Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams

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Dot com. How did you feel when you found out that you were being let go, a CEO? I was Devastated. I was also shocked.

I didn't even think it was possible. I so I went from w owning 100% of this company Дос та хайт в майсу. I was just kneecapped.

And It felt like Nothing I did before mattered. Because I failed at the biggest thing. I

I ever did. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Roz and on the show today, how a college dropout from Nebraska moved to California, started two major blogging platforms, and somewhere along the way?

co-founded a little company called Twitter. One day far in the future, there's a possibility you'll find yourself in a bookstore and come across a history book about this time, about our era. When that happens, thumb to the index section and I'm pretty sure you'll find lots of entries under the word Twitter. Now just to get the elephant out of the room here, I don't think Twitter is entirely guilty of the things that it gets accused of. Misinformation, polarization, cancel culture, etc.

But I do think that over the past 10 years or so, Twitter did help to shape the politics and culture, at least in the United States, in good and Bad ways. Mm. None of this was anticipated by Ev Williams. Twice never supposed to do any of this. And it's possible that Ev and Jack and Biz and Noah

The original founders Or just naive. And the product they came up with, like many successful products, wasn't even supposed to happen. At the time, Ed was pursuing, believe it or not, podcasting.

In 2004, Ev co-founded a podcasting platform called Odeo. Now going into podcasting at that time was a little like getting into electric cars in the 1990s, just a little too far ahead of its time. So not surprisingly, Odeo didn't work out. But a side project of Odeo, one that was being worked on by Jack Dorsey. Did you get it? And that side project would become Twitter. Twitter, of course, became Ev's best known brand.

But he also founded Blogger and later Medium. three hugely influential products in the era of social media. Along the way I've learned what it meant to be a really bad people person.

Something he spent much of the past ten years working to get better at. Now like a few well-known tech founders, Ed Williams is a college dropout. He barely made it through two years before striking out on his own. Ev grew up on his family's corn and soybean farm in a rural part of Nebraska. It was a tiny place, only about 400 people.

I feel very fortunate that that's where I grew up. I think there's tons of great stuff that I drew from that from a values and character perspective that was just fundamentally ingrained in me. And very fitting With

um being an entrepreneur. Um to a lot of people I mean the juxtaposition of going from farm boy to To tech founder sounds weird, but the things that are very aligned are these ideas of independent and self-reliance. And

All farmers are basically entrepreneurs and that ethos of figuring things out yourself, actually having to be fairly innovative. That was what I saw my dad doing from birth, and there was just So the idea of starting a company was very natural to me'cause it was just like, Well, why would you go like a line with some institution. That seemed like a much

stranger ideas. So in many ways I I adopted those values and r and, you know, didn't question them. At all? Yeah. I think the part that I didn't resonate with as much was really the culture.

And it was very sports centric. Literally Every boy in my high school Played football except for me. And so and that was

I was somewhat athletic, but I was fairly small, and I just didn't I didn't wasn't into it. I didn't like it. I was like, that's not what I want to do. So I alright, so you're and and and would you describe yourself obviously you're smart, but would you describe yourself as a good student? Were you a stand out student in high school? I was never a good student. I wasn't rebellious and like I was getting in trouble with the law or doing anything super dangerous, but I w really didn't wanna Do what I was

Told or in kind of in any regard. Like I never lined up to Institutions or anything. And I was like I'm not gonna try hard and get good grades. I'm not I'm in I'm Just not gonna

Do that. And so I never did any homework. I also for some reason I think I didn't sleep at night and I fell asleep in every single Class in high school. So yeah, it was a bad student.

But I I read that you were like growing up you were really into computers, right? And then And then eventually when you went to college, I I I don't think you majored in computer science or or or had any specific kind of plan, right? I think in fact I think you You dropped out. Mm-hmm. Um and you and I guess you lasted about a year and a half or so at at the University of Nebraska.

Uh w why? I mean, why did you drop out? I uh I was just in such a rush. You the whole time. I was like I gotta

Do something. In the world. I am not gonna get a degree and go get a job. That's just not me. I'm going to make something, I'm going to build something. And I for some reason I was in a tremendous rush to do it.

I always had some scheme or something that I I th thought I was gonna go do Um I was like I was in a really Like embarrassing

Like Get rich mail order ideas. I was like you know, like you know, like drop shipping. Okay, or like I'm gonna I would read like Entrepreneur magazine and order stuff out of the back or Success Magazine. And there were all these like Like multi level marketing things. There was there was I probably got into some multi level thing. But

Yeah, there's multi level stuff and mail order. Mail order was was really Like the the get rich path that Um I was like, Oh, I could do that'cause you can do it. from home, you don't doesn't matter who you are. Like Pre internet.

So when you dropped out, what was the first thing you started to do? To support yourself. I actually Move to Key West, Florida. And um'cause there was this marketing guru there who I wanted to study under. So I wasn't necessarily I would just

I knew I didn't know anything. I I kne I had a very strong sense in my abilities and again that like kind of fearless independence. Like I'll figure it out. But I was aware I didn't know anything and I didn't have any money. And so there was this guy At that, I was like, I'm gonna go work for that guy. I'm just gonna show up. And then I'll be able to do stuff. What was his name? His name was Gary Halbert.

Okay. Uh so I showed up at at Gary Halbert's. Office. He's like, Who are you? And I told him I was there, I was gonna

I wanted to write. It's like I could write for you. Yeah, it's like Yeah. Okay, um he thought I was joking. He was a I'm just look I've just looked him up. He was a copywriter. He was a famous copyright. Famous copywriter, yep.

He wrote copy for other people, that's how he he made his name and then he started Like selling his own newsletter and seminars and stuff. Okay. But Um, in retrospect I was like uh that was really it's

Sketchy. Cheesy thing to be a part of. But I didn't know I was a farm boy from Nebraska, so Yeah, I was just like, I'm gonna I wanna write.

For you or with you or whatever. And it gives me an assignment to bring back in the morning. Turns out it's Memorial Day weekend, so the office is closed for three days. And so I'm

Literally sleeping in my van in Key West. Terrified, no money, and the first night I stayed up all night to write to do this assignment. Finally bring it back on Tuesday. And um Again he thought it was it he thought someone else did it. He thought it was like a

He didn't believe I wrote it. And then He was like, Okay, I'll I'll pay you. to right.

