Twitter started as a project at another startup, Odeo

Twitter actually started out as a side-project at another startup called Odeo. Back in 2005, Odeo was supposed to become a platform for podcasters. The problem was that Apple announced podcast subscriptions in iTunes that same year.

After Apple made its announcement, Odeo CEO Evan Williams told the startup's 14 or so employees to start imagining new directions in which the company could go.

In February 2006, three Odeo employees – Jack Dorsey, Florian Weber, and Noah Glass – came up with something called Twttr, what's now known as Twitter.

By the summer of 2006, Twitter had a few thousand users but Odeo still going nowhere.

Williams, already pretty rich from having sold a company to Google years before, decided to do something drastic. He offered to buy Odeo and all its assets, including Twitter, back from from investors.

Here's what Williams wrote about Twitter in his letter to shareholders:

By the way, Twitter (http://twitter.com), which you may have read about, is one of the pieces of value that I see in Odeo, but it's much too early to tell what's there. Almost two months after launch, Twitter has less than 5,000 registered users. I will continue to invest in Twitter, but it's hard to say it justifies the venture investment Odeo certainly holds -- especially since that investment was for a different market altogether.

Buying back shares from Odeo's investors was an unprecedented move and, at the time, it was widely lauded as a generous act on William's part. Startup founders fail all the time, and they basically never pay back the investors who gave them a chance to succeed.

Five years later, of course, Williams looks like a genius and the people who sold him Odeo – and Twitter – look like they missed out.

Within a year of buying back Odeo, Williams spun Twitter out as its own company – a company now supposedly fetching billion dollar offers from Google and Facebook.

Our question is: How do Odeo's original investors feel about this twist of fate?

Depressed?

Happy for Ev?

Conned by how much he downplayed Twitter in that letter?

We asked them.