Consider how Twitter came about. It didn’t happen overnight. Founder Jack Dorsey had been, in his words, “obsessed” by how people moved, interacted, and communicated since the early 1990s. So, he learned basic computer programming, created maps with dots on them, and used information from Manhattan dispatch systems to track the movement of bike messengers, taxis, police, firefighters, and couriers. It was a start of bigger things to come. Dorsey then transferred to New York University and got a job as a programmer with the largest dispatch company in the world. He learned a lot in the role and eventually focused on the short format messages that people sent to large dispatch boards. “This became the basis for all of my work going forward,” he recalled. After moving to San Francisco in 2000, Dorsey continued to tinker with short messaging ideas. He started a company that dispatched emergency and taxi services from the web, but soon realized how little he knew about start-ups. Coming at the end of the dot com era, the timing was bad, too. “The company was more or less a failure,” he admitted. Yet he would learn from it. Dorsey continued to use instant messaging and LiveJournal (the early blogging platform) to post updates on what he was doing – simple things like, “I’m on the phone” or “I’m listening to the Black Eyed Peas.” Once again, these were small, achievable steps toward Jack’s larger interests, goals, and dreams. Then one night, Dorsey couldn’t sleep and sketched out an idea on a white board. The idea was to exchange short “status update” emails with friends using his RIM 850, a predecessor to the BlackBerry. The device had four lines of text good for short format messaging. Unfortunately, his friends didn’t have RIM 850s. So that experiment didn’t go anywhere either, but Dorsey got little bit smarter, a little bit better, and a little bit closer to a big idea, the big dream, the big goal. Around that time, Dorsey sketched out what would become the basis for Twitter several years later. On top it read “STATUS,” followed by a short fill-in the blank where he wrote “Reading.” But, lacking resources, Dorsey had to get a real job while continuing to tinker on the side. Dorsey was eventually hired as an engineer at Odeo, a podcasting company where people weren’t in love with podcasting. The company was, in fact, going nowhere, so founder Evan Williams asked employees for new ideas. “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” ~ Victor Hugo One night in 2006, Dorsey’s colleague sent him the first text message he ever received. “I had no idea what this thing was,” he remembered. But as Dorsey and his colleagues talked more about text messaging, he realized the short message format could be the missing link. Williams gave him and another programmer 2 weeks to build the idea. After the model was a definite success internally at Odeo, Williams upped the ante for a six-month project, and then launched a full-scale version publically in July 2006. Twitter would consume more and more resources until Williams spun it off as a separate company in 2007. Of course Dorsey’s approach was brilliant. He focused like a laser on short messaging and made hundreds (if not thousands) of small, affordable bets in that area, most of which failed. But with each step he got slightly smarter, better, and closer, until he ultimately achieved a remarkable feat. It’s an approach that the best self-employed professionals and creators have learned to do well, but anyone can do it. Jack began when he was a programmer. It began with a little bet that turned into a big goal, a big dream, and a big result. What will yours be?
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