I I I'm looking into Gary Halbert and I mean he's kind of a legend. So you s I I didn't know who he was, but like apparently the most legendary copywriter of all time. died in two thousand seven, but but this was your first Kind of mentor. Yeah, yeah, it's true. How long did you end up staying in Key West? Seven months.

Huh. Okay. So pretty relatively short time. And I guess a I guess after that You go back to Nebraska to to kinda try your hand at a couple of businesses and Yeah. they don't really pan out and then you you land on this idea eventually

to start a website business. This is around, I guess, the early nineties, to to sort of Make websites for local businesses? Is is that right? Yeah. With my friend. Paul and Craig and we

And We figured out how to make websites. So that's when we really got started on the internet. Um ninety three, ninety four, um, ended up doing some website development for

Companies In Lincoln. Yeah. Um And did that.

pan out. I mean there's lots of we've had people on the show who started that way in the nineties and um really built successful Businesses that way. Totally could've. Yeah.

Um I think it was poor execution. Also location wise. We could have been selling website development. To anyone but we're

Because of where we were, we're trying to sell it to local businesses in Lincoln. And You know, they weren't really Um to their credit they shouldn't have been. Their customers weren't necessarily on the internet. So

We Yeah, we barely Yeah, we were not paying the bills with that. was really broke the whole time. was very brave. But you're a young guy. You were a young guy. I mean you you eventually moved to the Bay Area. Right.

In ninety seven, I think. And this was um You were what, uh twenty five at this point. Maybe a little older. Yep. Actually. No, it's twenty five, when I was. Twenty five twenty five, yeah. Um but no degree. No degree. But you had you had a couple of failed ventures behind you. So when you came out to California

Did you have a did you come out with a job in m or did you just come out and say, I'm gonna look for something? I actually did get a job So I After the We really shut down that company in Lincoln. There's the the Internet.

company we called Plexus and then finally shut the doors on that. I felt Terrible. Just felt like this big loser and I went back and I was then living on the farm again with my dad. And the m my girlfriend because of that company, she was helping for a while and then ended up getting a job at another internet company in Lincoln.

And then they offered her a position, or maybe she requested it in San Francisco. And so she moved to San Francisco and I had never even been to California, but of course by the time that I was like Every I was consuming every bit of information there was in every magazine and on the web about Silicon Valley. And I so wanted to be a part of it. But I think I was just scared. And it was like oh and even though I was

I was bold enough to start an internet company in Nebraska, but I was terrified of moving to California and trying to be a part of the real thing until she moved. And I actually drove her out. From along that that I eighty goes straight from Basically the farm into the heart of San Francisco. Yep. And then and I d I was like

Drover of that Bay Bridge. I'm like, holy shit, this is this is where it all Happens. Yep. And then I went home. Yeah, it's like Maybe I could maybe I could go.

And and yeah, and and and so you do. You do eventually you do move to the Bay Area and and and get a job here. Um I think I think you got a job at a software company called O'Reilly Media uh which is just north of about an hour north of San Francisco in in the town of Sebastian, which I love, I know very well. Um and I think I think that you were hired to do marketing, right? Like to write ad copy and and and that kind of thing. So Was that good? Was that was that interesting? Yeah. So I found myself in this company. I remember distinctly being in a meeting, this is a conference room with maybe like a dozen people in it. And thinking

Oh, so this is what a meeting is like. having spent a couple of years trying to have meetings and after shutting down my own company and thinking, maybe you should work out a company before you start a company. Yeah. Which is a tip that I would recommend to most people. To Budby. But but so that's very important advice. And here you are, twenty five. For the first time you're working for a company rather than your your own startups. And um

How did you do in that environment? I mean, you described yourself in high school as just kind of like An outsider a little bit, and somebody who is not Really good. w working within the confines and structures of other people's rules and and and so here you are now in a company. Right.

How did that how did you Do in that environment. Um, not great. Not great. Unlike high school, I Tried very hard.

I worked My butt off. the first few months. Well, I was only there a few months. Um I worked really hard I did good work. But I was not a good employee.

Mm. I was rebellious and I would like have lots of opinions about what the company's strategy should be. 'Cause I'd read a bunch of business books and I would write Tim emails or memos about how we shouldn't be doing this or that.

There was some product that I didn't think was very good that I was assigned to write copy for and I sent in email to the whole team saying why it wasn't good and we shouldn't release the product. Like Doesn't everybody love a twenty five year old who does that the new employee. Cringe.

And by the way, if you're listening and you're twenty five and you do that, do that. It's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying that you will piss everybody off, but that's still d still you should do it. All right, so you're you're like You're trying and and while you were there, I guess. Some the something else you start to do it on the side. for fun was was

W wasn't it called blogging? But you were starting to like put your I guess you started your own website and you started to just Right. your own thoughts on it. Well tell me what this website was. It didn't quite overlap. I did have my own website from

From even before I moved to California And yeah, I had written some essays. I had had Some stuff on evehead dot com. We call them personal home pages at the time. Um There is a couple

essays I wrote that were The only one I remember is why Amazon shouldn't expand beyond books. Obviously very very wise. Um, what else? I don't remember. I think a lot of it for a short while I wrote

Just like kind of Newsy. technology updates. At this website evhead.com And and you would just you would just post things. This is before people use the word blogging, I think.

Yeah, there wasn't a ton of writing and there certainly were Probably even Fewer readers, but it wasn't quite a blog. Yet the big blogging innovations.

Came later where there's actually like a Uh Chronological scroll of posts. Yeah. And so this was all Hand rolled And it was a little bit later

And it was actually after I started my next company that I really turned it into A blog. Right. I got it. Okay. And so By that time I knew how to

Code. I wrote software to do it. A lot of people were doing weblogs by hand, like editing HTML and then uploading And I just wrote software and as and I made it so I could go to my own website, I could hit N

Uh And um and a little form would pop up and I could type something and hit a button And boom, it was at the top of my webpage. And that

Was a Just I can still picture that moment because that was new and different. The idea like having the thought. And then Putting that on the world wide web, available for the entire world. Of course, no one's looking at it, but just that going from thought to something published publicly in a matter of moments.

felt like a c entirely new thing. So meantime, okay, so that's happening. That's one one thing kind of happening, but But meantime, you had left O'Reilly and you had Some programming experience, right? You're not a you weren't a g I think by your own even your own account, you weren't a great programmer, but you were getting probably getting better at it. Yep. Um

And you met this woman named Meg Horahan, this is in the late nineties, and I guess she was A developer and designer living in San Francisco. Um you meet her. And I I guess by chance. and the two of you decide to start a business together. Tell me about

About that. What happened? Um when I so I when I left O'Reilly Actually I'd gotten paid enough.

