Hatching Twitter Part 16

"The board is going to make d.i.c.k 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 f.u.c.king guys. These f.u.c.king 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 f.u.c.king 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 f.u.c.k are you talking about?" Ev said to Fred, his voice now shaking. "This is how VCs f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k are you talking about?" he said. "You f.u.c.king fired Jack! This is insane. This is. f.u.c.king. 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"? d.i.c.k, 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 f.u.c.king 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 d.i.c.k 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. "d.i.c.k speaking," they heard over the sound of buckets of water smacking the window and roof of the car.

"What the f.u.c.k, d.i.c.k!" said Goldman. "So you're going behind Ev's back to be CEO of the company! I can't believe-"

d.i.c.k cut him off. "What the f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k are you talking about? That's news to me," d.i.c.k 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!" d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k to become interim CEO earlier that summer, d.i.c.k had asked that they execute it in a tactful way and that they determine how to tell Ev so it didn't seem that d.i.c.k was pus.h.i.+ng 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 d.i.c.k part of the equation. That was supposed to come later.

d.i.c.k had been caught between ethics and business amid the ousting of his friend and boss and he often found himself at a loss for what to do. He had a.s.sumed the board would handle it tactfully. But now it had all gone awry.

As d.i.c.k drove through the dark along the wet road, he explained to Ev and Goldman that he was going to tell the board he wouldn't take the job without Ev's consent-and since that clearly wasn't being given, he wouldn't do it.

As they hung up the phone, Goldman looked over at Ev and asked if he believed d.i.c.k. "I have no idea," Ev said. "I really have no f.u.c.king idea who to believe anymore."

Over the following days, events started to play out exactly as they had with Jack two years earlier.

Ev called Ted, Twitter's lawyer, who repeated almost verbatim the words he had said to Jack when he was fired. "There isn't much you can do," he said. "It comes down to a vote by the board." Then, reading from the next line in the script, Ted explained that he was sorry, that he really couldn't talk to Ev about it because first and foremost, he was Twitter's lawyer.

Goldman then went on the offensive, telling the board that they clearly didn't understand Ev if they thought he would simply step down. "This isn't just going to happen like that," he said. "If you push him out, I'm going to leave. So is Biz. So are half of the employees. You're going to lose all of us." He was right. Most of the Twitter employees loved Ev. More than half would have gladly put their few digital belonging onto thumb drives and walked out with him if Ev had asked them to. He had gone to great efforts to be the best boss he could be, and he had been successful. But while he was adept at managing down, managing up and sideways to his senior staffers was an entirely different story.

The conversations started to turn into a merry-go-round. "f.u.c.k this." "f.u.c.k that." "f.u.c.k you." Fenton came into the office to try to push things along. "I told you to manage Campbell," Fenton told Ev as they talked in his office. "I'm really sorry about this, but I told you to manage his ego."

"How the f.u.c.k is this up to Campbell?" Ev asked, cursing repeatedly, his hands shaking with anger. "Look, I totally acknowledge I'm not the best CEO, but you can't put d.i.c.k in as CEO. He's not a product guy; he's an operations guy."

"We'll sort the product stuff out later," Fenton told him.

"How?"

"I don't know; we'll just figure it out. You'll be involved at a high level; maybe Jack can come back and help out."

And there it was. Like a punch to the stomach. The word "Jack" hung in the air. "Wait, what did you just say?" Ev asked, his hands now still, his eyes hyperfocused on Fenton. "You're going to bring Jack back?"

"No, no. I don't know if Jack will come back. That isn't my decision; it will be the decision of the new CEO," Fenton said.

Another few days went by and there was a closed meeting of Campbell, Ev, and the rest of the board. d.i.c.k was sitting downstairs at his office, working away on daily operations.

After talking to the lawyers, Ev had realized he would indeed have to step down as CEO, but he also knew he could slow the transition and find the right replacement for Twitter.

"Should we hire someone outside the company, do a search for an executive, or should we just make d.i.c.k the CEO?" Campbell, who had commandeered the meeting, asked Ev.

Ev said d.i.c.k had done great work for the company, but "he's not the right guy to be CEO."

"So if he's not the right guy, should we let d.i.c.k go?" Campbell asked Ev.

Ev paused. "If I step down as CEO, I will likely be taking d.i.c.k's role, so yes, we should let him go."

"Okay!" Campbell said as he slapped the table then stood up as people started beckoning him to stop. "Shouldn't we talk about this?" Fenton said frantically.

