By Andy Owens
aowens@scbiznews.com
Published Nov. 4, 2009

The founder of one of the Internet’s social media darlings told a group of business leaders in North Charleston that a company recently offered more than $10 million for his startup.

Recent Daniel Island transplant Noah Everett said he turned them down along with a number of other takeover offers, because he’s just having too much fun. Everett was one of two keynote speakers who kicked off the Small Business Innovation Summit & Expo being held today at Trident Technical College in North Charleston.

The theme for this year’s summit is “Practical Tools to Grow & Thrive,” and the variety of breakout sessions demonstrates the nuts-and-bolts approach the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce took in designing the conference during the recession.

The winners of the New Ideas S.C. business idea contest will also be announced at the summit. Entries were in five categories: engineering, information technology, bioscience, environmental sustainability and wildcard. The ThinkTEC award will also be presented.

Everett epitomizes the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes the business climate in 2009, said GrowBiz Media CEO Rieva Lesonsky, who preceded Everett with a pep talk on the future of the economy and the vital role of small business.

Jogging up to the stage in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, Everett won the crowd over immediately by saying he’s not known for his public speaking. After talking, several people came up to speak to the 25-year-old entrepreneur, who chatted with ease, spending time and passing out his personal e-mail address.

One weekend in 2008, Everett created TwitPic, an online service that allows Twitter users to post and share photos online. Like many entrepreneurs, he saw a need that he figured others had and filled it.

“I just had this Red Bull moment,” Everett said. “I was actually in the process of starting another business.”

TwitPic gained attention almost immediately, as a blogger picked up on the service and started spreading the word. But what was a trickle of page views has grown today to more than 300 million each month; that, in turn, has given Everett credibility among Internet CEOs and venture capitalists who would like to own his company.

Everett said he was intrigued by early offers, which started at six figures and soon grew to eight figures, but he decided that he wanted to maintain control of his company to help direct where and how TwitPic developed. That ended up being on Daniel Island and word of his arrival earlier this year came by way of photos and Tweets about the Lowcountry being posted to TwitPic’s Web site.

As for the $10 million offer, Everett’s reasoning is simple.

“I turned it down because of this: I’m having too much fun,” he said.

The moment when Everett realized TwitPic was more than simply a photo-sharing service happened in January, when a U.S. Airways jet crash-landed in the Hudson River. The first photos from the incident that showed survivors and the extent of the crash came from a TwitPic user’s cell phone. Everett started getting calls from CNN.

TwitPic made international news when the service was blocked by Iran’s government, as citizens posted information and photographs from unrest after a national election that many saw as a sham.

“When I first started, it was just a way to share photos,” Everett said.