Twitter CEO Dick Costolo talks shop about the social network
As the company continues to grow, its CEO muses on the direction he wants to see Twitter take. And, no, it's not going public.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo gave a rundown on life, goals, and business at the social network during an interview Wednesday at the National Venture Capital Association's VentureScape, according to the Mercury News.
Addressing whether Twitter will go public (no), who he admires (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos), and what annoys him (Silicon Valley snarkiness), Costolo riffed on what it's like steering the helm of one the world's top social networks.
"One of the things I'm always challenging people inside the company is, you have to take more risks," Costolo said, according to the Mercury News. "We have to make bigger bets."
Interviewed by NVCA VentureScape Chair Jason Mendelson, Costolo said that he wanted to continue to make Twitter a place where people come to get or post information during disasters and emergencies.
During the Boston bombing, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and Hurricane Sandy, Twitter was a venue where people could find out immediately what was going on. Costolo said the social network "quickly became an alternative form of communicating to get help, in ways that phone calls and text messaging couldn't."Costolo, a Detroit native, joined Twitter in 2009 as the company's chief operating officer and moved onto CEO in 2010. When he first started, Twitter had just 60 employees, and now it has almost 2,000. As the company continues to evolve, Costolo said he'd like to emulate Amazon and how it has grown as a platform, according to the Mercury News.
"I think Jeff Bezos is amazing," Costolo said. "The way he's thought about building out the platform that the company has is exactly the kind of model we want to build at Twitter."