"We’ve raised all this money. We’ve created this global brand…Now we have to go build the business that lives up to that valuation."
Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, January 20, 2010
And that, my friend, is why we won’t see a Twitter IPO this year. That, and this really obscure New Yorker reference:
“My view of our financial future is like that old New Yorker cover where the New Yorker looks at the view of the United States and the IPO is way out west somewhere,” Costolo said yesterday during a panel discussion at Bloomberg’s San Francisco bureau. “Bronx and Queens are our 2010 financial plan, and that’s what we’re focused on right now.”
You could argue, that Twitter needs to be closer to Madison Avenue than the Bronx, but I think we all get his point–Twitter’s just not ready to head west and make its fortunes in an IPO.
Aside from figuring out how exactly it plans to generate revenue, the other monkey on its back isn’t actually a monkey at all–it’s a whale!
The company really needs to figure out how to avoid such random outages. A few of these immediately prior to an IPO, and it won’t be just whales that are sinking–Twitter’s opening-day valuation won’t be able to tread-water either!