

Twitter Was Act One - jbrun
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/04/jack-dorsey-201104

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codybrown
“Jack’s biggest insights have nothing to do with technology,” says Greg Kidd.
“His insights are always social first. It’s always a democratization machine."

    
    
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       Really refreshing to hear this.

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astrofinch
From the article it seems like Jack floundered around a fair amount in his
early life. This makes me think his success was a fluke, in the sense that
there are many people who are just as determined and talented who _don't_ end
up succeeding.

Of course, it's quite possible that _every_ successful person's success is a
fluke.

And for what it's worth, I'm just trying to figure out how much to copy
successful people in order to be successful myself--Jack sounds like a great
guy and I don't mean to dis him.

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erikpukinskis
My instinct is the opposite. I suspect his floundering is precisely what has
made him successful.

Particularly in entrepreneurship, a key skill is being able to see
opportunities where others don't. The article highlights the fact that before
Square, the banks said regular folks aren't allowed to accept credit card
payments. Jack looked at that and asked "why not?"

In the same way that with Twitter, conventional wisdom was "No one cares that
you are at Dolores Park" and Jack asked "why not?"

If you only participate in one community, and you only hone one skill, you
will only be able to toe the party line. It's only when you are able to wear
your different hats in the places where they don't belong that you can really
push boundaries as an entrepreneur.

Larry and Sergei were wearing their Academic hats while doing engineering.

Steve Jobs was wearing his typography hat while designing an operating system,
at a time when all computers had fixed-width fonts.

Where else do these kinds of breakthroughs come besides "floundering"?

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skrish
Great point. As Steve Jobs mentioned in one of the convocation speeches he
delivered: "connecting the dots forward is impossible...but is is very clear
looking backwards" - I don't remember the exact text but pretty much what he
expressed.

Most often it is the ability to see the opportunities while messing with
different things that seem interesting at that point of time and THEN running
with that one idea seems to be one common theme of several successful
entrepreneurs.

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rblion
Wow. Truly inspiring. A man who won't budge on design or ethics. I am happy to
learn from people like Jack.

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zipdog
> One day he proposed an idea to his boss

When I was reading up on Twitter's history, I think Evan Williams had actually
told all the staff to take some time (a day?) to come up with ideas for a new
direction, and Dorsey suggested Twitter

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timcederman
_"Dorsey talks about how Square must be “pixel-perfect,” and staffers tell
stories about him agonizing over the exact location and thickness of a line on
e-mailed receipts."_

And it shows. The first thing I noticed after installing Square was the
amazing experience - the design is incredibly polished and it affects the
whole feel of the app.

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emit_time_n3rgy
"..his friend Ashton Kutcher, who spent a week with Dorsey on a State
Department-sponsored trip to Russia."

I wonder how this 'foreign policy' trip was set-up & why exactly...

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farslinger900
Most people read such articles and come away aspiring to be more like the
person described in it. What Jack Dorsey has done is amazing. It shows what's
possible when someone is really driven.

I worry about how Jack feels. Is this a happy, content guy? It's certainly
possible, but I thought I'd offer a slightly different perspective, based on
the work I've done with people like this.

The impression from the outside is that they are on top of the world. The
private story is often very different. Usually there is a huge drive at play
in order to compensate for something else that is lacking inside.

You can look at it this way: One would get the impression that this person is
extremely content because he is starting the biggest companies, driving a BMW,
wearing the latest and best Prada clothes and Rolex watches. The implication
is that by having, doing, and being the best, that person feels best
internally. But if you needed all that in order to feel good, then the other
99.999% of the world would have to feel absolutely miserable. This is where
the logic of the implication breaks down, because that is simply not the case.

The other way to see it is that one success is never enough. Neither are two.
Or three, or four. The sense of having 'arrived' (finally being satisfied,
approved of, secure) never comes. Even if the current endeavor becomes the
biggest success, as soon as it's checked off, so to speak, a big sense of
disappointment will follow, which will re-create the need to prove it again.
So here too, it becomes clear that the external successes have almost nothing
to do with how the person feels.

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Dylanlacey
Why I'm in total agreement with you that happiness does not arrive in the
shape of a Vanity Fair article and 300 million dollars, I don't nesscessarily
agree that their drive is because they're lacking something or have Great
Inner Pain(TM).

I have a great driving force that I suspect many people here share. Making
things. I _NEED_ to make things. Not want, or would like to, or enjoy, I NEED
to. I wake up and start thinking about what I can make today, I do chores and
I'm thinking about how quickly I can get them done so I can make things.

There's no motivation to make things for a reason, just that I have to, like a
clock has to tell time and a fridge has to keep things cold... It's my raison
d'être in life. Just like those things, if I'm not making things I'm broken.

I'm building a few things because I want other people to notice them, to use
them, because the more something is used the more made it is, the more
worthwhile forming ether into substance was. So gradually I'm coming to need
to make things other people want, and this NEED is what drives me, what makes
me happy.

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erikpukinskis
This reminds me of what seemed to be the fundamental misunderstanding of The
Social Network. Zuckerberg himself commented that he didn't build Facebook to
get into the exclusive clubs or achieve fame, power, or money... he just
wanted to make Facebook.

Many non-makers seem constitutionally incapable of understanding that someone
might want to make something _just for the thrill of seeing it come into
being_.

And as a maker, I have a hard time seeing how that could be a hard concept to
grasp.

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vidar
Standing still for 45 minutes. Really good at concentrating. Minimalistic.

Asberger? (Not that it matters)

~~~
rudiger
It's _Asperger_ , and it's much more serious than standing still for 45
minutes at a software development job interview when you were 15 years old.

