While Twitter toils away on generating revenue, the company’s busy burning through its venture capital booty.
According to Twittercism, Twitter now has 47 employees – information gleaned from Twitter’s About Us page. That roughly works out to about $5-million of operating expenses a year using the $100,000/employee formula.
If you throw in $2-million to $3-million of servers of other costs, Twitter’s burning through about $7-million to $8-million of cash/year. At this rate, mind you, Twitter still have two to three years of financial runway even if it doesn’t generate any revenue.
Still, you have to believe the pressure is growing on Twitter to start generating revenue as its cash reserves drop each and every month.
Frankly, I’m beginning to think Twitter doesn’t have a solid revenue plan yet despite murmurings from Twitter executives and investors that something’s brewing.
And I’m also starting to believe Twitter may need some help at the senior executive level given what a bad week it and Biz Stone experienced.
In talking with someone yesterday who works for a large multi-national corporation, Twitter should seriously look at launching an secure version of its microblogging service for enterprises. More companies are looking to take advantage of Web 2.0 and social media tools, so Twitter should be exploring the opportunity – if it isn’t already.
Twitter’s Growing Empire…and Burn
While Twitter toils away on generating revenue, the company’s busy burning through its venture capital booty.
According to Twittercism, Twitter now has 47 employees – information gleaned from Twitter’s About Us page. That roughly works out to about $5-million of operating expenses a year using the $100,000/employee formula.
If you throw in $2-million to $3-million of servers of other costs, Twitter’s burning through about $7-million to $8-million of cash/year. At this rate, mind you, Twitter still have two to three years of financial runway even if it doesn’t generate any revenue.
Still, you have to believe the pressure is growing on Twitter to start generating revenue as its cash reserves drop each and every month.
Frankly, I’m beginning to think Twitter doesn’t have a solid revenue plan yet despite murmurings from Twitter executives and investors that something’s brewing.
And I’m also starting to believe Twitter may need some help at the senior executive level given what a bad week it and Biz Stone experienced.
In talking with someone yesterday who works for a large multi-national corporation, Twitter should seriously look at launching an secure version of its microblogging service for enterprises. More companies are looking to take advantage of Web 2.0 and social media tools, so Twitter should be exploring the opportunity – if it isn’t already.