Foundation 01 Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey is the inventor of Twitter and the co-founder of Square. Let's talk to him. Good to go? All right. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. My parents have always been big fans of the city. So St. Louis is interesting because it's it's really been in many respects destroyed by the 40s and 50s when everyone moved out to the suburbs and left a very desolate core. But my parents always stood by the city and always held roots there and the city has since bounced back a little bit and is rebuilding. But I've always been fascinated by cities and urban life and never really been attracted too much by by the suburbs or moving outside of like that urban core and all that urban activity. I just I love it. It gives me energy. Did you go to school out there? I went to you know grade school and I went to high school in St. Louis, and then I went to the University of Missouri Rolla, which was a engineering school, computer science, mathematics and English were my majors. But then I found my true passion and it was in New York in terms of what I want to do for work when I was around 18. And I moved out there. I transferred to NYU. I joined this company and then decided that I wanted to move out to San Francisco and start a company. So I dropped out a semester shy of graduating and have never gone back and my parents still hate that decision to this day. So did you was that your first startup when you moved out to New York? Was that so that was a startup that you were working for? I was um, I was really attracted to dispatch to couriers, taxis, 9-1-1 centers, and I found the largest dispatch center and company in the world and it just gone public. It was in New York City, which I'd always want to live because I can't imagine a busier or more bustling city. So I moved out there and I became really good friends with the chairman and founder of that company and this was in 99-2000 and you know the bubble was was growing ever bigger here in the valley and we decided that we wanted to move to Silicon Valley in San Francisco in particular to start a more web focused internet focused dispatch firm. So we did that we started working on the code and started hiring some people unfortunately made a not the best choice in terms of CEO in terms of like what we wanted to do vision-wise with what he wanted to do. We came very reactive to the bubble crashing and the company eventually failed and my partner Greg bought it back from the investors and then that was it. So that was that was my first startup. So you were coding then? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've been coding since I was 14 years old. What was it? So take me back for a second back to 14. Did you launch any shareware apps? I mean, did you? No, I was very selfish. I had a very specific goal with with programming. I was really, you know, I just my favorite thing to do was to walk around the city walk around downtown St. Louis and wonder about bigger cities like New York and even San Francisco and I just became obsessed with maps. I would have maps like hung all over my rooms and my I would bring like map hooks everywhere and in the car and my parents thought I was like completely nuts and just like What was it? It wasn't the flow of human traffic. What was it? That really got you excited about maps because most people don't think like yeah, I'm really into maps Like that's not a no. It was just like if you look at a map and you just like look in the intersection It's really easy to wonder what's happening in that intersection right now and then like who's going to the intersection who's going away Like how the intersection has changed over time what's happened there in the past? What's going to happen there in the future? So it just really sparked my imagination and curiosity and and and that traffic pattern is very interesting as well I'm just like watching people go So I got into programming because I wanted to play with maps more that the paper maps were were really dead and I could only do So much with them you said like, you know, check out and explore every Street but the the computer allowed me to put a map on the screen and I taught myself how to program so I could draw a Map and then I drew some dots on the map and then I learned figured out how to make the dots move around within the street boundaries and Then I had this map worth all these moving dots, but the dots had no meaning whatsoever And the internet was just coming to be so we had we had gopher. We had all these like accessible databases And WashU was in St. Louis and it was a major backbone of the internet at that time and had one of the first connections and I found all these BBS's that had connections to WashU to allow me to get to the internet and with that and also CB radio I heard emergency services so I could see ambulances and if you think about an ambulance or a police car or a fire truck They're always reporting where they are and what they're doing and where they're going So those three inputs I could say here's where you are Here's where you're going and here's what you're doing So you could plot where they're going in the city and then you could have a little indicator of what they're doing like patient cardiac Arrest going to st. John's mercy So suddenly I had meaning for my dots and I could see what was happening in the city in more or less real time I had to like, you know put these things in and type them in as I heard them or as I got them from gopher But as as it progressed I got better and better about making it real time and I found that This practice this software was actually called dispatch and there's a whole field around it So suddenly I'm like, I gotta do dispatch for the rest of my life And find the biggest dispatch firm in the world and I happen to be in New York Yeah, well, and this also sounds like another startup that that you created Let's talk for a second. There's a lot of on paper co-founders of Twitter But you actually invented Twitter. Yeah, so Tell me where were you? What was that day? Like like when did that happen? What were you sitting in the office? I know you were doing audio at the time Were you there one day saying hey guys, I just got to try this idea. Like how did that happen? Well, so I I worked in I worked in dispatch for for a long time Like the majority of my career has been about real-time low latency high transaction systems around moving information and It comes down to this very simple concept which is Someone broadcasts a message and those interested in that follow it and that's it. So Ambulance is constantly broadcast where they are and what they're doing and dispatchers and call centers