#31: But Twitter's Quarter Was Really Good! With Rajiv Sud

Oops, it happened again. A company we follow closely on The Razor’s Edge reported earnings, met or beat expectations, and then sold off heavily along with a major market sell-off. Last time it was PagerDuty, this time it’s Twitter. To work through the quarter and perhaps the angst and anxiety around it, we speak with Rajiv Sud. Rajiv is a Silicon Valley veteran, with time logged at Google, AdMob – which was bought out by Google while he was there, at TellApart, and then at Twitter after Twitter bought TellApart. He’s been out of Twitter for about two years but as a shareholder and a frequent tweeter, he still follows the company closely. We break down the company's ad server issues and why they may be in the past, the deliberate approach the company takes to product releases, and why Jack Dorsey is maybe fine as Twitter's CEO. Topics Covered 4:45 minute mark – Q3 Reaction 8:00 – One-off effects of a weird 2020 for comparison’s sake 14:30 – The challenges with the ad server and what changed 19:30 – The Jack Dorsey question 24:30 – The stand-alone nature of each company’s ad stack 28:30 – The ad-tech graveyard 30:30 – The MAP delay 36:30 – How Twitter engages users, and the step-up from occasional to active 41:30 – When does this scale, or the rising expenses 53:30 – Differences between Google and Twitter from an insider’s perspective 58:30 – Twitter’s engagement and the upside or money left on the table in the subscription ecosystem 1:01:30 – Controlling the narrative