In the last few weeks, I’ve been reading Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton—I’m already 25 books behind pace for the average CEO but that’s okay. Nick tells the story of the creation of Twitter, how it evolved over the early years, and the CEO power struggles along the way. I never knew much about the history of Twitter—only through what I’ve read in random articles.
It was definitely a fun read and I would recommend it. In a way it reminded me of The Accidental Billionaires. The chapters are very short which makes it easy to pick up and put down if you only have a few minutes to spare. I enjoy reading the history of startup companies and how they got to now—the wins and the failures. The Everything Store and Shoe Dog are next on my list. For any business owner, these types of books should be required reading for lessons learned.
I’ve previously written several posts discussing how I use Twitter in my day to day functions as well as tips and tricks on how to make it work better for you. But for this one, I decided to do a quick BuzzFeed-type exposé where I describe a few things I’ve learned about our dear friend Jack Dorsey after reading this book.
Ever wonder the meaning of the long S tattoo on Jack’s forearm? It was a cover up job. The tattoo had originally read “0daemon!?” The word daemon refers to a computer program that lives in the background. To Jack, this signified what he saw in himself, a person who lived “behind the curtain” and had little influence. The exclamation mark on the tattoo was meant to show his excitement for life. His level of curiosity with the world was represented by the question mark. It was also written upside down. Before Jack created Twitter, he worked as a massage therapist. People who received massages from Jack would see his tattoo and commonly mistake “daemon” for “demon” and think that he was into devil worship. Classic mistake.
Red Bull + vodka fan was Jack’s drink of choice. There are multiple mentions in this book of Jack drinking these on the regular. I was also a big RBV fan back in college until I drank too many one night and thought I was having a heart attack. I honestly don’t think I’ve had one since.
Jack almost quit building Twitter to become a fashion designer. He had always had an appreciation for fashion. He regularly left the office before others to attend sewing classes and a fashion design course. Ev Williams (one of the other Twitter co-founders) eventually sat Jack down and gave him an ultimatum: “You can either be a dressmaker or the C.E.O. of Twitter, but you can’t be both.”
Jack’s vision of Twitter was the opposite of Ev William’s vision. Jack’s vision had always been about status—about “What are you doing?”. Whereas Ev’s vision had been more akin to blogging—about “What’s happening?” To Jack it was about telling stories about yourself—about Jack. To Ev, Twitter was about telling stories about other people.
When Jack was ousted as Twitter CEO, the first person he called was his mother. The second person he called was Mark Zuckerberg. Jack had been secretly meeting with Mark about a potential sale of Twitter to Facebook for $500M. Could you imagine what life would have been like if they would have sold Twitter to Facebook? The worst.
While Jack was unemployed he took a trip back home and met up with an old friend Jim McKelvey who blew glass for a living and made glass art sculptures. Jim told Jack that he missed out on a sale once because a customer didn’t have enough cash on hand. This was the spark that ignited the discussion about allowing purchases using a credit card and a phone. Squirrel, which was later renamed to Square, was born. Jack proved he wasn’t just a one hit wonder.
Jack was left off of an issue of Time magazine that included the one hundred most influential people in the world—I know how this feels. Instead, Evan Williams and Biz Stone were included on this list as Twitter co-founders. The editors of Time magazine hadn’t seen Jack as an employee of Twitter and hadn’t thought it made sense to include him on the list. He was pissed. In later interviews, he tried to lay claim as the sole founder of Twitter while he wasn’t even working there. This pissed off the other co-founders.
Jack had plans to run for mayor of New York City someday. He said it would be his dream job. Since Bloomberg and de Blasio have already done it and have also run for President, maybe that’s Jack’s next play. I’d vote for him, but only if he would give me a verified badge.
Full Disclosure: $WERAMP is long shares of $TWTR.
This is post #52. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram or sign up for my free newsletter here. Also please check out my Amazon page for a full reading list.
How a 39-year-old made nearly $13M on Tesla and refuses to sell his position.