In a new NPR interview Twitter c-founder Biz Stone talks about the time he and partner Evan Williams got a meeting with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and how he decided what his company should be worth:
SAGAL: Wow. So I understand that Facebook at one point they offered to buy you guys for a lot of money.
Mr. STONE: Yeah, that was the meeting, actually.
SAGAL: Really?
Mr. STONE: Yeah. We drove down there. We were on the way down there. I got in Ev’s car, and I said, where are we going? And he said, we’re going to Facebook. I said, why are we going to Facebook? He said, because they would like to acquire us. I said, oh, well what do they want to acquire us for? He’s like, I don’t know, what do you think’s a good number.
Mr. STONE: I think we were valued at like $25,000 at the time. And I said, I don’t know, $500 million.
SAGAL: You just said that?
Mr. STONE: Yeah. And he said, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds pretty good.
Find out why Biz and Evan ended up skipping lunch with Mark Zuckerberg after the jump.
SAGAL: So how did you come up with that number?
Mr. STONE: I just made it up because it was ridiculous.
Mr. STONE: And so what happens was, you know, we get to this awkward moment where he says, well, you know, I don’t like to talk about numbers, it’s not something I do.
Mr. STONE: So then Zuckerberg, said, but if you’d like to throw me out a number, I’ll tell you yes or no right now. And Evan, said, okay, 500 million. And Zuckerberg said that is a big number.
Mr. STONE: And I said you said you’d say yes or no.
Mr. STONE: That wasn’t even the worst moment. The worst moment was he was like hey, do you guys want to go have lunch at our cafeteria. So we had to wait on this huge line for lunch. Evan was like aren’t you the boss? Can’t you like kind of cut the line a little bit here?
Mr. STONE: And he’s like that’s not how we do things here.
Mr. STONE: And that’s when I said, oh my gosh, Evan, we have that thing.
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“The worst moment was he was like hey, do you guys want to go have lunch at our cafeteria. So we had to wait on this huge line for lunch”
That sounds so horrible
I hope Mr. Stone recovers from that dreadful experience.
i don’t get it? Slow day for me :/
I didnt get the end either….im just slow somtimes
The fact that Mark didn’t pull rank and get the owners of the business he was trying to buy in the front of the link irked Stone and Williams. Basically one of those ‘omg, i’ve got to get out of here’ moments
500 Million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? 1 Billion dollars.