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October 10, 2013 09:10 am GMT
Last week, when Twitter’s S-1 filing dropped, the media pored over it with a fine-toothed comb, extracting every bit of juice possible from under the freshly peeled-back rind of the intensely secretive company. One very interesting tidbit was dug up by the Times’ Claire Cain Miller: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had apparently given up the voting rights of his stock to fellow co-founder Ev Williams. Though the piece discussed the agreement, which assigned a proxy vote to Williams, the truth of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of this gifting was still a mystery. Until today, when another hot nugget dropped in the form of Nick Bilton’s piece in the Times that takes material from his upcoming book on the company. If we piece together Miller’s discovery, revelations from Bilton’s piece and some bits and pieces about the comings and goings of Twitter employees, a picture starts to emerge of exactly why and when those votes were removed, making Dorsey Twitter’s ‘silent Chairman’. The cogs of this particular bit of corporate machinery started turning in 2008, when Williams and board members Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson expressed concern in Dorsey’s ability to act as Twitter CEO. Push came to shove and, in October of 2008, Dorsey was informed by the pair of board members that he was out as CEO during a meeting at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Octobers have actually shaped up to be no good very bad months for Twitter (and Odeo) founders in general, as October of 2006 is when Odeo co-founder Noah Glass was shown the door. Bilton’s piece points to Dorsey as the catalyst for Glass’ ouster. The offering from the board? A ‘silent’ Chairman position, which would have no voting shares. Williams would control those shares and take on the CEO role. A bitter pill, to be sure, but the ‘silent’ part of that position went beyond just voting shares. Dorsey didn’t have day-to-day involvement with the company and was expected to be as literally silenced as he was legally. Instead, according to Bilton, he started myth building. He began to build up his role as a creator of Twitter and started speaking for the company in interviews, ignoring the ‘silent’ part of his ‘silent’ position. You can see the tension exposed in this clip from an interview on The View. Barbara Walters had spoken to Dorsey the day before the May 6, 2009
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/35Yl3V5fbpY/
Twitter's Silent Chairman
Last week, when Twitter’s S-1 filing dropped, the media pored over it with a fine-toothed comb, extracting every bit of juice possible from under the freshly peeled-back rind of the intensely secretive company. One very interesting tidbit was dug up by the Times’ Claire Cain Miller: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had apparently given up the voting rights of his stock to fellow co-founder Ev Williams. Though the piece discussed the agreement, which assigned a proxy vote to Williams, the truth of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of this gifting was still a mystery. Until today, when another hot nugget dropped in the form of Nick Bilton’s piece in the Times that takes material from his upcoming book on the company. If we piece together Miller’s discovery, revelations from Bilton’s piece and some bits and pieces about the comings and goings of Twitter employees, a picture starts to emerge of exactly why and when those votes were removed, making Dorsey Twitter’s ‘silent Chairman’. The cogs of this particular bit of corporate machinery started turning in 2008, when Williams and board members Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson expressed concern in Dorsey’s ability to act as Twitter CEO. Push came to shove and, in October of 2008, Dorsey was informed by the pair of board members that he was out as CEO during a meeting at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. Octobers have actually shaped up to be no good very bad months for Twitter (and Odeo) founders in general, as October of 2006 is when Odeo co-founder Noah Glass was shown the door. Bilton’s piece points to Dorsey as the catalyst for Glass’ ouster. The offering from the board? A ‘silent’ Chairman position, which would have no voting shares. Williams would control those shares and take on the CEO role. A bitter pill, to be sure, but the ‘silent’ part of that position went beyond just voting shares. Dorsey didn’t have day-to-day involvement with the company and was expected to be as literally silenced as he was legally. Instead, according to Bilton, he started myth building. He began to build up his role as a creator of Twitter and started speaking for the company in interviews, ignoring the ‘silent’ part of his ‘silent’ position. You can see the tension exposed in this clip from an interview on The View. Barbara Walters had spoken to Dorsey the day before the May 6, 2009Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/35Yl3V5fbpY/
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