07:33 PM

Silicon Valley Goes To Oxford: Twitter Co-Founder Says It Would Not Sell for $5 Billion - Wants To Do More

Every year the Saїd Business School, University of Oxford, hosts its "Silicon Valley Comes To Oxford" event and invites well known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

At this year's event Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, was one of many featured speakers. As usual, he was asked if Twitter is for sale, reports Mike Magee at TechEye:

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said today that even if the company was offered $4 billion or $5 billion, it's still not ready to be sold.


He said that although it was Twitter's fiduciary duty to its shareholders to consider bids, it maintained that it was still not ready for such a move.

Twitter's valuation on Sharespost, a secondary market for shares held in private companies, is $3.36 billion. Clearly, Twitter believes its value is far higher than the trades made by its investors.

The rest of the TechEye report is also interesting:

Did you know that if you're a Twitter aficionado, it's because you're flocking like a flocking bird? That realisation, said Stone, made his hair stand on end...

They decided to build a status building system and that's how Twitter was born - it took two weeks to build a prototype. They showed it off to the rest of their colleagues who weren't very impressed. The world at large thought it was a really stupid idea, he said.

"We were ridiculed so much it actually helped us." Even in the protoype phase, Twitter was making him giggle and the important thing with Twitter is the emotional involvement. In the first nine months, no one said Twitter was useful, to which its co-founder Evan replied, neither is ice cream. "Does that mean we should ban ice cream?"

Twitter was a blast.

In March 2007, South by South West in Austin triggered a great deal of interest in Twitter. About 75,000 people were using Twitter and this became the first time they'd seen it operating "in the wild". In the middle of a panel a lot of people got up to leave and it turned out people were twittering to each other there was a much more interesting lecture going on in another hall.


While it looks complicated when birds do it, it's rudimentary behaviour that allows people to behave as one organism.

They formed Twitter Inc within two days of that realisation.


He wanted to say, when journalists asked him what role Twitter had in the revolt to say "Well, I wasn't happy with that regime". Afterwards, he said, he looked up where Moldovia was on Wikipedia.

He realised, he said, that Twitter wasn't going to be a triumph of technology but of humanity, because, he claims, people are basically good.


It's a real time network available to everyone with even the most rudimentary communications devices.He said when he was a little kid, he was put into a programme called Boy Rangers, modelled after native American Indians and had to endure feats of strength, make their own wampum, and advance from papoose to warrior.

The other kids called him Chief Owlbear.He never learned soccer or played baseball. At high school he wanted to join a team but was intimidated by all the lines on the field. Lacrosse, he said, wasn't supported by his high school so he assembled a bunch of kids and a coach and then won a lot of games.

The lesson that taught him was that opportunities can be manufactured. You can create those circumstances yourself and step into them. He took a job in the field of graphics design because it teaches you there are so many different creative answers to the one problems.


Mistakes, said Stone, are how we learn and that's universally recognised. Twitter loves it when people tell them they've had two failed businesses.

Stone likes making mistakes, especially really publicly. Every time Twitter makes a really public mistake it shows the kind of integrity people have.If you own up and say exactly what went wrong, that builds up goodwill and trust. Even though you're making mistakes you're giving them a peep into your soul.

He relishes absolutely screwing up."Make mistakes, enjoy them," said Stone. He reckons to succeed spectacularly you have to be ready to fail spectacularly. If you don't totally fail, you won't get to where you want to get to. You can't do things that safely in the real world.


Assumption 1 is that we can change the world, build a business and have fun. That's the definition of success for Twitter.

Assumption 2 is that we don't always know what's going to happen.

Assumption 3 is that there's a creative answer to every problem. And that can be wacky.





You can read more here: Silicon Valley comes to Oxford: We're still not up for sale, Twitter co-founder says - Why we're all flocking mad | TechEye

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Also: Please see:

Twitter's Ev Williams and Biz Stone At Inforum: Surprisingly Little Insight Into Twitter... - SVW

Massive 8x Jump In Twitter Use By Twitter Co-Founder Ev Williams - SVW