Frenemies ...The Twitter API Wars

Good morning…

I went to a fun bar to watch the Leafs lose last night. I asked Twitter for a place to watch the Leafs hockey game and I got back ‘Canuck Bar’ which was definitely full of Leafs hockey fans.

I also was invited to Brunetti’s in West Village by James the owner in the same thread and had a great pizza and met James. My friend Micah joined who was formerly product at Snapchat and now at a new AI and VR mobile gaming company.

I asked Micah to show me some Snapchat filters and he came back with Young Howie and Micah…I need Elon’s hair guy!

Onward…

While I was in Amsterdam this weekend, my friend Scott Grimes set up a lunch for some local American friends also venture capitalists in Amsterdam. One of them was my old ‘frenemy’ Ryan Sarver who was running the Twitter API, partnerships and biz dev way back when Twitter was 30 people and Twitter was ‘open’.

I won’t get into the boring gory details, but I was the co-founder of Stocktwits, indirect seed investor through Betaworks in Summize (acquired by Twitter), first seed investor in Tweetdeck (acquired by Twitter) and seed investor in Bitly (acquired by Twitter), I had many reasons to call Ryan and yell, scream, swear and cajole about Twitter strategy.

Ryan was rewarded just fine for those community attacks as Twitter exploded in growth and he left I think in 2012 and went over to Redpoint (venture capital). Today, he is living in Amsterdam, thinking about what is the next big thing for him.

Ryan did genuinely act happy to see me. We do run into each other every few years and keep up with each other on Twitter. He chose the diplomatic ‘frenemy’ bear hug and we shared a few great pasta dishes and glasses of wine and I made him go back and tell me what was going on back in the days of the commercial strategy battle. Ryan is a good dude.

It was almost exactly how I thought which did not make me feel any different, but it was really fun to sit with Ryan and hear about the Twitter early days of juggling CEO’s, his own battles within Twitter and how all my opinions and strategy ideas were perceived.

If I were to choose, it is better to be in these battles than to have not participated at all.

Have a great day.