"No. Guys, we're running a start-up here!" Campbell said as he stormed out of the room, leaving a shocked boardroom in his wake. Moments later Campbell was sitting in d.i.c.k's office and telling him he was fired and needed to call the board and resign without severance.

"What, what are you talking about?" d.i.c.k said, utterly and completely confused. "Are you joking?" One minute he was being told he was going to be the next CEO of Twitter, the next he was fired from the company.

d.i.c.k sat, mouth agape, unsure what to do as Campbell walked out after his speech where he told d.i.c.k that they would find another company in the Valley where he could become the CEO.

As soon as the board heard, d.i.c.k's phone started ringing, with Fred and Bijan telling him, "Don't go anywhere! You're not fired!"

When the weekend arrived, d.i.c.k and Ev decided to meet for brunch in Marin County. d.i.c.k had spent countless nights trying to decide what to do, and here he was again, stuck between the ethics of a friends.h.i.+p and his desire to see Twitter, with all of its employees, grow into a successful company.

"Listen, you brought me in here, and I told you when I started that I would never go behind your back, and I won't," d.i.c.k told Ev as they sat across from each other eating breakfast. "So you tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it."

"I need you to quit so I can focus on a CEO search," Ev said.

"Okay, great," d.i.c.k said, gently tapping his hand on the table between each word. "Great. I'll e-mail Ted and ask him to draw up papers and sort out my severance." He was trying to do the right thing by Ev, and he reasoned this was it.

But as soon as the board found out d.i.c.k was resigning, his phone started ringing again. "Don't quit!" Fenton told him.

"Jesus," d.i.c.k said, "what the f.u.c.k do you want me to do?"

"Don't do anything!"

Finally Fred had had enough.

An e-mail had arrived in everyone's in-box saying that Fred and Bijan were getting on a plane and flying to San Francisco for a meeting. Attached was a legal doc.u.ment noting that the entire board would be present. "Apologies for the formal notice, but I am told this is required," Fred said in the e-mail.

"Notice is hereby given to the members of the Board of Directors of Twitter, Inc. ("Twitter") of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors. This Special Meeting is being called pursuant to Article II, Section 2.4 of the Bylaws of Twitter. The Special Meeting will be held in person on Friday, October 1, 2010, at 2:00 p.m., local time, at the offices of Fenwick & West, 555 California Street, 12th Floor, San Francisco, California."

It was signed by Fenton, Bijan, Fred, and Jack.

Although Biz knew the gist of what was happening with Ev and the board, he didn't know the full extent of it. Nor did he care to. He had never wanted a seat in Twitter's boardroom. Company warfare wasn't his thing. He preferred to build moral fences around corporate castles. But whether he liked it or not, he was about to become a foot soldier in the latest battle.

As the legal letter went from Fred to the board, Biz had set off to j.a.pan for some press and meetings. The trip was going smoothly until, one afternoon, while he was walking through the hallway of the Twitter office in j.a.pan, his phone rang. He looked down, saw the name Jack Dorsey pop up, slid his finger across the screen, and lifted the phone to his ear.

"Ev's out as CEO," Jack said without skipping a beat. "You have to come back so we can tell the company tomorrow." Biz was standing in a hallway, j.a.panese Twitter employees milling by as he heard Jack talking. "Hold on, hold on," Biz said as he peered from side to side looking for a quiet place to talk without people overhearing him. He quickly opened the first door he saw and ducked inside, closing it behind him.

"What are you talking about?" Biz said. Jack explained what had happened-the letter from Fred, the scheduled meeting at the law office-and that the plan was to announce that Ev was leaving the company the following day, Friday. (Ev didn't know about this plan either.) "You can't do this without me," Biz said, looking around the room, which he now realized was a computer closet filled with racks of servers that were powering Twitter's j.a.panese office. Rivers of blue Ethernet wires crisscrossed the floors and walls.

"I know we can't. That's why you need to come back now. You need to get back here by tomorrow," Jack said. "Just get on a private jet and get back here."

"I can't get a f.u.c.king private jet from j.a.pan," Biz said, also noting that he had an important press conference to attend. "That'd cost like a billion dollars."

"Cancel the conference and get a private jet," Jack said. "The company will pay for it."