By the way, when I got to O'Reilly, I was in debt To the IRS. 'Cause I didn't pay payroll taxes at my first company. But I Made enough money to pay off.

the ten thousand dollars or whatever it is, which seemed insurmountable before that. And then I had learned enough. more programming that they actually hired me as a contractor at O'Reilly. after I quit as an employee in marketing. And so

I I rolled that into some other contract programming jobs. I ended up working through agencies That's when I met Meg. I had already decided to start a new company. I knew what it was. And we started What we call Pyro Labs. Mm-hmm. We call that project management or

productivity app that was web based. Um collection. Collaboration project management, that space. How did you finance that? I mean, this is n the end of ninety eight, I think, and this is the d the the height. Yep. of the dot com boom. Was there was it I mean As a twenty I don't know, now twenty eight, twenty

twenty six year old, was it easy for you to raise money? No. It was and it was frustrating because everything you read is like oh it's so easy to raise money just rolling down the Sandhill Road and I didn't know anyone. It like especially time is very Very much a connection game. So I was like I don't know. Like people say the money is easy. Where do I go? Whose door do I knock on?

Um It was that's why I was doing the contract programming. So that's how we paid for it. Entirely bootstrapped. And um so was able to then Meg and then Paul who joined later were able to do some of the pro Paul's your high school friend. My high school friends out. Yeah.

So and and did you ever find any customers to sell this Software too? No. And we never charge for we never charge for it. Yeah, there was just a handful of users. It was very beta. And so from what I understand fairly early on in the company you made a pivot. You moved away from project collaboration project management software to

this other thing which was this side thing that you'd been working on, which was basically weblogging. Yeah, so Paul and Meg and I were All into we all had our own web logs. I had that moment I told you about where I I turned my own I just wrote code to Yeah.

And that gave me the idea, I was like, this could be a product. But it's too simple. That's what actually t told myself and we talked about it as a team is like it's too simple. It's not interesting, anybody could do that. Our collaboration thing was not simple at all. It's very very complex. And I don't I didn't appreciate at the time the power of simplicity.

But Um Eventually we didn't pivot at first, we just created another product. as a three person company that was bootstrapped and also doing outside. Outside stuff. And the product was what was the product called Blogger.

Blogger. Yeah, so you go to blogger dot com. Create an account. Put in where your website was and then Easily post.

Uh from I'm I imagine that the word blog or blogger was was not yet popularized at that point. No, not at all. Especially blog. Even weblogs were were quite niche and

Um I remember for a few years the hardest thing about Blogger was explaining what it was. Okay, this I guess on the strength of this you did manage to raise Some money. For it, about half a million.

Half million dollars. We did. We raised half a million dollars in I think April of two thousand, which was technically right after the stock market crash from the dot com it was the beginning of the crash. But we were still able to get the money. I think the crash took a while to reverberate. So you raise half a million dollars, the crash happens. And

that's probably not gonna be enough money to keep this company going for that long. So Did you go out and try and raise more money? I mean, in that environment? Yeah, although Half million dollars was more money than I'd ever seen in my life. So I it wasn't clear I was like we can do anything on a half million dollars. I mean that was gonna last us forever. Uh course, we stopped doing the contract programming, we hired a few people, I think we got up to six or seven people, and then

You're right, in like six months we're running out of money. 'Cause you had no revenue. You had no you weren't selling this. You were just giving it away for free. Mm-hmm. What was the business plan? Well, how are you gonna make money? This is why it took us a while to drop the collaboration tool because we thought we could charge money for that. We didn't think we could charge money for blogger necessarily. I'm not sure what the plan was. I think the plan was to raise more money and then it was like, Oh yeah.

figure it out. And then it was in the fall of two thousand when things started getting really Bleak. And then we started getting nervous. And a a thing a ton of companies did, a ton of consumer internet companies did at that time was pivot to enterprise. We'll take our product built for consumers and we'll go sell it to businesses. And then

There is a moment where Meg and I really had a c uh come to Jesus. 'Cause it was bothering me. I didn't like that path and I I think this in retrospect was a very important moment because I was just like I don't

Want to build that. That's not Why I by that time I had gotten very excited about

Anyone in the world can share their ideas and knowledge. To the internet? was a very powerful idea. And it's what really got me most excited about the internet in the first place. And so I loved what we were doing and I love the idea of bringing that to millions of more people.

And so Like Company blogging I was like Fine, maybe we can make money, but I'd kinda rather go out of business. It's that's not

Interesting. Let's let's not do that. Um, I guess you did basically get close to going out of business, right? Because a at a certain point Pyra. Um you stop you stop being able to pay employees.

That was a very stressful time. Basically We didn't pivot to enterprise. We didn't get any customers. We still didn't have any revenue. And then eventually just got to a point where it was like Look, guys, we're not going to be able to

Um I think there is even A payroll we missed and then I Sat everybody down and said. We don't have any money to pay you past this next pay period, so

You're welcome to come back. I think this is on Friday, you're welcome to come back. I'm gonna keep working. Um if you come back and work, you know, we'll pay you when we make money, but We're out of money. And then the next Monday I came back.

And I was the only one there. When we come back in just a moment. How Eve brings Blogger back to life. And then heads into a whole new venture, which does not go anywhere. Until it turns.

into Twitter. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around two thousand one and Eve Williams is determined to get Blogger up and running. Even if he has to do it.

I won't. Yeah, I Couldn't imagine. Stopping. Once everybody left, my cost went from

Fifty thousand a month to five thousand a month. Uh still had to pay for the servers. And I just wanted to keep building it. So I Kept building it. And just by yourself working on the site, updating it.

Trying to improve it. Yeah. It was Both really sad and very freeing. And it was sad because

I mean you reach that point in a company, there's been a lot of stress and a lot of angst and Um, I think that's just natural. And my company was also my social life. And so there was this Oh overlap with

My roommate didn't work at the company, but dated someone who did and brother worked at the company and so And everyone was mad at me at the end. And I felt really bad'cause I felt like I failed. They were mad at you. They were mad at you when it failed. They're mad at me when it failed, yeah.

