How a spare server turned into Twitpic, the $1.5M+ a year startup

[moe]

That whole story is just one big WTF to me.

It seems most things sailing in the wake of twitter simply defy all logic and common sense. There have been literally dozens of picture sharing services before twitpic. The only difference I can see is the name ("look, we're for twitter!") and that he basically integrated an url-shortener.

The entire site looks like about a week's worth of work. 700k in annual profit? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

[abstractbill]

The entire site looks like about a week's worth of work. 700k in annual profit? Not sure if I want to laugh or cry.

Laugh. Be happy. Learn from this that you don't have to make something people want that nobody else could make because it's so complex and you're awesome. You just have to make something people want.

[petercooper]

It's not so much what the site does but the fact that it came earlyish on and got so much traction (and recognition from most of the major Twitter clients). Being in the right place at the right time can beat execution in most areas.

[volida]

you should cry for your attitude.

[mikeyur]

You should grow up.

[tennisman120]

you should cry that you didn't come up with that idea and have 700,000k+ sitting in your bank account.

[noaheverett]

Thanks for the comments everyone! I hope that you will find the information in the interview useful in some way.

Feel free to hit me up on Twitter (@noaheverett) if you have any questions.

[brandnewlow]

Noah, thanks for putting all this info out there. And congratulations on your success so far.

Question: How did you respond to the leaked Twitter notes in which the Twitter guys talked about "blessing" another Twitter photosharing application instead of you? That had to be a low point. I remember when I first read that I clucked my tongue in sympathy for you. Do you suppose the Twitter guys would rather just work with a known quantity instead of some guy out in SC?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strat... (ctrl+F for "twitpic" to find the relevant section)

[Skeuomorph]

Is "O-off" a subtle dig at OAuth, or an audio transcription typo?

[fizx]

> Noah was recently offered 10 figures for the business

Bullshit.

[icey]

There were a few times in this interview that my BS detectors went off. Andrew asked a question regarding which VCs Noah had spoken with and Noah said he couldn't respond due to NDA. After some probing the story changed to say that only some of the VCs required NDA at the point of discussing monetary figures. Andrew did a nice job by continuing to ask questions like "what did they want you to do with the money?" and Noah again vacillated. It just struck me as odd that he couldn't remember what the discussions were about, it seems like something that should be really easy to remember. Of course, he could have just been nervous as well, but it really smelled fishy to me.

Disclaimer: I don't know Noah, I have never used TwitPic, I have nothing for or against Noah and / or TwitPic, so take all of this with an ENORMOUS grain of salt since this is nothing more than pure speculation

[noaheverett]

Yeah 10 figures is a typo. It's stated as 8 in the actual interview.

[AndrewWarner]

Oh man. Good catch. Typo. Complete mistake. I'll correct it.

I was doing an interview and didn't see your comment till now.

[mikeryan]

It is - in the interview its 8 figures, 10+ million.

[antidaily]

8. andrew says "so at least 10 million". he counters "much more than 10 million".

[sucuri2]

It certainly seems hard to believe...

[jasonlbaptiste]

it says somewhere 8 figures. thats a typo.

[robryan]

I would have sold, at any time twitter could basically undermine his business, actually the more successful it becomes the more likely twitter would be to integrate it.

[jfarmer]

To wit, Twitter switched the default URL shortener from tinyurl to bit.ly, and now bit.ly is the largest URL shortener on Twitter.

This is what happens when your business is a commodity (and you're not the one who commoditized it).

[gsmaverick]

Twitter is almost guaranteed not to go into photo sharing. They've had tons of opportunity to add in media services but they clearly aren't interested.

[anApple]

My thought as well

[anApple]

Lucky guy. Twitter could have killed him in a glimpse by just offering an image/video storing site themselves.

[slig]

Yeah, right after building their own URL shortener.

[tennisman120]

This is just one of those pot-luck ideas. It was already out there, he just hit the jackpot.

[dusklight]

Question for noah, if he's willing to answer it:

You said that currently you have $1.5M+ revenues, and margins of 70%. What are the current cost breakdowns right now? Other than salary, what other ongoing costs do you have?

[ynniv]

You have to serve a lot of content to make $1.5M in advertising.

[sewerhorse]

well i guess the cdn costs is trough the roof when the core functionality of your site is photo sharing.

[alexro]

2010 turns out to start full of good news about small teams. First Balsamiq story, now this one. Anticipated is a new wave of optimistic first-time entrepreneurs with financial projections built on these cases :)