follow where those ambulances are It's really really simple And but that was different than everything that was going on at the web at the time That was when Twitter launched it was all about like mutual friendships and actual relationships. There was no really one-way following concept So that's that's where the idea of following came from then. Yeah. Yeah, we we kind of got back to that that core eventually But we were kind of just distracted by what was happening with social networks and being mutual so in 2000 I was I was really interested in taking that concept and bring it to my friends and very simply To allow me to be anywhere and just update what's going on and send that out to a bunch of people And I wrote a very simple email script that took an email from a BlackBerry 850 which was the first BlackBerry and would broadcast out to a list of emails that I inputted and I went out to Golden Gate Park I went to the bison paddock and said I'm at the bison paddock it went out to all these people and I quickly learned that no one else had blackberries and no one Was interested that I was at the bison paddock. So 2000 it was just the wrong time. So I went back into dispatch. I went back into contracting and Odia was actually the first Time I've ever written a resume and taking a real job and I wanted to be more consumer facing I want to learn more about consumer facing stuff And went to work with Ev and work with biz and Noah glass And the month after I joined Odia was a podcasting company or building a directory for podcasts the month after I joined iTunes Launched its podcast directory. So pretty much killed right our entire path So morale was was kind of confused and we didn't know what direction to go And a few months later in February I've said I was a CEO. He said go out Come up with some ideas that we might want to work on and at this time SMS got really big in the country and I just fell in love with the technology and its constraint of 160 characters and Talked to the three people. I was I was talking to you on the on the playground and said You know, what if we just do the simple thing of being able to be anywhere use SMS Send it out and it goes out to all these people in real time. Just let's let's do that and we You know built a very quick system in a matter of hours Demoted to the company And it really didn't go anywhere and then about a week later no name yet no name no name a week later We were also talking about more audio stuff very interested in group communications and again brought up this idea and said like let's just do this and Have thought about a little bit more Noah thought about a little bit more and then a week after that We had a company meeting and said we we decided the tracks can go off Work on this thing for two weeks And I left the room started working on this project we were calling it a bunch of different things at that time and Then took another programmer. What were some of the other names? We're calling it jitter twitch All really terrible names. We wanted to evoke like a physical sensation like when you get a message your phone Jitters it twitches around but twitch doesn't like really bring up the best right images So Noah actually took the dictionary went down the TW's and Found the word Twitter, and it means a short inconsequential burst of information and chirps from birds And this was in the new you know the new Oxford, and we're like oh, that's perfect, so we'll take that name But since we're based on the phone right now and since the phone is a big part Then we need a short code and short codes are five characters So let's take out all the vowels and then it could be TW TTR so people can just type TW TTR to get into the phone to access his service But then we found out that that short code was taken by team people text team people so we added the vowels back And Twitter awesome, so you got the name Did you have any idea at this point? What impact? The actual number of followers would have the people's egos because I I noticed like very very shortly like Mom six a year later six months a year later all of a sudden celebrities started using the service Yeah, and it was kind of this thing where everyone looked at the more followers the better you had Did you have any idea that was gonna be the case? We didn't we didn't really consider it. It was um There was just we actually you know we came up with the word follow and leave because we wanted it to be something again That spoke to a physical manifestation of something so If you think of Twitter as like a whiteboard You're writing all these messages on the wall and people can come up and they can look at that wall and they can stay and Watch the wall as long as you want to write on it and when they're disinterested they can walk away They can leave from the wall. So it's very very conceptually sounds so we're thinking more about like, you know You know just the the verbs and then we we took it a little bit too far one time when we like Came up with this concept of worshipping So if you worship someone you would get every single one of their messages no matter what they said, you know All their at replies everything. It was just like the full firehose of everything they were saying But we ditched that so we took the following worshipping. That's a little cold That's amazing, yeah, but that was some feedback on follow and leave was like is it is it too is it too cultist is it too Stalker ish, but it's it's a really interesting term and it really speaks to the action of like what people are doing like not so much unfollowing but like you follow when you're interested and and you leave when you're not and and and that is really Completely speaks to the complete recipient controlled nature of the service. Is it all or nothing though? I mean does it have I mean right now it is you follow someone you get every single message Yeah, will it always be all or nothing or do you think there's a place for saying, you know? I'm following my friend Daniel because he's a great graphic designer and I only want the things that he's talking about that pertain to graphic Design, I mean will that ever exist? I I think it should I mean, I think the challenge not only for Twitter But but for the technology industry at large is like building more relevant filters in real time like being able to being able to Surface valuable information immediately no matter who who it is who's listening or who's who's broadcasting is a really really hard problem and It makes Twitter a lot more meaningful. It makes Twitter a lot more approachable But I think we've gotten really really good at being able to put content in in immediately for getting it out in a relevant Valuable way in real time is