The Day I Wrote Off Twitter (Before It Was Twitter)

I'm writing this from my home studio in Colorado, preparing for this week's Killer Innovations episode. I just got back from two weeks in Silicon Valley, and I kept noticing the same pattern everywhere I went: billion-dollar companies that started as ideas everyone thought were stupid.

During my flight back to Denver, I was reflecting on these patterns when a memory I'd completely forgotten suddenly surfaced.

It was 2005, and I thought I was watching a company die in real time.

When Apple Killed My Partners

My Killer Innovations podcast was one of the first shows listed on Odeo, a new podcast directory started by a scrappy team trying to make podcasting mainstream. I got to know the founders — smart guys who understood that podcasting was going to be huge.

Then Apple announced iTunes Podcasts.

Overnight, Odeo became irrelevant. Apple had the distribution, the ecosystem, the marketing power. Game over. I remember thinking, "That's it for these guys. They're finished."

But here's where it gets painful to remember.

Instead of folding, the team started using this crude internal communication tool they'd built for quick team updates. Early users started using it to share random thoughts. What they had for breakfast. Random observations. Stupid stuff.

I watched this happening and thought: These guys are desperate. This "Twitter" thing is the stupidest pivot I've ever seen. They're just prolonging the inevitable.

I completely wrote them off.

The Arrogance of Expertise

Here's what kills me about this story: I thought my years of tech experience gave me perfect pattern recognition. I'd seen plenty of companies die. I knew what failure looked like.

The Odeo team was clearly finished. Their core business had been obliterated by Apple. This "microblogging" thing was obviously a desperate Hail Mary—who cares about 140-character breakfast updates?

I was so confident in my assessment that I stopped paying attention entirely. I literally unsubscribed from their updates because I didn't want to watch the slow death spiral.

That "death spiral" became Twitter, worth over $40 billion at its peak.

The Pattern I Couldn't See

During my recent two weeks in the valley, I kept seeing this same thing: companies everyone initially dismissed that became massive successes. Twitter, Google, Facebook—all started as "terrible" ideas.

But it wasn't until I was reflecting on my flight back to Denver that this memory surfaced—something I'd completely forgotten until I started thinking about patterns of "stupid" ideas that become billion-dollar companies.

But I couldn't see it because I was asking the wrong questions.

Instead of asking "Why would anyone want this?" I should have been asking "What behavior is this enabling that never existed before?"

Instead of asking "How do they monetize breakfast updates?" I should have been asking "What happens when real-time global conversation becomes possible?"

Instead of asking "Who's the market for this?" I should have been asking "What market could this create?"

The Expensive Education

This wasn't my only miss. At HP, I watched our team dismiss breakthrough ideas weekly using the exact same flawed thinking patterns:

"This is too simple." We acquired a mobile device management company called Bitfone with an elegantly simple solution. Our enterprise team looked at it and said, "This doesn't look sophisticated enough for Verizon or AT&T." We completely screwed up what could have been a massive win because we couldn't see that simplicity was the breakthrough, not a bug.

"The market's too small." How many times did I hear "This is interesting, but where's the billion-dollar opportunity?" We passed on ideas that seemed too niche, not realizing they were creating entirely new markets.

"What problem does this actually solve?" The deadliest question in innovation. Breakthrough ideas don't solve existing problems—they create new behaviors people didn't know they wanted.

The Framework Born from Failure

After missing Twitter and watching HP kill dozens of potentially breakthrough innovations, I developed what I call the three-question filter for evaluating ideas that seem "stupid":

1. What new behavior could this enable?
2. What complexity could this eliminate?
3. What market could this create?

These questions force you to look beyond surface-level features and obvious problems to identify transformational potential.

If I'd asked these questions about Twitter in 2005:

New behavior: Real-time global conversation and information sharing Complexity eliminated: The friction of traditional media and communication Market created: Social media as we know it today

But I was too busy being smart to ask the right questions.

I walk through exactly how to apply this framework to current Silicon Valley trends in this week's episode (to be released on 6/25/2025) — including which "stupid" AI ideas might actually be the next breakthrough opportunities.

The Pattern Repeating Today

Here's what's concerning me after these two weeks in Silicon Valley: I'm seeing the exact same pattern playing out with AI.

During my two weeks in the valley, every company was screaming about AI. Every pitch deck, every billboard, every conversation. It felt like 1999 when everyone became ".com-first" overnight.

But the real breakthrough opportunities? They're probably the ideas that look completely stupid to everyone following the AI herd. The companies that seem "too simple" or "too niche" or "solving the wrong problem."

I identified several of these potential breakthrough ideas during my trip—companies and concepts that everyone's dismissing but might be creating entirely new behaviors. I break down how to spot them yourself in this week's video analysis (to be released on 6/25/2025).

The next Twitter is out there right now, and everyone with "expertise" is probably dismissing it for the exact same reasons I dismissed the real Twitter.

The Brutal Truth About Expertise

Here's what twenty years of missing breakthrough innovations has taught me: expertise is often the enemy of recognition.

The more experience you have, the better you get at pattern matching. But breakthrough innovations don't follow existing patterns—they create new ones.

When you've seen a hundred companies fail, you become really good at spotting the signs of failure. The problem is, breakthrough success often looks exactly like failure in the early stages.

The Odeo team looked like they were desperately pivoting after getting crushed by Apple. From the outside, Twitter looked like a company making random moves to avoid death.

But from the inside, they were creating something that had never existed before.

The Question That Haunts Me

I still think about this sometimes when I see a company or idea that seems obviously doomed. What if I'm wrong again? What if my experience is blinding me to something unprecedented?

The truth is, I probably am missing something right now. There's probably a "stupid" idea out there that I'm dismissing with the same confidence I had about Twitter.

The question isn't whether I'll miss the next breakthrough—it's whether I'll catch myself making the same thinking errors before it's too late.

What I'm Watching For

These days, when I see ideas that make me think "that's obviously going to fail," I try to pause and ask myself: What if I'm seeing the next Twitter and I just can't recognize it yet?

Because if more than thirty years of innovation experience has taught me anything, it's that the biggest breakthroughs always look like the stupidest ideas—especially to people who think they know what they're looking at.

What "obviously doomed" company or idea have you been watching lately? Hit reply and tell me about it—I'm genuinely curious if I'm missing something again, and I read every response.

P.S. I broke down the three decision-making patterns that caused me to miss Twitter (and cost HP millions in other missed opportunities) in this week's framework analysis. The same thinking traps are killing breakthrough recognition across Silicon Valley right now.

Wednesday's deep dive: Watch me apply (to be released on 6/25/2025) this framework to current Silicon Valley trends and show you how to spot the next "stupid" idea before everyone else figures it out.

Studio Notes is where I decode +30 years of Fortune 100 innovation decisions. Every Monday, I share the behind-the-scenes stories, costly mistakes, and hard-won frameworks you won't find anywhere else. Subscribe to get each issue delivered to your inbox.