Kevin Rose's Twitter Windfall

A story about how Kevin Rose's reputation helped him get early access to invest in Twitter, turning $25,000 into over $100 million.

"Kevin had the prepared mind to notice Twitter was going to be a big deal. He was very humble about other investments, but with Twitter he knew it was going to be the next big thing. He noticed that Facebook and all social networks before were based on the idea of friendship where you had to request and accept follows. Twitter had one new feature - it was one directional. You could just follow someone without approval. He thought 'Wow, that's going to be amazing for celebrities.'

He reached out to Evan to invest, but was told the round was closed. A couple weeks later, Evan called back and said 'Hey, you asked about investing? We have this engineer who's leaving and wants to sell some of his shares. You could buy his if you want. I'll let you in because it's you - I like the way you are, you have a good eye for product, you're really active on Twitter, and I know you really believe in this.'

That $25,000 investment turned into a $100,000,000+ payday."