"Let me think for a second," Biz said. He paused for a moment in the closet, the server lights blinking around him, the fans whirring. He knew if Jack was calling, it was real and Ev was going to be forced out of the company the next day, but this was one of those rare moments when Biz could stall the events about to happen.

"Look, you can't do this without me," Biz said to Jack. "If you stand up there in front of the company without me, the employees are going to think you pushed Ev out and you did it behind my back because I'm not there."

"I know! That's why I need you to get back here," Jack said.

"Well, I can't," Biz said in an uncompromising tone. "I can't get back until Sunday, so we'll have to announce this to the company on Monday."

After he hung up, Biz called Goldman to strategize. Jack called Fenton to do the same. It didn't matter; Jack was going to return to the company the following day, with Biz by his side or not.

Jack barely slept on Thursday night. He tossed and turned thinking about what he would say to the 300 Twitter employees he was going to address the following morning, 290 of whom he had never met before. But the plan had been set in motion, or so he thought. After the meeting was over, the deed done, Jack would go to Twitter's offices with d.i.c.k and the board. There he would triumphantly announce that he was coming back to the company. The exiled executive returning to his throne. d.i.c.k would be the new temporary CEO and Jack would serve another role at Twitter, likely running product, pus.h.i.+ng his agenda of mobile-first status messages, not Web-first newslike messages.

He woke up on Friday morning, practicing what he would say to the employees as he dressed in his expensive daily uniform. He slipped on his dark Earnest Sewn jeans, tucked in his crisp white Dior s.h.i.+rt, then rubbed gel in his hands and scuffed his hair to perfection. His story about being the inventor of Twitter had been perfected over the past two years, and now he would get to tell it in the house that Jack built.

The day moved almost glacially. Jack was constantly distracted. As the time of the meeting approached, he scanned his in-box and saw a message from Ev. The two hadn't spoken privately in months. He began reading: "Jack: I know we haven't gotten along in the past but I really want to try to work this out ... if I stay as CEO I'll figure out ways to bring you back into the company ... I want to remind you that if we do this, make this change, then I take your seat and you're off from the Board."

Like Ev two years earlier, Jack didn't respond.

Ev barely slept on Thursday night. He tossed and turned thinking about what was inevitably going to happen the next day. When he awoke, he was almost in a daze. The day moved quickly, almost in a blur, and as the early afternoon set in, he knew his time had come.

He walked through the city streets alone, approached Fenwick's offices, and looked up at the large gla.s.s building. He had arrived early for a meeting with Fenton to try to sort out a compromise and negotiate a role running product at Twitter, or so he had been told.

The receptionist greeted Ev and showed him into the boardroom, where he immediately saw Fred and Bijan sitting next to Fenton. "What's going on?" Ev said to Fenton, confused by the sight of them all. "I thought you said it was just us meeting first."

"I'm sorry, we're not. We just have to get this done," Fenton said.

Ev looked over at Fred and Bijan and asked them to leave the room for a moment. They obliged.

"You f.u.c.king lied to me," Ev bl.u.s.tered at Fenton. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

Then the conversation was m.u.f.fled as the door closed behind Fred and Bijan.

Some time pa.s.sed and everyone was told to go into the conference room. There were the seven board members: Fred, Bijan, Fenton, d.i.c.k, Jack, Goldman, and Ev. The two lawyers, Amac and Ted, were also in attendance.

The door closed. Tension filled the room as they sank into their seats. The meeting was called to order.

And then fifteen characters came out of Ev's mouth: "I resign as CEO."

"Someone needs to create a motion," Ted said. Then he asked for two people in the room to confirm the motion. Ev looked around the room to see who would vote, and the first hand shot into the air.

"I first," said Fred, frustrated by the past week's maelstrom.

Then there was a brief moment of silence. Fenton didn't raise his hand. Neither did Bijan. Or d.i.c.k. Instead, Jack's hand slowly rose into the air.

"I second," said Jack.

It was in that moment that Ev started to realize what was happening. Jack had been involved from the start. Moving chess pieces, ten moves ahead.

The numerous lawyers Ev had consulted had told him, not in so many words, that he was f.u.c.ked. The board had spent months preparing to oust him as CEO of Twitter, ensuring that once the gears began moving, there was nothing Ev could do to stop them.

As the lawyers explained, there were seven board seats at the time. Fred, Bijan, and Fenton were clearly going to vote to have Ev ousted. Goldman, Ev, and even d.i.c.k would vote against his being fired. Which left the one deciding vote: Jack.