Twitter co-founder and very rich person Jack Dorsey has a collection of great ideas – but he’s also had some that would fall under the “not-so-great” heading.
The biggest bad idea was his plan to quit.
Not just the pursuit that would become Twitter, but to quit the tech industry altogether.
To what end? Well, to be a fashion designer.
Although Dorsey was, and remains, keenly interested in fashion – he designed skirts and doesn’t like the nose ring – he probably followed a better path.
Dorsey, 44, the CEO of both Twitter and Square, has an estimated personal net worth of $12.9 billion, according to Forbes.
Another stroke of non-brilliance? Among the names considered before settling on “Twitter” was Dorsey’s thought: FriendStalker. Not good.
Alternate career paths included other online startups, botanical illustration (yes, drawings and/or photos of plants), fashion design and professional masseuse.
At times, “I felt like a failure,” Dorsey told The New Yorker.
″I’m going to quit tech and become a fashion designer,” Dorsey told Twitter co-founder Noah Glass, according to Nick Bilton’s 2013 book, “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal.”
Dorsey said he spent 2000-05 mulling the idea and wrote this on the Twitter platform in 2006:
”The 6th year; the idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We’re calling it twttr … I’m happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.”
Dorsey continued taking fashion courses and, at one point, fellow co-founder Evan Williams reportedly told Dorsey: “You can either be a dressmaker or the C.E.O. of Twitter. But you can’t be both,” according to Bilton’s book.
He stayed.
By the end of 2006, Twttr had become Twitter.
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