still very difficult So, you know that example, of course like we should be doing stuff like that But it's just like there's a question of like the user experience and the you know The technology behind it how much we put in algorithms how much is human curation and like what the balances are? So you're two and a half three years in and you have another idea Was it two and a half years in something like that about two and a half years in and Square comes along Yeah, so tell me about Square. How did that come to be? Well, that's the thing about I think I think that's one of the strongest things you can cultivate as an entrepreneur is to not rely on luck, but Cultivating and the ability to recognize fortunate situations when they're occurring Odio was a very fortunate situation could have taken that idea Not told it to have not told it to biz not not told it to Noah and all my other Co-workers at Odio and tried to start my own company with with that idea But the fortunate situation was that I was working with some really amazing people and we had a great team So, of course, you know, it makes sense to start there the fortunate situation for Square was that In 2008 the end of 2008 the entire market was crashing down like all of these abstractions we built upon abstraction upon abstraction upon abstraction in the financial world Which no single human understood we're now falling apart and suddenly we're getting back to basics back to fundamentals Management teams were being asked to leave banks were failing, you know People were we're clarifying around like we need to start getting innovative. We need to start treating our customers. So poorly We need to start insight. We need to stop, you know, encouraging bad behavior to reap fees like we need to really turn this whole thing around and Anytime there's a recession or a depression. That's a great time to innovate start a company start a project, you know do anything so You know, we recognize we recognize that time in the same time my co-founder Jim We you know, we contacted me. He I've known him since I was 15 years old. He was my boss when I was 15 years old and He's like Jack. I want to talk to you. I want to I want to build an electronic car company like that's Interesting and he was thinking about it because the car industry was failing as well I'm like, he was like, why don't we just give these car companies to well-seasoned entrepreneurs? Like why don't we give Ford to Steve Jobs and like, you know, that would be amazing. Yeah, it would be amazing And like, you know GM to Ellison or like whatnot. He's like and also I want to start an electronic car company. I'm like That's ambitious. But in that moment, we decided not to start an electronic car company, but we wanted to do something together Mm-hmm and we kept having these weekly conversations about what that thing was and I was researching a lot with finance and health care Because I was looking at you know doing something in those spaces and and Jim called me one day one of us scheduled meeting meetings and he said I just lost a Glass sale. He's an artist. He he sells glass and I lost the sale because I couldn't accept a credit card and Here he was talking on his iPhone his general-purpose computer and I was talking to my iPhone I'm like, we've got a one gigahertz computer sitting in the palm of your hand, but no way to accept credit cards He couldn't accept $2,000 from from someone who wanted to pay him, right? Like why is that? so we decided that we wanted to answer that question and we did a bunch of research and I started writing some server code and we hired a guy to write some iPhone code and Jim built some hardware and in a month we had a Little what it was actually quite a big device that plugged into the audio jack of your iPhone and could swipe a card take a payment it would go through the merchant process and then generate a receipt with a map on it and I Went around I showed it to a bunch of investors and they were all amazed that it could even work So we decided to really Focus on it and make it a make it a company and it really just comes down like recognizing that fortunate situation Recognizing the people around you that that could help and and just owning it How do you think it would be entrepreneurs get over that hump because a lot of a lot of people say to me They're like I've got this idea Yeah And it's always you know on paper or in their head But they don't want to take that jump to actually start something like that. How do you get over that? Yeah, I I've gone down that road so many times I mean that the hardest thing about all this is to get started and I think the most important thing that I've learned is that you have to as soon as you have it get it out of your Head get it on paper and then to take us one step further Just show someone just show someone what it looks like on paper Even code a little bit and show someone the interaction like a working prototype Like just you and a buddy or something like that exactly and there's two outcomes and they're both really good outcomes from that moment Either you like someone like really it just sparks like a wow like that's cool or it says You know, I don't know how to get into that. So You decide I'm either gonna dedicate some more resources to this thing or I'm gonna put it on the shelf for now for a later day and that's perfectly admirable like Build this build a thousand things and then put them on the shelf Like you'll use them like that that first idea for Twitter put it on the shelf in 2000 Reused it in 2006 and now it's worked out So I I think you have to be comfortable with the fact that you're not going to go down every idea You're gonna have some ideas. It's just the timing is the fortunate situation doesn't exist right now. Mm-hmm, then that's okay. So Clear it out of your head move on onto the next idea onto the next idea But too many people just get stuck in this concept and when it's stuck in your head or stuck just on paper then you're always making excuses for why it doesn't exist like right only I was working with Kevin Rose on this or if only this situation happened in this macro environment or if I was living in New York or if I was funded by Fred Wilson or Like whatever right? You're gonna make a thousand excuses and never do anything So talking about some of the the challenges that you ran into because hardware I've heard is extremely difficult to get into. Yeah These being manufactured Domestically internationally. What's what's how did you go about actually building a physical piece of hardware? I'm I'm really proud of what we've done with square and under a year like we We're doing a lot at once and a lot of the stuff we've never done before So we're