Make every detail perfect and edit every detail: Interview with Jack Dorsey

Square and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey shares this insightful lecture, describing his early background and inspirations, the current focuses he keeps as a CEO, and his desire to create memorable experiences and solve problems. Still amazes me that I can pop online, get access to such an amazing talk, and learn so much all for free. And I didn't even have to pay that hefty Stanford tuition:).

At minute 17: The thing that really inspires people is a working product.

At minute 23: We instrument all usage. Log, measure, test. We treat data as a product.

At minute 24: We focus on the power of story and creating user narratives. We want to tell one epic cohesive story that we tell the world.

At minute 27: There's a thousand things we could be doing, but only one that is important. We need to drive the one or two that are going to drive the service/product. I am effectively the Chief Editor of the company. 3 things I edit: Bring in best Team and edit the negative members; internal/external communication, coordination of goals internally. External communication is the product. And the story we tell with it. How people are using it.

At minute 35: I think about marketing through the product itself. If the product is built in a beautiful way, it inspires people to take action.

At minute 40: The more you can minimize the thinking around the mechanics in the moment, then more people are going to use it and feel good about it. We want to get you to the value of what you intend to do.

At minute 43: Important to write it out, to draw it, to code it. It's important to get it out of your head. To see it on a surface. The sooner you can pass it around and get feedback the better.

At minute 44: What is the story. How are people coming to this. When I show my friends, how will they react. I realized I was writing plays.

At minute 48: It's not what we can build. It's what we can take away.

At minute 50: Q: Do you want to get rid of credit cards? A: We want to make payments feel amazing. (Love how he gets back to the "epic story").

At minute 58: Talks about building platform and importance of API to build ecosystem around Square. "I think of Square as a start-up with many start-ups around it."

Make every detail perfect and edit every detail

Expect the unexpected, and whenever possible be the unexpected.