybe there would be a tasty delivery from a food truck or a local ice-cream parlor, thanking the company for all it had done to help their business grow.

  There were links being shared on Twitter about the latest issues of the New Yorker, the Economist, and the New York Times, each with an article about Twitter’s role in the revolutions now taking place in the Middle East, revolutions that were beginning to spread to more countries in the tumultuous region, all thanks to Twitter.

  Goldman had arrived early on that Monday morning. He had taken a couple of very trusted employees aside and told them a variation of the story that would be told to the media later that day. Then Ev and Sara had come in, walking into his office as he prepared for what was coming next. “Are you okay?” Sara asked, as he responded that he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t know if it was his nerves, or if he was coming down with something, but either way, his stomach churned. Sara left the room as one of the public-relations employees walked into Ev’s office to review the speech he would give in forty-five minutes. And then he interrupted her.

  The door closed as Ev fell to his knees to the rough carpet floor.

  This was it. His last act as the CEO: staring at the bottom of a garbage can, searching for how he had gotten there. Searching memories that had been blogged, photographed, and tweeted over the past decade but still lingered somewhere else, lost in a sea of tens of billions of tweets.

  He searched the emptiness for answers. How was he forty-five minutes away from being thrust out of the company he had started, the company he had financed with his own money, the company he loved, the company he had hired his friends to help run? Some who had betrayed him.

  He searched his memory looking for answers. But even when you bury those memories on the Internet as tweets, you have to remember which box you hid them in. And when you put them there. If there’s no X to mark the spot, there is no spot.

  Even on the Internet, the elephant that never forgets, memories are still forgotten.

  Ev had known all along that it had never been about the money. A billionaire still throws up into a garbage can. It was about making a dent in the universe. About power, the power that had been sucked from politicians and Hollywood, from celebrities, revolutionaries, corporations, and the media, then siphoned through this bizarre fucking thing called Twitter. This accidental thing that had tipped the world upside down.

  Now it was time for Ev’s world to tip. And in that moment, staring at the floor, alone, he felt it. The feeling of regret.

  The door to his office opened and Sara walked in. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fuck.”

  Dick was on the phone next door, peering down as he paced in his office, talking about Jack’s return to the company. A new plan was being hatched.

  Biz sat down at his computer and typed out an e-mail to the company telling everyone to meet at 11:30 A.M. in the cafeteria. No outsiders allowed; put them in the lobby until after the meeting; there will be no hummus, just important news.

  And then it was time.

  Employees stood up from their desks, walking through the labyrinthine halls of Twitter as they shuffled into the cafeteria, a quiet and confused hum echoing through the room. They found their seats.

  Then Ev appeared, Biz and Goldman in tow.

  Then Dick.

  Ev walked out, a microphone in his hand, and delivered his own eulogy, telling employees that he had deci
ded to step into a product role and had asked Dick to take over as CEO. A solemn few words said in an upbeat tone. Then he stepped aside, handing the microphone to the new CEO of Twitter. The third CEO in two years.

  At 11:40 A.M., as Dick took the helm, a woman from the public-relations team, who sat in the audience with her laptop open, hit “publish” on the blog post announcing that Dick Costolo was the new CEO and that Evan Williams, of his own volition, had stepped down to focus on product.

  “If we want to get Twitter to a hundred-billion-dollar company,” Dick said to the audience, “Ev and I agreed that this is the best move for the company.”

  Within seconds the press started scrambling to cover the announcement. An announcement that didn’t mention the vicious mutiny that had taken place in the boardrooms of Twitter over the past months. An announcement that didn’t mention that Ev had almost been completely out of a job. And one that didn’t mention that Jack Dorsey would be returning to the company. That was all still to come.

  V.

  #DICK

  No Adult Supervision

  Do you smell that?” a round-faced Twitter engineer said as he peered up from his cubicle. It was late in the afternoon on a Thursday. Moments earlier the office had been as serene and calm as a summer lake, the only sound a faint white noise coming from employees’ computers.

  “It smells like weed,” the engineer said to his cubicle mates as he took a deep whiff to be sure his nose was being honest. “Right? That’s weed?”

  Another engineer sat up, now sniffing too. “Wait, is that rap music?” he asked.

  They looked at each other, trying to figure out what was going on.

  They didn’t know it, but two hours earlier the metal elevator doors on the sixth floor of Twitter’s office had quietly slid open and, like a scene from the beginning of a rap video, an entourage of a dozen large men, most of them black, had poured into the lobby.