And We had been fighting and I all my friends went away. It wasn't just my employees went away. My friends went away I felt really guilty. I didn't wasn't talking to anybody

But I was able to show up at work every day. And not explain anything to anybody. not have to argue. I was just like, I am going to build whatever the heck I want. And that felt great. And that feeling of creation

Really what Always drove me. And so that was inc That was very liberating and very fun.

Did you um Uh Uh uh this is You know, this is a little bit complicated. But I think that at the time Some of the people who had left Pyra.

felt like burned, right? Your view was, Well, I stayed, I kept running this thing. So Like what do you expect? But some of the people said Ev doesn't know how to manage teams. And by the way, I say this as somebody who still struggles to manage people. It's really hard. But you were criticized. Um, was that a fair criticism that you just were not good at

I don't know, in managing Teams? I would say worse than that, I don't think I was good at relationships. Which even more fundamentally. I mean, management is a particular skill. But

I wasn't good at relationships, I. e. how to deal with conflict the most important thing. And I avoided conflict, especially in those days, and I

at the time really considered the people part of company building a necessary evil. Yeah. And so I didn't invest in relationships. I didn't know how. I never had any model for that. I never Because I never worked at companies, I never saw so yeah, I was terrible. Terrible. in those days at

Um dealing with people. For sure. I mean blogger eventually started to get gain traction. You know.

within a year, I mean this is two thousand one And of course we know it happens in two thousand one, September eleventh. I wonder if that had something to do with more people using it. It did. More people going to blog. Wha what happened? Yeah, so blogging was kind of growing the whole time, despite the dot com boom and bust. And that was part of the reason that I didn't want to give up. Like it was

Um The numbers were good. And then Yeah, nine eleven was actually a big moment for blogs. And it's it's when

The way I would describe it's when Journalists started taking them seriously. Mm. Actually a Nine eleven the day nine eleven happened, I actually spent the day aggregating

Um, because there wasn't really real-time search, and of course there's no Twitter or anything, but people are writing about their experiences, including a lot of people in New York. And it was hard to find out, you know hard to find this on the ground information. So I actually spent the day calling these posts as they're coming in from database and put up special pages. About that. And some really big blogs emerged after that time that were really covering the news. And then of course

newspapers and magazines started creating their own blogs around Probably after that time. And then yeah, we s continued to see growth for sure. So By two thousand two you were able to actually start charging

for blogger um and and it started to bring in some revenue. Like you guys were getting People paying money to use it. Yeah. Somewhere along the line we we offered to host blogs, but we had ads on them. And the ads Never made any money to speak of. There there's like a very tiny trickle of money, but then the first thing I started charging for was you could remove

The ads from your blog. That was the first thing. And that made a surprising amount of money for me at the time. Maybe I could pay my rent. And then I launched. Well w I call blogger pro. And yeah, people paid for it.

U of course many people who know the story know where this is going'cause it attracted Google's attention and they made an acquisition offer to you, um and and in February of oh three, two thousand three, they bought blogger from you, um, and here you are, you're thirty one and You you come into some money. Yeah. That was pretty amazing.

All right. So you go to work for Google, you become a Google employee because they acquired blogger Which was a really big deal at the time. Did you n did you was it clear to you soon after you arrived to Google that you were not fit to work in a big organization. Yeah, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I And I was like employee number eight hundred at Google, so it's

laughable how how small it was. Same size as the as the high school I went to. Um Yeah. And it felt similar. It felt well, it felt like a college, but Yeah, I didn't know how to operate and I and they didn't know what to do with me either.

Because they've not done any acquisitions. We're literally their first acquisition that involved people. They had bought some IP, but We're the first group of employees to come in who were Googlers but not. And so we were just kind of plopped in there.

And Yeah. Trying to figure out how to survive. And to their credit, a lot of uh tons and tons of big companies bought these tiny internet things at the time and Then they would just die. Kill them. It killed it. Yeah. Blogger, I'm happy to say twenty years later. It's still running.

And anything written on blogger twenty years ago, unless the author took it down or it was like a violation, is still up. on the internet for free and Google has you know Paid for that and you know

Probably that entire time. Yeah. So that's amazing and super lucky to have felt that, but I didn't know how to operate within Google. And so Yeah, after Google went public.

I left. So two thousand four. Um, you leave Google. And You start to noodle on a new idea.

Because you made some money from Blogger. And the in and and the new idea would become Yeah. platform in two thousand four

I mean this is before Apple Podcasts. This is like gotta be one of the first Podcast did you call it podcasting? Did you say hey let's make an audio platform? Tell me about this idea. Yeah, it's funny how this came about. I had this neighbor named Noah Glass. Who

Was a Um Fun, boisterous, entrepreneurial guy who Invented a way to call a telephone number. and requ leave a voicemail that would end up on the web.

And then Biz Stone, later co founder of Twitter, he worked With me a blogger. And We were driving home from Google one day and

Just kinda brainstorming about it. It was one of those moments of um independent invention. Kinda to help NOAA, because we're like, no one's you know, it's cool you can record these, but no one's gonna listen to these things on their desktop computer. What if you get'em on their iPad? And we were thinking about what the technical solution is to that. And then we start looking into it's like around the same time people like Adam Curry and Dave Weiner had started

Talking about podcasting. Yeah, Adam Curry, though, performer MTV VJ, a lot of people don't know, is truly the pioneer of podcasting. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, Adam Curry was doing like a daily show, I think, around there. When nobody was listening to I mean who knew even knew how to connect your iPod to the computer to download this stuff. Exactly. And so we find out these guys are talking about it. But there's no software to do it.

And so then the idea was obvious, like make it easy to do this. Make it easy to listen, make it easy commercialize this idea. And It's another democratizing media. Anyone can have a radio show. That seemed obvious. And so I was really encouraging Noah to do that, to take audio blogger and create a podcasting company. I didn't want to create a podcasting company, but I thought Noah should.

