Part 16 (1/2)

”The board is going to make d.i.c.k CEO,” Campbell said. ”They want you to step down.”

At first Ev thought Campbell was kidding around, and he laughed nervously. But Campbell wasn't joking.

”You're being serious?” Ev asked, his heartbeat revving up. ”I'm confused. What, what are you talking about?” he said, the smile now completely erased from his face. ”I don't understand what you're talking about.”

Then Campbell said it again. ”The board doesn't wasn't you to be CEO. They want you to step down. They want you out.”

Campbell continued talking, rambling about the board's decision, about their belief that Ev wasn't the right person to run Twitter. That he took too long to make decisions. That he couldn't execute. ”Look, these f.u.c.king guys. These f.u.c.king New York investors,” Campbell said, trying to show he had nothing to do with the decision.

As Ev started to grasp that what he was hearing was actually real, he interrupted Campbell. ”Are you for this too?” Ev asked. ”Do you agree with the board?” Campbell started hemming and hawing, looking away from Ev, unable to properly answer him. ”And are you for it too?” Ev asked again in a fierce tone, his disbelief now turning to anger.

Again Campbell dithered, cursing about the board, the investors. ”These f.u.c.king guys!” he said.

Eventually Ev had heard enough and asked Campbell to leave so he could call the board and find out what was going on. He quickly started dialing.

”Hey, I'm really sorry, man,” Bijan said. He sighed and told Ev that he thought he was a great CEO. ”We want you to stay on in a product-advisory role,” Bijan said. ”We don't want you to leave the company. We think you're really valuable to Twitter.” But, he explained, the company needed a new type of CEO who could focus on revenue and take Twitter public.

Ev was stunned at what he was hearing. He hung up. He then called Fred Wilson, who was not remotely as friendly or apologetic as the others had been. Fred told him bluntly that he believed he had always been a terrible CEO, that he had no product sense. Fred said he hated the new Web site design, that it was the wrong direction for the company.

”What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?” Ev said to Fred, his voice now shaking. ”This is how VCs f.u.c.k up companies.

”Where is this coming from? Every time I ever gave a product presentation to the board, you were always like, 'Yeah, this is amazing, this is awesome,'” Ev said to Fred. ”I know we weren't executing well, but ...” He paused, lowering his voice, and solemnly stated, ”I really don't know how you can do this to a founder of a company.”

”I never considered you a founder,” Fred responded snidely, offended by Ev's slur against VCs. ”Jack founded Twitter.”

Ev's eyes widened. ”What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?” he said. ”You f.u.c.king fired Jack! This is insane. This is. f.u.c.king. Insane.”

”This is not a discussion,” Fred said. It had been decided by the board. Ev was not going to be CEO anymore.

Ev was infuriated. He had no idea whom to trust. How long ago had the board decided to fire him? Could they fire him? After all, Ev still owned the largest majority stake in Twitter and owned two voting board seats.

Ev tried several times to reach Fenton, repeatedly hearing his voice mail rather than his voice. He wanted to talk to Goldman and Biz. Were they in on this too? Campbell, Fred, Bijan, and Fenton all wanted him gone as CEO-that much was clear amid the fog of confusion-but what about ”his boys”? d.i.c.k, his friend of many years, had to be a part of the coup if he was being made CEO, Ev reasoned.

But not Goldman? or Biz? Ev thought, there was simply no way. Ev rushed out the door of his office and headed toward the third floor. He kept his head down to avoid talking to employees.

”You okay?” Goldman said as Ev walked up, a worried look on his face. Ev pointed to the rear conference room. As they went inside, Goldman closed the door behind them and sat at the table, looking up at his best friend and boss inquisitively. There were no windows, just dim lights s.h.i.+ning down from the ceiling. Outside the room, hundreds of employees buzzed away. Ev leaned back against the wall and told Goldman what had just happened. It was immediately apparent that Goldman had not been in on the boardroom rebellion.

”You're f.u.c.king kidding me,” Goldman said in confusion. ”What did they say?”

Ev walked him through his conversation with Campbell, then the phone calls with Fred and Bijan, broadly explaining what each had said.

Goldman was shocked.

It was dark outside as the rain pelted d.i.c.k Costolo's car relentlessly. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, trying to concentrate on the dark road. He was exhausted after the long flight from Indianapolis, where he had been speaking at a conference about Twitter. A few more miles, he thought, and I'll be home, out of these wet clothes.

He had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and begun navigating the dark, winding roads that led to his home in Marin when his phone rang. He fumbled to answer it with the Bluetooth in his car.

Ev and Goldman were sitting in another windowless conference room at Twitter on the sixth floor when the speakerphone finally clicked on. ”d.i.c.k speaking,” they heard over the sound of buckets of water smacking the window and roof of the car.

