How Will Twitter Make Money? One Of Their Major Investors Speaks

Twitter July 6, 2011 2 Comments

The question of how Twitter will ever make money has been one that has been debated for as long as the service itself has been around and nobody really seems to have an answer. With over 200 million tweets per day and huge traction Twitter has become an essential resource for millions of people around the world but how viable it is as a long term business has been a burning question for some time. The company rarely addresses the question themselves but Chris Sacca who owns just over 10% of Twitter and was one of the early angel investors shares his vision in this video shot with Kevin Rose. It’s a facinating insight in to Twitter from somebody who has incredible access to the road map of the company and seeing as he is friends with Rose he probably lets his guard slip more than the staged PR answers that Twitter’s top executives would normally give. Sacca claims that he is incredible bullish on the company and it’s future as a “great business” and gives a couple of examples of just how measurable the Twitter advertising model will be and even cites advertisers having success with the platform already. There is a certain amount of vague talk which suggests they are still figuring a lot of the monetization stuff out but when somebody like Chris Sacca says “the money is starting to stack up over there” you know that Twitter are probably on the right track. It’s a great video and probably the best insights ever seen in to Twitter from somebody that close to the company without the usual PR spin…

I’ve cropped the video to only include the part about Twitter but the entire video is well worth watching below if you are an entrepreneur or somebody who is interesting in investing. Some of the highlights include how Sacca was $2 million in the hole when the last internet bubble burst but how he fought his way out of that and got back to break even before going on to work at Google and also start his own fund. This is the real story of a hustler and somebody who can make it under any circumstances. The best part of the video though is how he became on of the early angel investors in Twitter by accident and needed to be convinced to do so by Ev Williams. Seeing as the company is currently worth 7 Billion it wasn’t a bad call! If you have an hour the full video is well worth a watch…

Full Video


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