Yeah. And I didn't have a job then. And it was I was determined to take some time off, but Noah kept Arriving at my door. So

I fell into it. So that was it. Yeah. And so we built Uh

O was a directory of podcasts. We were basically collecting all the feeds. We were making them easy to f find. You could listen to individual episodes on the web, but then there's a piece of software that you could install on your desktop that would sync whatever podcast you subscribe to onto your iPod. So you built this entire platform to make it easy. There was nothing like it. Okay. So you're you've spent the time and money on building this. And then Apple comes out with uh With their own podcast.

um service on iTunes and what did that mean for your business? It basically obsoleted everything we had done for the last six months that we raised money to do. We made the mistake of actually raising too much money. Pre Product. really in pre product we raised five million dollars which

Was a terrible mistake. Because it Mm Allowed us to grow the team.

We just weren't nimble enough to easily Mm-hmm. And so we thought we told ourselves, as every small company does when a big company was in their space, Oh, we can we can compete, we'll we'll do it better, whatever, but they had They had an insurmountable advantage. Like people They had the software.

Yeah. So Вен да хапен What did you do? I mean, you raised five million dollars to start a podcast company and all of a sudden the big eight hundred pound gorilla is like actually we'll take it from here. Yeah. Um, and so what we what did you do?

We we tinkered for a few months, like I said, we we're like okay, maybe we'll create tools for podcasters. And that was another Big lesson for me because I listened to podcasts, but I'd never created podcasts. And one of my f fundamental rules, I've come to believe, is If unless you are really good at

User research. Build build products for yourself. I had no sense of because I didn't create podcasts, I had no sense of what the tools needed were or how the software should work, that's where I think great products come from, is feeling that. And so We took some stabs at that, but our our product wasn't good.

Alright in this This company, Odeo. Um that you started. With no glass. There was a guy you hired.

And I guess he kind of approached you, he had He had written to you and sent you his resume and he was a But young Programmer. Name Jack Dorsey.

And um and I guess you hired him on the strength of his resume. Um tell me about about him and what he was doing at at Odeo. Uh yeah, we hired Jack just as a programmer. And We liked him. I think around the same time we also had Kevin Sistram, founder of

Instagram. Instagram. Um was working for us as an intern. So Kevin Jack Prepared to write our I think our installable podcatcher as we called them. And And I guess Jack

talking about that that that was intriguing to him, that was m more about like not audio blogging, but Microblogging? Uh

Sort of that evolved. how long Jack had been thinking about this, but basically we came to a point where I didn't have faith in the original plan. About you. Actually went to the board.

I think we had three of the five million dollars left. And said I can't sell you on the future of this company. Maybe we should just give the money back. And Go away.

And The board. was like, Well, we didn't invest in podcasting, we invest in you, so You come up with something like that. And I always prided myself on having lots of ideas.

But we were still, I think, fairly attached to audio. And so there's a lot of Um basically we had a two week what we call a hackathon where we divided into teams and just let people come up with ideas. To find the new course of the company, and that's When

Jack. uh presented what he he had been thinking about, I guess, this idea for a while of like a status update. service. And um the first version of that I heard, it was actually attached to audio like I do remember a conversation where at first there was a version of of what became Twitter

presented that had audio and I remember asking what if it didn't have the audio piece? I don't remember the first For him and I don't want to. Take credit from anybody.

Jack had an idea which I didn't probably even see the very first version of And he started working with Biz, and so they were a team Biz this is Biz stone who also had worked with you on Blogger, I should mention. Biz came over to Odeo fairly early from Google. And so Jack and Biz were working on a thing, there was maybe three or four teams And And then no uh

The original founder of Odeo. So the The thing that we saw in in one stage of the hackathon that was intriguing was the ability to Send a message with your phone.

And it would arrive on other people's phones. So instead of just but why would you just send them a direct text message?'Cause I I guess it costs money. Well, you could send it to multiple people at once. That was that was harder to do at the time. There were a couple of services that let you do that, great groups. I know there was a lot of conversation around the time. We all used AOL instant instant messenger on our desktops.

And there's this um status line. Um, which was just like, you know. Not a message, but it's like what you're doing and you could update it. Facebook had the same feature. It's like update your status. Like say like, okay, going to the park might be your status. And you could see your list of friends, you could see them up in the order updated of their status. And that was the whole thing.

Mm-hmm. And we knew Everyone kinda had a sense that mobile computing was the future, but building things for phones was a pain in the butt. And so we thought Mm.

SMS is ubiquitous, you don't have to install any software on the phone. That would be pretty amazing if we could leverage that. So at a certain point This seems like I mean you you guys had to make a decision like well let's pursue this thing

So even when it it debuted,'cause I think it it it was like March of oh six when it was like it went live but it was still Tiny. Uh it was just a part of the podcasting business still. It wasn't Okay. And and you guys had already called it Twitter by this point. Twitter.

My opinion, one of the best Names. May it rest in peace um for for this for for a tech product. Um I think Noah came up with that on a list of names. Noah Glass, he came up with that. Yeah. He he I remember seeing an email where he had been brainstorming names and it was on a list. I'm like, Ooh, Twitter

He always explained it was like what's that feeling when you feel you're Pocket buzz and was like it's like a twitch and he looked up Twitch in the dictionary and next to that was was Twitter, which is a w Twitch was also good. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, we called it Twitter, but Odeo still existed. So when at the end of the The hackathon, the two weeks officially. We declared It probably wasn't named Twitter yet. But

We had an internal joke name called Friends Stalker. And It's sort of like yeah, you're stalking your friends. So you're seeing, you know, what they're up to all the time. Right. Okay. But we still had Odeo. And Biz said this very wise thing, I think, at the time, which was

Even though we were only a dozen people, it's like Twitter was such a nascent idea. It's like if we put Everyone on this state it's like a This idea is like a small ember that if it gets too much oxygen is just gonna go out. And so we need to keep the team on Twitter small while we Develop it.

So most of the team went back to Odeo. And Twitter was another side project. Yeah. And People still think Twitter is a dumb idea. Imagine the very first

Very first day is like what? That makes no sense. And okay, so what are the numbers even after we launch publicly? It's like oh there's like five hundred people using it and we know two hundred of them. And So it didn't look like a thing. It felt like a thing. Yeah which Has I've

come to realise is the most important thing and like it's feeling is much more important than metrics early on. Why did why did it feel like a thing to you? It felt like a thing because once we had a handful of people on it. Most of whom we knew.

And we're using it through our phones. Two get and send these real time updates. We use the term real time a lot then because the internet wasn't real time. In you know, email. Was asynchronous

got updated, you know, kinda slowly. And so It was the first thing we felt where you could send a message. And buzz a bunch of people's pockets. It would update.

