Jack Dorsey Joins Disney’s Board Of Directors | Hacker News Reader

Jack Dorsey Joins Disney’s Board Of Directors

techcrunch.com

88 pointsdko44 comments

It's worth checking out the NYT piece on the rise of Twitter and the role Dorsey played. His rise to fame was a tumultuous one and while he is no doubt a talented individual he is credited with more than he actually created. It will be interesting to see how his influence develops and shapes Disney's future.

"Ideas rarely, if ever, come from the mind of a single person, but those who go down in lore as visionaries take credit for them as if they do. Dorsey seemed to understand this intrinsically, too.”

"By this point, many Twitter investors believed what Dorsey had been telling the media for the past two years. More important, they knew the public did. He could be an effective public face of Twitter as Costolo managed the operations. The board was grateful for the $25 million that Costolo arranged in deals with Microsoft and Google, and he had a good rapport with Twitter employees. A pact between all of the investors was formed. By late September, Costolo was told that he had been picked to be interim C.E.O. Williams was out. Dorsey was back in."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/magazine/all-is-fair-in-lo...

Noah Glass deserves all the credit, IMO.

http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-cofounder-noah-glass-...

"Originally, (Twitter) was all running on my laptop on my desk. An IBM Thinkpad. Using a Verizon wireless card. It was right there on my desk. I could just pick it up and take it anywhere in the world. That was a really fun time."

Calling him a founder seems to be a stretch based on Twitter's official comments on the matter. He wrote the code. He was an engineer employed by Odeo. That doesn't mean he's a "founder." I don't know which side is true, but my sense is that calling him a "founder" is tech linkbait.

He didn't call Glass a founder. He implied Glass wrote all the early code and essentially built Twitter, and said he deserves all the credit for that early building out. I really don't have a problem with putting it that way. That's true based on everything I understand about the Twitter backstory (and confirmed by Noah, Ev, Biz, Jason, and Jack himself).

I think he's referring to the article's headline. But that quote resonates with me. I would never serve files from a laptop--who does that?! But it does have battery backup in the event of power failure, LOL! I can see the appeal for getting something working quickly. And you don't have to worry as much about random web host stealing the source. At least in my imagination, Noah's coding style was perfect for getting a prototype working, but had to pass it on to "do it by the book" engineers who no doubt cursed "this spaghetti is all wrong, there's globals everywhere!"

"random web host stealing the source" really shouldn't be a concern at MVP stage.

In the old shared hosting days, they knew exactly which scripts were suddenly eating up resources. You might get an email like, "Hey we disabled xyz.php because it was hogging the server." So it's not like they couldn't see who was about to make boatloads of money and then jump on the bandwagon.

Kudos to him.

I'm not bitter or upset but I'm thinking: Why can't I think of stuff people want? Maybe I don't know how to listen? He's a human, just like me, but I can't do anything. Maybe asking this question is a first signal of failure, or at least that I'm of a wrong mindset, that separates a good entrepreneur, whom wouldn't ask that question and just go do it, from people like me.

If his WP page is accurate, it's not like he didn't have startups that didn't work out but he still made it.

Well if you think back to the release of twitter the overwhelming response on most tech sites was that it was stupid/useless/waste of time, etc...

("Why would I want SMS restrictions on the web?!")

Maybe you need to get out of the tech-site bubble :)

> Maybe you need to get out of the tech-site bubble :)

Yeah, maybe. i don't use social stuff too much, but I'm mostly experienced with enterprise stuff. Not sure how to talk to them, too, or even what their problems really are.

Count me amongst those who shared that impression...my impression hasn't changed much! It obviously isn't completely stupid or completely useless but its utility is still shockingly low especially when you consider its stock market success.

I am on twitter mainly as a way to promote my company and connect with prospective people, but otherwise the utility of twitter still strikes me as rather low.

It is a good medium for one-to-many (aka broadcast) communication but there aren't enough interesting people in the world to make that a viable option. Not to mention once you start to follow more than 20 people your stream becomes a fire-hose that is not really consumable.

I guess now that it is a public company we'll have to wait and see if it can turn the amount of profit that matches its valuation.

Also stupid/useless and success are not necessarily mutually exclusive, we are talking about humans after all :)

> once you start to follow more than 20 people your stream becomes a fire-hose that is not really consumable.

I only feel like people discover the "true" nature of Twitter after they go above 200 follows - it is intended to be saturated consumption like TV, something that can be consumed habitually at any idle moment. There is a Matrix-like quandary in this, in that users who want to filter stop themselves from reaching the point where they see a net-positive outcome. IRC is very similar in that getting the full effect out of it means keeping dozens of channels open.

Maybe narrow your scope. Dorsey created two services that millions of people want. Could you create something that only thousands or even hundreds of people would want (and pay money for)?

That certainly seems doable. Thanks for this tip.

Square has about 40,000 active customers. They "have a plan" to be profitable by 2015.

"Millions" of people don't want Square, a handful of underserved merchants do, and not being profitable means their customers aren't "paying" for the service yet.

If you hit it out of the park with a Twitter or Facebook or Google, you can get enough investors on board to make your next venture seem successful regardless of actual traction.

I'm not saying Square isn't awesome, you've just had too much kool-aid.

No Kool-Aid, I just believe that there's more than a million people in the world who want Square (yes, under served merchants), regardless of the current group of 40k. Give Square a few years and I think you'll agree.

Nice info you got there.