”What the f.u.c.k, d.i.c.k!” said Goldman. ”So you're going behind Ev's back to be CEO of the company! I can't believe-”

d.i.c.k cut him off. ”What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? Who is going to be CEO?”

Ev slowly leaned in to the phone. ”The board tried to fire me today and said they're putting you in charge to run the company,” he said in a placid tone, then repeated: ”They told me to step up to the chairman role and that you're taking over.”

”What the f.u.c.k are you talking about? That's news to me,” d.i.c.k said, sounding as surprised as Ev had been when he had heard the same news from Campbell earlier in the day. ”Was anyone going to tell me?” he joked, his deep laugh bouncing from his car into the Twitter conference room.

”You mean you didn't know about this?” Goldman asked.

”Noooo!” d.i.c.k said, shocked. ”This is literally the first I've ever heard of it.” This wasn't completely true, but it wasn't completely untrue, either.

Although the board had asked d.i.c.k to become interim CEO earlier that summer, d.i.c.k had asked that they execute it in a tactful way and that they determine how to tell Ev so it didn't seem that d.i.c.k was pus.h.i.+ng him out of the company to take control, which he was not. That plan had vanished into a plume of smoke when Campbell had shown up in Ev's office earlier that day and delivered the wrong speech. Campbell, who had known about Ev's approaching ousting for months (even during the coaching sessions), had suggested to the board that he tell Ev to step down, but he wasn't supposed to mention the d.i.c.k part of the equation. That was supposed to come later.

d.i.c.k had been caught between ethics and business amid the ousting of his friend and boss and he often found himself at a loss for what to do. He had a.s.sumed the board would handle it tactfully. But now it had all gone awry.

As d.i.c.k drove through the dark along the wet road, he explained to Ev and Goldman that he was going to tell the board he wouldn't take the job without Ev's consent-and since that clearly wasn't being given, he wouldn't do it.

As they hung up the phone, Goldman looked over at Ev and asked if he believed d.i.c.k. ”I have no idea,” Ev said. ”I really have no f.u.c.king idea who to believe anymore.”

Over the following days, events started to play out exactly as they had with Jack two years earlier.

Ev called Ted, Twitter's lawyer, who repeated almost verbatim the words he had said to Jack when he was fired. ”There isn't much you can do,” he said. ”It comes down to a vote by the board.” Then, reading from the next line in the script, Ted explained that he was sorry, that he really couldn't talk to Ev about it because first and foremost, he was Twitter's lawyer.

Goldman then went on the offensive, telling the board that they clearly didn't understand Ev if they thought he would simply step down. ”This isn't just going to happen like that,” he said. ”If you push him out, I'm going to leave. So is Biz. So are half of the employees. You're going to lose all of us.” He was right. Most of the Twitter employees loved Ev. More than half would have gladly put their few digital belonging onto thumb drives and walked out with him if Ev had asked them to. He had gone to great efforts to be the best boss he could be, and he had been successful. But while he was adept at managing down, managing up and sideways to his senior staffers was an entirely different story.

The conversations started to turn into a merry-go-round. ”f.u.c.k this.” ”f.u.c.k that.” ”f.u.c.k you.” Fenton came into the office to try to push things along. ”I told you to manage Campbell,” Fenton told Ev as they talked in his office. ”I'm really sorry about this, but I told you to manage his ego.”

”How the f.u.c.k is this up to Campbell?” Ev asked, cursing repeatedly, his hands shaking with anger. ”Look, I totally acknowledge I'm not the best CEO, but you can't put d.i.c.k in as CEO. He's not a product guy; he's an operations guy.”

”We'll sort the product stuff out later,” Fenton told him.

”How?”

”I don't know; we'll just figure it out. You'll be involved at a high level; maybe Jack can come back and help out.”

And there it was. Like a punch to the stomach. The word ”Jack” hung in the air. ”Wait, what did you just say?” Ev asked, his hands now still, his eyes hyperfocused on Fenton. ”You're going to bring Jack back?”

”No, no. I don't know if Jack will come back. That isn't my decision; it will be the decision of the new CEO,” Fenton said.

Another few days went by and there was a closed meeting of Campbell, Ev, and the rest of the board. d.i.c.k was sitting downstairs at his office, working away on daily operations.

After talking to the lawyers, Ev had realized he would indeed have to step down as CEO, but he also knew he could slow the transition and find the right replacement for Twitter.

”Should we hire someone outside the company, do a search for an executive, or should we just make d.i.c.k the CEO?” Campbell, who had commandeered the meeting, asked Ev.

Ev said d.i.c.k had done great work for the company, but ”he's not the right guy to be CEO.”

”So if he's not the right guy, should we let d.i.c.k go?” Campbell asked Ev.

Ev paused. ”If I step down as CEO, I will likely be taking d.i.c.k's role, so yes, we should let him go.”