And that was that was new and it was such a unique and immediate Sensation. When we come back in just a moment. How Eve makes the right moves to grow Twitter. But then fails to realize that

He's no longer the right guy. to run it. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2006, and Eve Williams and his partners are juggling a few things.

Audio, a struggling podcasting service, and Twitter. A site that only a few hundred people are using. And ever realizes that for Twitter to get off the ground? He has to change how the company is run. There's a board meeting where

It was assumed we were just gonna decide to give the remaining money back to investors. Twitter wasn't growing, we didn't believe in ODO. I made an offer and uh I said, Well I'll actually Buy it. And that was

Obvious was the name of the company that I bought. audio with. Right. And just to clarify, you You buy it and obvious is the company you form that includes Uh both Odeo and Twitter.

And yeah, I mean very s smart decision on your part. I mean I I think probably some investors wish that that they could have been a a a part of it m you know, maybe some some were or of it were eventually, but did you know in your mind Did you have an inkling? that Twitter I mean you say there was an energy there was a feeling you had Did you already in two thousand six feel like okay.

This thing I think Could be the next blogger, could be bigger. I think there's part of me that felt that. I think today I would value that part of me much more strongly than I did at the time.

Mm. One of the things that I've learned through my own efforts and watching others is that That's why I mentioned that feel.

being more important than the numbers. I didn't trust that enough. At the time. It's so easy. Two

Yeah. overwhelmed by data, especially in tech. And as soon as you have anybody using your product, the attention turns to numbers. and testing and ab and people try to be very scientific about it. if you're in those conversations like, No, but it really feels like something. And as someone who really

Has gone by feel and has that intuition. You just kinda You downplay that. I was like, ah, well, there's no evidence to back up what I'm feeling. Yeah. And so I can't defend it.

But yeah, there's enough I feel enough that I'm gonna keep Investing in it. So you basically Now our the owner

And to and Twitter is this thing that you really start to pursue. I think by by the end of two thousand six Get about sixty thousand users. And it was initially, right, it was like it was like a status update. Like the question was, What are you doing, right?

That was the first thing and then you would just populate it with I'm at the grocery store, whatever it is. But but this is And it's still before the iPhone comes out. So people are doing this on Uh most people are like I'm sitting at my desk working on my computer. Yeah.

Uh And This whole time we're we're tweaking, we're we're changing how the system works, and even though the original idea That it was gonna be through our phones and via SMS

Messages were or What became known as sweets were limited to one hundred and forty characters. I think it was in Late it was a few months in that we um made it easier to use on the web.

And that's when We saw our first real bump of growth because people were Desktop all day. Yeah.

I guess the turning really the turning point happens in March of O seven, which is South by Southwest, right? You take Twitter. to South by South. So it becomes a turning point for many companies, Airbnb. and others later on. But in two thousand seven you go to South by South West And what did you do to attract attention there? Uh, we did something kind of unusual because we had a sense that that was our audience, and I knew from experience that

Um Going in the trade show floor is not where you wanted to be and that everyone hung out in the hallway. I'd spent many hours hanging out in the hallway. Uh South by South West. So we contacted

the organizers there and said can we actually set up a screen in the hallway. A screen a T T V screen. There's a screen that had These little

Um tweets floating by of people Just scrolling, tweet scrolling. I think moving across the screen from people who were there. And so That was pouring gasoline on the fire.'Cause it had the density

It's like classic network building. You need density and r And there was also Um the real time nature was very valuable'cause people were walking around and didn't want to you know, pull out their their computers to know what was going on. And so what happened? I mean people people started to see other people. Basically everybody everybody there got on Twitter.

And you know, it's a few thousand people and Again Лоса журналист, лоса блогер. And so then they talked about it.

It was a moment we just capturing lightning in a bottle amongst that community. It was the perfect thing at the perfect time with enough density to reach a tipping point. Well. And and so when you Left south by southwest, how big did it grow?

I don't know the numbers. I know like the shape of the charts was very very hockey stick. Uh The service definitely started falling down, I mean getting overwhelmed and we're running into scaling issues.

Immediately But I don't it's Certainly still tiny. I mean South by South West was It's w it's not even At the time, I don't know, maybe a few thousand people.

But they were using it a lot. And and I have to imagine That that what happened at South by South West starts to attract a lot of attention. And so Did you start to get investors kind of

banging on your door, wanting wanting to to get involved. We did. We did. Uh we got a lot of investors knocking on our door. I still owned a hundred percent of it at that time. Through obvious

But it was clear that we needed to grow, we needed to raise money. So we started Take in those conversations. Can I ask you about The broader idea of Twitter.

I a as you started to see this thing really grow. And I've seen you talk about it like at the time already at the time saying things like This is gonna be a way for people to really build community and connect. And if there's like an earthquake in San Francisco, like this is a way and some of that happened, a lot of that happened.

Like There was an idealized vision of what this was going to bring to the world, that it was gonna bring the world closer together and make us all happier and friendlier and kinder. But it it really has been. uh a force for Um Division Two.

Did you in any way anticipate that that would happen? that Twitter would actually Exacerbate division and tension? I did not. Certainly not in those very early days.

Um, you know, the team over the years gotten a lot of flack on the trust and safety side. Earnest, hard working integrity driven folks I've ever seen in In the world of business.

And we didn't realize it's sort of like um In some ways, like when we figured out processed food manufacturing and we're like, Oh, this is a easy cheap way to get calories, not realizing all the implications of that. You know, let's keep working on it. Tell me a little bit about

Um 'Cause you ha'cause basically You were running Odeo, but it was clear that that Twitter was the product now in this in this bigger company. Yeah. And Jack was, I think you h he had been named the CEO of Twitter.

And you were the chairman. Of Twitter. And this is a little tricky, I understand,'cause we're talking about personalities and big personalities and people who were friends and You know, and had falling outs, but how did your relationship with Jack Dorsey

begin to change'cause I know I mean this is no secret, it's been written about there was a falling out. Yeah, so the the course of events was Twitter and Odeo were just products inside of Obvious, which I ran. And so I had

around this time also sold audio. So Twitter was the only thing we had, but I had lots of other ideas and it was just like I just kinda wanna tinker and invent new things, so That was the time when we spun it out into Twitter Inc. That Uh for

Jack. Uh The job of CEO. And I again like Jack is not here and and others aren't here to to this is not a documentary show. It's a one person's perspective.