It surprises me the "be profitable by 2015" plan. Square has a front row seat at money, I would've probably bet that they were profitable from day one.

Can you shed some light on to why they are still not profitable?

Square is basically trying to buy marketshare right now.

Everyone regardless of size pays the same base prices to Visa and Mastercard [1] and makes up profit in markups. A large processing network can charge lower markups because they process many more transactions, where smaller processors needs to make more on each. Smaller processing networks also make money on fees (chargeback fees for example), but Square does not.

The only way to profitability would be to try and shift transactions off the processing networks (like with Square Wallet), or to 1000x transaction volume.

1. http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-...

Do not fall for the Survivorship Bias: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/

good point and taken. thank you.

It's never been clear to me to what degree Jack is coming up with good ideas versus being very fast at adopting other people's good ideas. But I guess the distinction may not really matter- most of us don't even recognize good ideas until success is already certain.

It's not about good ideas, its about their implementation's good design.

> It's not about good ideas, its about their implementation's good design.

That's true, and I've heard it often. But I have to have some idea to do, and the skill or smarts to pull it off.

Read James Altucher's blog, and his books. Among other things, he recommends a daily exercise of coming up with ten ideas on some topic.[1]

Do it. Every day. And see what happens.

(Yes, I do it. Every day.)

[1] http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/10/how-to-become-an-idea-m...

Would you say that you have tried coming up with ideas yourself really hard, have given it your all for months or years?

Because that's what Jack did and what all other oh-so-famous entrepreneurs did to become successful.

One doesn't have that idea and then it just works out "overnight". It's a long long process over several years of unpaid hard work.

So don't wonder why can't you just have that billion dollar idea. You've probably had 5 billion dollar ideas already, but then someone else actually did it. So you need to do them.

And the mimicry of Steve Jobs continues.

Does Dorsey also scream at his subordinates? I thought he had a calmer persona.

I'm not sure how he treats his 'subordinates'. I recently read 'Hatching Twitter', in which he's portrayed as a ruthless manipulator.

Just read the description on Amazon,

• Evan “Ev” Williams, the ambitious farm boy from Clarks, Nebraska, who had already created Blogger and sold it to Google for millions. Quiet and protective...

• Jack Dorsey, the tattooed “nobody” who helped mastermind the original concept of Twitter, became a billionaire tech titan...

Anyone else find it funny how Medium and Stripe exactly portray those two personalities?

Perhaps you meant square, not stripe?

My bad, yes square.

I feel like people who say this do it to downplay his accomplishments. It's a very negative tone.

Yes, it's a negative tone. My feeling is that he unjustifiably self-identifies with Jobs. As mentioned, I've recently read 'Hatching Twitter' and it paints him in an unseemly light.

I don't see how the comment is downplaying his accomplishments though.

Interesting. I haven't really read that book but it seems that most really successful people have had to behave in very cutthroat ways no? Of course I may be saying this with subject to some selection bias. We have our standard set of Bill Gates, Zuck, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, etc to provide some weight to the statement but I'm sure there are many many noble leaders that I haven't heard of that weren't as ruthless but maybe that's why they haven't achieved the same level of success? I'm not sure.

I'd love to read the book but I'd love it even more if you could give an overview of the sentiments echoed in "Hatching Twitter".

In any case, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you that Jack is an unlikable person, but was simply pointing out that almost every time someone has said "Oh he thinks he's Steve Jobs", it's often to downplay the story at hand. It's cool that Jack is on the board of Disney, that a significant accomplishment.

> I'd love to read the book but I'd love it even more if you could give an overview of the sentiments echoed in "Hatching Twitter".

The book credits him with seeding the concept for Twitter, but certainly not for fleshing it out. At a very early stage, Jack was ousted as CEO and left with no role at Twitter other than a board seat with no actual voting rights. While the rest of the team made the product what it is today, and scaled the business to .5bn users, Jack was on the outside doing nothing. Despite this he pandered extensively to the media lying about his non-existent role at the company and daubing himself the 'inventor' of Twitter.

All that said, I've enjoyed watching some of Jack's talks, and I think Square is incredible (more so than Twitter).

That's a pretty cushy salary - isn't? Anyone know how much a new Disney board member gets paid?

As of 2011, about $250k/year.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001039/0001193125120...

But they were in the process of increasing it by about $30k, so probably closer to $300k/year now.

http://cdn.media.ir.thewaltdisneycompany.com/2013/annual/pro...

Sheryl Sandberg made $274K in 2012 being on the board at Disney as an example.

Is there a cushier job than being a board member?

Being on the board of a publicly-traded company also opens yourself up to a lot of personal liability, as you're legally bound to act in the best interest of shareholders. I personally would not want the job; if I were wealthy & accomplished enough to be offered a board membership, I'd much rather have a quiet life out of the public eye than wrestle with concerns of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that needs to satisfy many different constituencies. Being on the board of a non-profit, however, can be pretty cool. You usually don't get a salary for that though.

They have insurance for this tho, I thought. Its paid for by the company. That being said, once upon a time this was a much better job than it is today, but for other reasons.

Don't imagine he cares about the money.

I personally find a lot of inspiration visiting the Disney Family Museum here in SF (http://www.waltdisney.org/). Whenever I feel like I need a bit of a kick to see how a man can go against all odds to realize his dreams, I visit the museum. It may be dull to some, but the quotes alone make it worthwhile.

I find I might owe to Disney and his product some of the push I have. It may pay off for some of you to take a visit.

Please insist on a better script for the next Tron movie.

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