Don’t Mess Up Tumblr: Five Lessons Learned From YouTube

When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision. Today analysts estimate its enterprise value is approaching $20 billion. So I guess it all worked out, eh? Being one of the first Googlers to join YouTube after the acquisition taught me a lot about what works, and doesn’t work, when you bring a fast growing community property into a larger entity. There are clearly parallels between our situation in 2007 and what Tumblr will experience with Yahoo. Marissa is a friend from our time together at Google and I’m impressed, but not surprised, by her decisiveness and vision. I don’t know David Karp but we share a number of mutual friends and at a 2012 group dinner he passed me the salt, so we’ve got that. But since neither of them replied to my tweet offering $10k/hr consulting services, here are five Lessons Learned for Not Messing Up Tumblr.

1. Protect Tumblr from “Helpful” Yahoos

YouTube saw a huge influx of meeting requests, collaboration ideas, inbound employee transfer offers, etc. We were the shiny new toy and everyone wanted to play. Much of it was self-interest — some good natured, some more political. But even the useful opportunities still had the risk of hugging us to death. Eric Schmidt, who was an amazing sponsor of YouTube, gave great advice — be very selective about who you bring into the team and just say he gave us permission to turn down the other offers of “help.”