A 33-Year-Old CEO and Only 20 Full-Time Employees: This Is the Tiny Bluesky Team That’s Taking On X

Bluesky is growing by one million users daily. By leveraging the recent user exodus, it aims to become a genuine alternative to X.

Bluesky
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Bluesky has already surpassed 20 million users, according to its real-time public counter. It’s growing at a remarkable rate of one million users per day and has emerged as the most promising alternative to X in a long time.

The question now is: Who’s behind Bluesky? The answer extends beyond just co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Jay Graber and 20 Full-Time Employees

Leading the project is Jay Graber, a 33-year-old CEO who oversees a team of only 20 full-time employees. While the company hasn’t publicly disclosed the total number of people it has on staff, including part-time and external collaborators, it’s confirmed that it has 20 people working full-time.

According to The New York Times, the small team primarily focuses on managing the rapid growth the platform has experienced recently, addressing service crashes, code errors, and content moderation issues. Bluesky has become a busy highway with far more traffic than expected.

The origins of Bluesky trace back to the idea proposed by Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, who envisioned creating a “decentralized” social media platform.

The project initially received funding directly from Twitter. However, these ties were severed after Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired the platform. Not long after, Bluesky successfully raised over $23 million in two rounds of funding, providing a crucial lifeline as it navigates its future direction and revenue model.

Bluesky COO Rose Wang defined the essence of the project in a promotional video by saying, “It’s built by the people, for the people.” She also emphasized that users are “no longer tied to a dominant algorithm that promotes either the most polarizing posts and/or the biggest brands.”

Leadership

The initial core team included Daniel Holmgren, a protocol engineer experienced with IPFS, and Paul Frazee, a full-stack developer who previously built Patchwork.

In addition, Bluesky enlisted prominent technical advisors such as Martin Kleppmann, the author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, and Jeromy Johnson, the first employee at Protocol Labs.

Bluesky’s philosophy starkly contrasts with its competitors, such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, which function as walled gardens. These platforms often penalize or severely limit the connection to the open web, making it challenging for users to switch between them.

In contrast, Bluesky advocates for an open protocol, allowing independent developers to create their own social media platforms using its framework, much like Mastodon.

The Future

Graber has a clear vision for the future of the platform:

“We want to build something that makes sure users have the freedom to move and developers have the freedom to build… If anyone has an idea for improving the state of social media, they don’t have to lobby us to change things.”

This vision is already proving successful. Bluesky has become a haven for users who have left X, whether due to dissatisfaction with Musk’s leadership or in reaction to President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and his relationship with the platform’s owner.

The Bluesky team operates with a small but agile structure. Now, it remains to be seen how effectively it can provide continuity and direction for the platform and whether it can genuinely compete with the tech giants.

Bluesky’s recent decision not to use user posts to train generative AI technology marks a significant departure from practices at Meta, X, and Google. This decision also reinforces its commitment to creating a more respectful and user-centric social media platform.

Image | Yohan Marion

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