A couple of Jack Dorsey talks - the next Steve Jobs?

-
A couple of weeks before Jack Dorsey came back to Twitter, a friend im-ed me a link of a talk Dorsey had given at Stanford earlier in the year.

The line before the link to that talk was "He is the next Steve Jobs." Ever the skeptic, I responded with "Hmmm....really? I'll be sure to check the video out." I did early next week.

I was particularly curious, because for months I'd admired both the execution of and the product design at Square, the company Dorsey had founded; and I'd loved his Golden Gate talk (embedded below.)






There's a lot of interesting things he said there, but the part that really resonated for me was the point he made about building something beautiful:
  • The idea of "Let's build the Golden Gate bridge. Something memorable and you can be proud of - not some crappy bridge that may work but no one remembers or drives on" - particularly since as he says, so many people are ok with building crappy bridges. How can anyone that builds things not respond to a call-to-action like that?
  • I couldn't help recalling Steve Job's considerably less politically correct "They have no taste....and I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way." comment (below)
  • He also makes no bones about the fact that doing that takes a lot of hard work, and patience.





So I sat down a couple of weeks ago to catch his earlier-mentioned Stanford talk. Its long, but I came away very, very impressed.

He's not just smart and motivated with a great personal story, but he's clearly thought very, very hard - not just about the importance of design and good products, but how to be a leader and a CEO. He's also clearly developed a sense of theatre, and he hints at that as well.

I probably found the Q&A more interesting than most because I work in payments, but the talk itself was incredibly impressive and interesting.






I'm not going to try to summarize, but here were some of my favorite quotes and points:

  • CEOs/Leaders as Editors: Choose what's important. 1000 things you can do - only 1 or 2 are important. Edit people, products, communication and ideas in (and out!)
  • Payments are a form of communication
  • Power of a story: tell great stories. Focus on user narratives, and understand the importance of epic stories.
  • "1.) Make every single detail perfect. 2.) Limit the number of details"
  • Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible be the unexpected.

To boot, he has an incredible personal story and if this picture (below) is indeed his, he seems like a pretty nice guy to boot - which is rare enough for entrepreneurs.


As someone mentioned to me the other day, you can't help root for the guy! :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Why don't you love Chocos, America?

-
Image
A few days ago I had the following conversation with a customs agent at San Francisco airport - as an Indian returning from India I get sent to the customs line even when I check "No food" on the customs form. :-) Agent: "Any food?" Me: "No" Agent: "Sure? No jira or cadipatta ? Me : "No....     well actually I do have a box of cereal." Agent: "Huh. What? Really?" Me: "Yes. Its a brand you don't get here." Agent: "Seriously. Even in the Indian stores? I've never heard that before." Me: "Ummm....yeah." I love reading local customization stories, particularly about how international chains tailor their offerings to local markets - the food industry has the best examples of these - check out this McDonald's story about the McPaneer , or how KFC is incredibly successful in China . But I seem to have missed that the customization extended to breakfast cereal. Turns out the
Read more

What might Twitter and/or Facebook have cost us if they were invented earlier (or should some things stay deliberately un-social?)

-
Image
So I was reading an ebook last week, and came across a quote that I liked. My first thought wasn't "I should write this down" , it was "I want to tweet this." My ebook reading software wasn't equipped for it, and it wasn't trivial to do so I didn't, but I expect most ebook reading software will be updated to do this in the next couple of releases and probably encourage me to as well. Why should reading be left behind? Twitter is already saving live TV . As I look back on the last week watching the Cricket World Cup , a huge part of it for me was watching my Twitter and Facebook feeds for reactions and being part of them. My parents were the only ones that actually called me during the match, but I felt connected to so many more people through FB and the Big T . Wether you're shopping, eating out, playing games, even searching ... apparently "everything gets better with social." We all have a very human, internal urge to express ours
Read more