The story. That I've read. is that he became frustrated because you were uh you know, I don't know, m maybe you were frustrated with his leadership when he was CEO, he was frustrated with your meddling That's a that's a that's a an old story. That's happened in every company.

Yeah, I I think yeah, I think we're frustrated with each other and goes back to what I said earlier about being not good at relationships. I didn't know how to deal with that. And I didn't do a good job of dealing with that. I was senior to Jack in age and experience, so I sh I should have been the one to really work on Lead working on the relationship.

And Stress gets high when you have something Stress is very, very high. Because we had something we knew was working. And it felt incredibly precarious.

Twitter always felt precarious. Our stuff kept breaking, like we couldn't handle the growth. We Facebook was always looming. over us and feeling felt like it they could eat our lunch at any time and they were trying to And

It was so the stress was incredibly high. And Um Jack went from individual contributor

He had never been a manager, I believe, before he became CEO of this very fast growing company. Um, I wasn't a great manager, but I had A few years on him. You had some you had some experiences with failure. Yes. To say the least for sure. For sure. And so

Yeah. They you know, we we didn't see I to I we're we're Very different actually. Um We Both desperately, desperately wanted it to succeed and both thought we were correct and we didn't talk about it in a healthy way. Yeah.

Alright, so eventually the frustration got to a point where You ask the board. relieve him of his duties and he was

This is well known. He was b basically kinda pushed out. Did and that I'm assuming was that the end of your relationship? Was that more or less Kind of the break. That was the break. Oh yeah, that was the break for sure. Um And again, my I I would handle that very differently'cause I hadn't been giving him clear feedback.

He was pushed out and then I became CEO. Which is hard to believe, but it wasn't actually my plan. I still didn't necessarily want to be CEO. And we talk to a few other candidates, but then I was like, okay, maybe I'm the best person to be CEO. So it really looked like it was just a oh this thing is successful. I'm gonna push him out and Take over.

Um so understandably He was hurt and upset about that. Have you guys ever um Talked since then or repaired your relationship or not really? Yeah, well we've talked I was yeah.

L long long story in the Twitter saga. As you know, he eventually came back as CEO. And you were on the board. And I was on the board. I gotten pushed out of CEO. And and I was on the board for Multiple years. And we he was also on the board the whole time. Even after he left as CEO, he was still on the board.

And so we were on the board together for A decade. Mm-hmm. And so yeah, and we were yeah, we were we're fine. We're friendly.

We have dinner, but Yeah we're not. Best friends. Yeah. So he left.

You became The CEO. And this would be kind of a a a two year stint for you and you didn't know that at the time. Um

You also I guess were approached in two thousand eight by Mark Zuckerberg to buy you out. Yeah. Um What I mean what

what happened, what was the story, because I from what I understand Um, you guys said, Well, you know, we think we're we're worth half a billion dollars and and and Mark Zuckerberg was like, Okay, yeah, it that sounds Right, but but the sale never happened. What what happened? Uh yeah, there's a a story that Biz tells about Biz and I going down to Palo Alto and meeting with Mark, um

And It was just Mark and Biz and I like. In a room with soft seating. And It was very awkward and

Strange, but Wanted to hear him out. And I felt I had no interest in selling, but you gotta listen to these. things and Facebook of course was private at the time, but based on their valuation they could do a stock deal that may value us around

A half billion dollars and That was a lot of money. And we were maybe No, we were You were thirty people at the time. Wow.

Yeah. So Yeah. Serious. We ha we had to take that seriously. We of course didn't know what Facebook would become either, you know, eventually that half billion would be Who knows? Like I don't know if you did the math on that.

But I went to the board and I I thought about very deeply and I came up with this like okay, why would you sell a company I think there are three reasons and none of these meet that criteria. Three reasons being you don't want to do it anymore.

And so you need you need someone To do it. For you. Or you're in trouble. Um so there's famous cases like YouTube sold to Google, obviously amazing acquisition for Google.

But YouTube Was was really a lot of trouble both with um You know, copyright infringement. and the scaling and infrastructure costs of YouTube really needed this

uh the shelter that Google could provide and lost money for years and years and years. Um and so I thought that was another reason that didn't seem to apply to us. And third Was that if If just from a fiduciary perspective, if the offer clearly was a no brainer from a financial perspective, then you might be inclined to do as well.

And so my letter to the board was I think these are the reasons to sell. I think none of them apply. And so we shouldn't sell. And so that was the end of conversation. All right. I wanna go back to your leadership and and just to point out, be being CEO of Twitter is like being an Italian prime minister, right? Like you you don't last that long, okay?

And um and and that just was the theme, right? Like it's a hard Um But there was a rap on you, and and I I I say this not to make you feel bad or criticize you, but I I'm I'm curious just from a self reflective perspective on

What you think about it and and whether you learn from it if it was If it's in retrospect helpful, but the rap on you was You're too slow to make decisions. Анд осу You were prone to hiring people you knew.

Which is a big no no for some people. Again. Not saying that's right or wrong, that was the criticism that's You know and and and the massive, you know tha millions of columns have been written about Twitter. That's come out. Do you think that's fair?

I think both are fair. I was not a great CEO. By any stretch. And

I think I was getting Better. What I was very good at Was Product.

And knowing in my opinion product and strategy and knowing where to take But the company got to a size where Lots and lots of other things were important for the CEO to do.

Um certainly management, finances, leadership, giving confidence to the entire team. But I think in a lot of cases I was slow to make decisions because I was I was avoiding conflict. I didn't want to make decisions that other people disagree with. I didn't have My If

Felt something Intuitively But every b like the evidence or the data or the logic, everyone was arguing something else. Then I would just I would got frozen.

Or if the decision was about a person and I I I was I was lacking the confidence to And um really upset people, and that was a huge weakness, for sure.

And so How did you overcome that, or did you ever over I mean we'll go on to your next company. I got better. having having conflict aversion Is For some people it it's a character trait and and uh and one I respect'cause I identify with it.

Yeah, it's not like Embracing conflict is a great character trait. Either. But I think conflict aversion comes from fear.

