Kevin Rose's Twitter Investment

Kevin Rose shares how he acquired early Twitter shares and accidentally caused Gary Vaynerchuk to pay more for his shares.

"I didn't invest in Odeo (Twitter's predecessor company). After they became Twitter, I asked Ev Williams, who was CEO at the time and who I was tightest with, if I could invest. There was no round available, but he said 'I got this engineer Blake that was leaving and had some stock - do you want to buy some of the stock?'

I bought in from Blake, and then I told Gary (Vaynerchuk) that Blake was selling some. But then Twitter had a preemptive round come along that really 5-10x'd their valuation. Blake was like 'Oh wait, there's a new valuation now' and he charged Gary the new price.

Gary's still pissed at me because I got this really cheap price for Twitter stock and then he had to pay the more expensive price. But Blake held onto like half or more of his shares, so if I had to guess, he probably made $50-75+ million on it. I'm sure he's okay."