From the Valley
How Evan Williams and Blogger.com Survived the Dot-Com Crash
Many of my peers and I often fathom the limitless possibilities of what “would have happened” if we had founded a startup just a decade earlier. We like to imagine the unlimited funding and access to resources we would have had had we formed an internet startup during the dot-com boom. There seemed to be such unlimited potential for success back in the 90’s…
But what if, conversely, we had entered the market in late 2001, just after the dot com bust, lost funding, had our company depleted to a single employee, were abandoned by our coworkers, had our friends turn their backs on us, and to top it all off, and broke up with our long-time girlfriends? Would we have had the fortitude to continue with your company? Could we have emerged as one of the most influential and lasting companies of the dot-com era? Well, that’s precisely what happened to Evan Williams, founder of Blogger.com.
The Start of Blogger.com, 1999
Back in 1999 Evan Williams, along with some of his close friends, founded Pyra Labs and soon thereafter, launched its first product, Blogger.com. Though they enjoyed some initial success – quickly gaining a loyal user base and investment backing – by 2000, with the downward spiraling trend of the startup funding and eventual dot com bust, Pyra’s resources began to run dry. By January of 2001, after their second failed acquisition deal, the idea of a Pyra becoming a successful startup seemed all but lost.
From Bad to Worse
That’s when the series of inauspicious events began to occur for Evan Williams. With no money left to pay salaries, Williams’ startup Pyra Labs began to experience a mass exodus of employees, many of whom Williams had initially recruited from his circle of friends. Even long-time girlfriend and Pyra labs co-founder, Meg Hourihan, lost faith in Williams and the future of their company, eventually parting ways with both. Despite his precarious situation, Williams never lost faith in himself nor his company.
Going It Alone
Without employees for his company, or even friends for morale support, Evan Williams trudged forward as the sole employee of Pyra Labs. Somehow he managed not only to keep the Blogger.com service running, which at that point had several thousand users, but also continued to grow and expand the utility of the service. Through the struggle, Williams taught himself Linux system administration and Java, just to keep the servers running. During this time he also launched the first for-pay features of Blogger, which incorporated his innovative “reverse advertising” scheme – a system in which users pay a nominal fee to not have advertisements posted their sites.
Turning of the Tide
By 2002, Evan Williams launched Blogger Pro, the paid-for version of Blogger and managed to bring some new employees to his company. Soon thereafter, Pyra managed some significant licensing deals of its Blogger service. And, as we all know how the rest of the story goes, in October of 2002, Pyra managed to get acquired by Google. Not only does Blogger.com remain as one of the most popular websites and services on the web today, but it also stands as an emblem of the success that an individual can achieve with a little bit of faith and determination, no matter what dire circumstances he or she faces.
On to Better Things…
Evan Williams Left Pyra Labs in 2004, just one year after its acquisition by Google. In 2006 he co-founded Obvious Corp., where he’s been behind his latest project, the increasingly popular social-networking/micro-blogging service Twitter.
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Nice article