Hm. Fear of what? Fear of rejection. I think I think especially if you have imposter syndrome and Look, I'm a farm boy from Nebraska who was running this company. I was like I Never had a Job where I rose to the ranks.

the the success that you had and the And the psychological Kind of. Let's say it's a Foundation of wealth that you had built?

You still have that. For sure, for sure. That didn't really change anything. And I hadn't really done any work on myself at the time. And I think this is Like for entrepreneurs So so important to realize like what is driving you and where are your blind spots. I had No idea. So when I would hear, I got a little bit of feedback.

And by the way Somewhat ironically. The board of Twitter had a lot of conflict aversion. Because they never never gave me that feedback to my face. I didn't know

I was gonna be fired. At all. Cause no one ever told me I was doing a bad job. Uh so there was a whole culture of conflict aversion. And my my execs who were complaining about me to the board also weren't telling me so everyone was avoiding conflict. Yeah.

But yeah, I had a lot of I had a ton of fear and a lot I had both a lot of confidence about What I was good at, and a ton of fear and That Um I didn't think I actually even could be ousted, so it wasn't that. Was just really about being called out for not knowing what I was doing. How how did you feel?

When you found out that you were being Let go, as CEO. Were you were you devastated? Was it a dark time? I was Devastated. Devastated. I can't

Like describe how I was also shocked. I didn't even think it was possible. I so I went from w owning one hundred percent of this company

To being kicked out. That was my own fault, but I had Like why didn't Get the legal protections. There's no way I had to lose control of the company. I just trusted my investors. And and the board. And it was like oh we're all on the same side.

And so I knew, you know, I was barely keeping things together, but it's also the nature of fast growing companies. The company grew Ten X and users and employees and valuation in the two years. I was CEO, so I'm like

Guys, on paper this isn't going that badly. And so I had a meeting, it was my Coach at the time, hired by a V C is Bad idea.

Um Bill Campbell who told me and I was just like what? What are you even What? How What?

Couldn't believe it. And then I was Very upset and very mad, went through all the stages of grief. Yeah.

It it's interesting because from from one perspective people might say, well, who cares? You're gonna walk out of this rich rich guy and who cares? But but personally it felt like a failure. Like you had you had not succeeded as Running this thing. Yeah, it felt like the h huge failure and so much of me I honestly thought That it was gonna destroy the company.

And And so I was really sad about that, but it was also terribly embarrassed and like I spent years Trying to prove myself. And like

and at this at the height of my success I was just kneecapped. And Every it felt like Nothing I did before mattered.

Because I failed at the biggest thing. I I ever did. Okay. So this Chapter of your life is over. But you clear

You you have an energy and a drive. And you you clearly were gonna do something else, which you did. It would uh it's no secret to people listening, it was it was gonna be medium. Um, which is kind of amazing'cause it's like the first your first really the thing that you first really had success in, which was blogging. You kind of go back to that. It's like a three sixty return. Tell me about W what did you want it?

to do. Medium the seeds of medium were really planted while I was still at Twitter. And The initial genesis is Biz and I, Biz who came over from Twitter

Well he and I were talking. One of the things we learned at Twitter, which we really believed in, was this idea of constraints. So we're like Let what if we create a writing platform That wasn't so short as Twitter, but still was N you know, not too short, not too long.

And I I walked up to the right whiteboard and I wrote medium. I was like, I don't know what it is, but we should call it that. Yeah. And then um

The idea was essentially What we had learned from social networks was that the value was in the connectivity. Like If

Twitter just did what Blogger did and posted your tweet to a webpage. And didn't fan it out to if there wasn't this follow mechanism. It wouldn't be very interesting. It would it would essentially just be bloggers. So It's the distribution system that created all the value. And this is why I call my company as obvious. It was obvious to me that that should exist.

So the idea of medium was basically to uh I mean wha how was it gonna be different from from What blogger was. It was the network. It was Giving people a place to write these longer things, but connecting them.

So they could be discovered. And Um that's what Blogger wasn't there's no network to blogger. You could create a web page. You couldn't follow the webpage and there's no real

reason to write on Blogger versus anywhere else because there's no audience on Blogger. Tell me about your How the rest of your life and career unfolds. And you pr don't know, you have no idea. But you're you're not old. I mean you're in your f you know, early fifties.

And you know, you've achieved incredible success and built amazing well known brands, blogger. Twitter medium. I mean, very few people can say that. You obviously as a result of that became incredibly wealthy. You have you you can't possibly spend a fraction of the money that you earned in your lifetime.

How do you imagine the rest of your Life unfolding, I mean starting more businesses, investing How do you think it's going to Go. Um

Um so after I stepped down from medium, which is almost it's coming up on two years. Can I Um Tony Stubblebein, also someone who I've known for a very long time. I hired him to run that company. He's doing a great job, doing a better job than I was doing running medium. Medium's going great. I co founded another company recently. Uh

Uh it's a company called Mosey, which is a social App. It's another social app, but it's not a social media app. It's really about relationship building and getting people together. In real life. Mm.

And so I'm sorry that but I I didn't want to run another company. I am not running it. I'm really getting more and more just into the creative side and just like and by creative side I mean of life, being like um

I also recently got divorced. I have two kids trying to create a great um environment for them. I'm working on some art projects. I'm Do a little philanthropy. And other than that, I don't know, could be music, could be

events, um But uh that's what I'm focused on right now. When you look back on on your career so far. Long life ahead of you. Um

How much of of where you Got to do you tribute to the work you put in the grind and how much do you think You were lucky, you were here at the right place at the right time.

A whole lot of both. A whole lot of both, for sure. And I and I think anyone who doesn't who has success who doesn't mention luck is fooling themselves. And it's like everyone says, you can increase your chances of luck. I worked Incredibly hard.

Um From those first days of those first companies. To the extent where I didn't sleep. I worked Too much. to the point of um

decrease in returns for sure. But I learned everything I possibly could about what I was doing and I kept trying stuff. And again I attribute like maybe my upbringing, maybe the way I was wired, but that sense of I have to completely rely on myself and I'm not gonna give up. Certainly paid off.

That's Ev Williams, founder of Blogger and Medium. and co-founder of Twitter. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app, so you never miss a new episode of the show and as always it's free. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Ramteen Areblui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Carla Estevez. Our audio engineers were Gilly Moon and Josh Newell.

Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Casey Herman, JC Howard, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, Catherine Cypher, and Malia Agadello. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

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