building hardware in China We're fulfilling hardware through the United States Postal Service, which is a major challenge in itself to keep the cost down We're building a payment network. We're building fraud and risk systems. We're building web service We're building a client and then we're building customer service. Most companies do one or two of those things, right? We have to do all of them and we have to do them in a highly coordinated fashion so we everything we've done with square except for the bank we've built from scratch and We just have a lot of focus and we just have this desire not to Not not to just build what's needed but build what we think should exist and that's the best thing about engineers and entrepreneurs is That like a lot of people saw square is just like this naive approach to the payments world But that's a great thing I mean, it's it's great for engineers to build what they want to see in the world I mean what what else could you hope for it than that? I mean, that's that's exciting You don't want to build something that just like fits in to something else so we've taken it as an opportunity to build what we want build how we want the world to work and You know, we've we've been able to just like move very quickly along those goals Is it frustrating at times though when you hit certain roadblocks and like how do you get around that? How do you keep everyone motivated? I mean, you've got a team of people now. Yeah, they're looking to you for motivation every single day Yeah, I mean, how do you get up there and and and it's got to be I mean I've seen you gave me the latest prototype today or this is the final version that you're shipping I've had three or four of these. I mean there had to be some hurdles to get over How do you keep everyone jazzed and excited about what you're doing? I think I think the biggest thing is I One of my favorite things about San Francisco is the Golden Gate Bridge You just think about first the Audacity to even want to put a bridge on over that span. The Golden Gate is very tumultuous Like all the weather is forced through that one gate. It's constantly being maintained There's that can't take a day off exactly and and like it's extremely deep and the waves are immense and it's rocky and it's crazy Just just to have the desire to do that in the first place is immense And then to have the desire to make it beautiful at the same time is Really really telling so you have this really interesting balance between we're doing the impossible We're going to make it beautiful and it's going to stand up so you've got this great like you've got this great pairing of vision and then Architecture and then engineering and it works I mean one major feature of that bridge is it stays up and it carries millions and millions of people So we just go back to those basics like we're running this company by design We are building beautiful things payments has always been seen as a burden It's always been seen that something you have to get through and we have a rare opportunity To make it beautiful to make it social to make it something that people feel good about So people can not worry about the burden of payment, but can actually enjoy the tea that comes after after paying for something So we're going to get people focused on on what's important and not have to think about the utility aspect of paying people And the interesting thing when you think about it is more people pay for things than they use Communications devices then they use phones or they use Facebook or Twitter all these other things like more people in the world pay for things It's just a it's just a cultural It's a cultural strength that we all go through every single day of our lives And have the opportunity to Address that mass and to address that that opportunity is is immense And once you speak in those terms and yeah, everyone's excited roadblocks roadblocks opportunity Let's pivot to something like we can use And and not in a negative way, but in a positive way. Here's a roadblock. Here's how we can shave it off and fix it awesome So two last questions for you Give me one thing that you would never do again in any startup that you that you start and then one thing that you would Absolutely take with you no matter where you go and use it again and again and again Like just a tool for success. Like what is one thing that you've learned? I Think I think the biggest thing for me. I think for all startups is that it's really really easy to Consider any higher as like The length of the entire company I think I think leaders of companies have to consider themselves editors and you constantly have to edit the team You constantly have to make sure that you have the best people in and if there's any negative attribute within the team person or element Or otherwise you have to part ways and deal with it right away. Yeah right away I mean you have to say like This is the best thing for the company and to be fair to both of us Like it's just not the right time for both of us like any other relationship Need to be able to recognize what's good and and what isn't is an optimal and and take action on it So that's that's one thing that you know, I would Like with Twitter like we grew very very slowly and we didn't we didn't edit the team in the in the best way We didn't get out of the way of ourselves often enough. So that's something I would never do again but what I would do and What I would encourage every entrepreneur and anyone starting a project to do is really focus on The data really focus on the analytics really focus on how people are using the system and collecting that And this goes like, you know We have a we have a dashboard in square and we have a metric how many times do people actually look at that dashboard to? See how the company is doing because that speaks to like how much people care about how much how the company so this isn't Google Analytics, I mean you're talking about build a homebrew build your own system Custom to you and you have to you have to tailor it to to yourself and this is starting companies starting our projects starting films whatever you need to have an understanding of The momentum of what you're doing and then where you're going and you can only do that with data and that informs a lot of your decisions and product decision things like that and communication and also like Hiring and editing the team awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you See you soon. See you That's it for this episode of foundation foundation is always free and it's always ad free But if you want to get access a week early before it's released to the general public Sign up for the private newsletter at the URL below. Thanks