Skip to main content

The billion dollar tweet

Here’s a tweet Travis Kalanick sent in January 2010. The reply from Ryan Graves happened 3 minutes later. That tweet was worth over a billion dollars.

January 2010 was the month Travis was doing a test run with 3 cars in New York for a mobile app that he and his friend, Garrett Camp, had just created. 

They had decided it was time to start a company around the app and, needing to find a GeneralManager to run it, Travis took to Craigslist and Twitter looking for the right person.

Ryan’s reply to Travis came as he was looking for something new. He had some experience at GE, and had worked for Foursquare for a while for free after the company turned him down for a job. He was ready for a new opportunity - and took a chance with this tweet.

Travis replied back, they met, they hit it off, and Ryan joined Travis and Garrett on March 1st as their first hire.

With their new company started, the three of them then invited all their friends to demo the product and they officially launched in San Francisco just 3 months later on May 31st.

That was five years ago.

This week, the team that started with that tweet has built their company, Uber, into a company that is currently valued at over $60 billion (they just announced another funding round of $2 billion this week http://bit.ly/ubers-next-2-billion).

Today, Travis and Ryan are worth over $6 billion, and that tweet from Ryan (who today is Uber’s Head of Global Operations) began a journey which has made him a billionaire today as well.

How are you using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube today?

As a wall of content? As a broadcasting tool?

Or, like Travis and Ryan, as a way to find the resources, connections and opportunities you need when you need them?

Depending on how you use it, social media can make you feel apart from everyone, or one step to anyone.

It can overwhelm you, or empower you.

It can be a time waster, or a time saver.

“Never confuse motion with action.”
~ Benjamin Franklin

What do you need or who can you help today? It may just be a tweet away.

Of course, there is no promise that one connection or one tweet will result in you making a billion dollars or impacting a billion lives.

But there is no promise it won’t either.

 extracted from facebook page of Roger James Hamilton

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starting a Business in Ugand PART 1-COMPANY REGISTRATION

Below is a detailed summary of the bureaucratic and legal hurdles faced by entrepreneurs wishing to incorporate and register a new firm in Uganda. It examines the procedures, time and cost involved in launching a commercial or industrial firm with between 10 and 50 employees and start-up capital of 10 times the economy's per-capita gross national income. This information was collected as part of the Doing Business project , which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 190 economies. The most recent round of data collection was completed in June 2016. Standardized Company Legal form: Private Limited Company Paid-in minimum capital requirement: UGX 0 City: Kampala No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs 1 Submit the Name Reservation Form to the assessment window of t...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com

10 Daily habits of most successful entrepreneurs.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” ~ John C Maxwell How many of these top 10 entrepreneur habits do you have today? What good habits can you start and what bad habits can you stop to change your results tomorrow? 1) Create a routine - Set a rhythm to connect to the big 5 P’s every day: Purpose (why?), Products (what?), People (who?), Processes (when?), Productivity (how?) 2) Keep the mornings for the toughest projects - Start with what’s most important, not what’s most urgent. Make yourself 80% proactive, 20% reactive. 3) Work out & meditate - Richard Branson says the #1 thing he does to improve his business success is exercise. The universe will only look after you as well as you look after yourself. 4) Give a head start to tomorrow today - Design each day ahead of time and ask the same question Steve Jobs asked: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want t...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com

The most successful African entrepreneurs of the future __Think beyond borders of all kinds.

By Dr Strive Masiyiwa Amongst the many things I wanted to achieve with this platform was to get young African entrepreneurs to reach out and start talking to each other, doing business deals, and partnering to find solutions to Africa's many other challenges. I'm not sure if you saw this comment I made during our discussion on partnerships a while back: "Afterthought: Here is a secret! The most successful Africans in future are those who master the ability to partner with Africans from other African countries... Shhhh! (Keep this secret to yourself, because there are many enemies out there who will try and stop you from believing this.)" As an entrepreneur, there are huge benefits for you if Africa can shift its economic narrative to what I sometimes refer to as "Africanization." We as Africans need to open up this continent to development by Africans. However, this should not be to the exclusion of working with partners from other parts of the worl...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com