Twitter founders: Innovation before business plan

Twitter's co-founders are singing a new song when it comes to explaining why they famously haven't put a business plan in place yet: it's too expensive!

Maybe I'm being a little bit mean there. But in a video interview with AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, the so-buzzed-it's-ringing-in-your-ears company's founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, said possible revenue strategies are currently in the process of getting bounced off the walls.

But, they said, it will invariably take some time because the company has a whole lot else to deal with--you know, monster worm attacks and ravenous fail-whales, which sort of makes you wonder when the plague of locusts will come along--and it's still a small start-up.

"We're doing a lot of research right now, and we're laying some groundwork," Williams said to Swisher. "We have very limited resources still--less than 40 people--and that's not very many to just manage the size of the service we have right now. So there's a ton of stuff we want to do on the product side, some of which we think are very complementary with revenue-generating stuff, but it's going to take us a while to experiment on that."

Translation: There aren't very many people on Twitter's payroll, and even though the company is extremely well-funded by top-notch venture capital firms, it's not willing to burn through its funding at the risk of being short-sighted on innovation. Twitter has, however, started making notable business development hires.

Stone chimed in, "The idea of recognizing the difference between profit and value, and defining value...for us, value is making a great service, making a great user experience, putting out a good network, a robust network worldwide, and focusing on features and feature development, those types of things. That's value for us. And profit will come later, when those things are achieved."

It's so adorably Silicon Valley of them.

[alexisbellido]

I think they are on track. If they have the funds to keep working on a better product that's the right thing to do before starting to sell whatever they plan to sell.

Twitter's improved a lot since the old whale days (there were a lot of them, now not so often) but I guess there are many more things to do to make it a rock solid service.

[cvaldes1831]

A lot of tech companies were saying "innovation before business plan" in 1999. How quickly people forget. (sigh)

[unknown unknown]

Twitter even feels like a site from 1999, a lot of hype but not much substance. People want to say it's more than it seems but it's really not even with third party apps like Tweetdeck.

[austinstorm]

If they don't get their act together, eventually we'll all move on to something else.

[Inconnux]

I've already switched from Facebook to Twitter... good riddance to Facebook arrogance...

[ThePrairiePrankster]

Why don't the geniuses ask those who use their service what they want? Or is that too "old school", making a product or service that is more than a fad? The money train will stop sooner than anyone thinks, business can be cruel if all you can produce is losses. Profits do not always follow value, the best product or service does not always win. Keep fiddlin' away your time boys, don't forget to keep an eye on the rear view mirror, something's gaining on you....

[geakz]

Here's an innovative idea: Fix the friggin' Fail Whale.

[jflorey]

How does the average investor get in on the ground floor with twitter before it becomes a part of another company such as Google? I am no idea what I am talking about but it sees to me that there is a company that is supported financially. Any suggestions.