Article Originally posted on Linkedin Pulse

From an unconventional basketball team to a Disney movie about an underdog chef, here's what animates the busiest man in tech

People have a lot of questions for Jack Dorsey. He runs two publicly traded companies: social network Twitter and payments upstart Square. Both are staring down Goliaths in their categories.

But when I caught up with him a few days ago at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, I didn't want to talk stock prices or investor angst -- he'd done plenty of that with us on CNBC weeks earlier during earnings season. Instead, I wanted to pick his brain about the nuggets he's learned, the strategies for product improvement, the things that give him confidence that he can help his team at Twitter succeed.

Here's an edited transcript of our conversation:

Team basketball

FORTT: Well, to start off, I know that you're a Golden State Warriors fan?

DORSEY: Yes.

And they just had a big comeback?

They did.

Right? Down--

Unheard-of comeback. (LAUGH)

Unheard-of comeback, down 3-1. What do you take away from watching that kind of teamwork?

That's the joy of watching the Warriors for me, is that word, which is "teamwork." There's so much focus on some of the individuals at points, but you realize just in the little things that they do, that they really, really pass the ball.

They really give it up to each one of their teammates. And they trust their teammates to do the right thing. And you saw it just in the game this week, the game seven. There was one moment, you know, when [Stephen] Curry went and he was going around in the last minute, and you know, he went under the basket.

He could've taken an easy layup right there, and then he went all the way back to the three-point line. He shot, and he made it. And just the trust that his teammates have to do the right thing there, is number one. And then when they actually got the trophy, the first thing that he did;  they were actually handing the trophy to Steph, he pointed to Klay.

And Klay took it, and Klay spoke first. And you know, just the humility and this constant trust around the team. So, I learn a lot from that, because I want to make sure that we're building a team that has shared accountability, that has a sense of teamwork, that has a sense of that electricity that you feel when you're working together with someone and you're actually winning.

How does that affect the way you bring a team together to create a product? Because in a way, for the Warriors, the game is the product, and you're seeing it getting created in real time.

Yeah.

But in technology, usually it's not that way. We see your release, but we don't see the process of bringing the team together, of how you pass the ball, of the moments, you know, when things don't work out as well. How do you translate some of that teamwork into the way you attack product development, and trying to build that velocity that you're talking so much about?

Yeah, it's a really good insight, but I think that's changing. I think software is enabling the change more, so you can actually ship in public, and you can make much faster changes. And you can have experiments out there that work or may not work.

And you can amplify them or you can shut them down. So actually, I think people do now see a whole lot more development, faster. And a lot of that development is done in public. And a lot of that development is done with feedback of the people using it, so software allows us to move super fast and be a whole lot more agile.

And sometimes we get that feedback just if people are using it. Are they using it more? Are they using it less? You know, do these features actually create more re-tweets, for example, or not? And what does that tell us? Is that really consistent with what we're trying to do, in terms of serving the use case?

And sometimes it's just having conversation with people. "Do you like that?" You know, "Did it feel right? Does it actually make you more powerful? Does it amplify your voice in the right way?" And we take that feedback, and we make decisions around it. So, I think there are more and more parallels, because that development is getting more and more real time, because software can move so quickly.

Now, you know, at Square, we make hardware. Hardware has six-month lead times. These are long product iterations. We do a lot of that work in private, but even there, we have a small, closed group of sellers that we talk to, and we bring prototypes to, and we say, "What do you think?"

And we test hundreds of iterations of the same piece of hardware to feel what it looks like. So, I think that dynamic is changing, even in hardware, with the advent of 3D printing and where we're going there, bringing more agility to the development process. So, I think we're actually mirroring more of the insight around what the Warriors can do in terms of their game, as a product.

A safe place to speak

Now, your mom is on Twitter? And my mom's actually on Twitter, but that scares me to death, (LAUGHTER) because of some of the safety and trolling issues that get talked about, where Twitter is concerned. How do you go about, product-wise, feature-wise, making Twitter a place where you don't have to worry about who your mom's going to run into?

Well, I think Twitter is a reflection of the world. In the same way that I worry about where my mom is and who she might run into in the real world, I have to do that in the digital sphere, as well. And I think, you know, as in the physical world, you give people better protections, better controls, around how they live their life.

I think in the past, we have had some rudimentary controls for people. And I think we're getting better and better, and we're applying a lot more engineering to the problem, as well, so that we can build a very simple mechanism for people to block, to report, to mute, not just accounts, but potentially even hashtags or keywords, so that they continue to feel free to express themselves.

That, to me, is the most important -- that we want to hear people's voices, and we want to hear every type of voice. People should feel free to express themselves. And we will defend that right, and make sure that we're amplifying those voices.

Sometimes, you know, want to hear everything. Sometimes you just want to talk. I have never blocked anyone on Twitter, because I want to hear every single voice. I get some positive, and I get a lot of negative, and it ebbs and flows, according to what's happening in the world and what's happening with the companies, and what I'm saying. But behind all that, I believe there's positivity. I believe that there's a desire in the Twitter case, even if we hear something negative, that where that's coming from is a place where people want us to win. People see this as an important company, see us as a company that needs to exist in the world, and a service that needs to strengthen. So, I take it with that mindset, and it's emboldening.

How do you think of Twitter, as a place? Now, I don't know if you think of it this way. Is it like a neighborhood? Is it like a place where if you have an experience that's too negative, if you don't have those sorts of controls, you won't go visit that neighborhood again? There'll be boarded-up windows? It'll become blighted?

You know, I think it's a collective of communities. I think it's fundamentally new. I think there are certain metaphors we can look to in the past to really kind of capture some of the spirit, but I think it's fundamentally new, and I think what really ties it all together is people having simple, straightforward conversation.

And what's different about the conversation is it happens publicly, so anyone in the world can see what you're talking about. Anyone in the world can actually see that conversation, and even participate in it. And any in the world can actually reply back and add or sometimes detract from the conversation.

But it's very fluid, in a sense. So I think it's our job to make the tool. And we are toolmakers, and you know, ultimately to me, that's what technology is;  it's a tool that ideally makes humans better. Gives them an efficiency that allows them to focus on more meaningful things, and the meaningful thing in our case is having a better conversation.

And then it's up to the community to make sure that they're actually maintaining themselves, and they're recognizing where the negativity is, where the positivity is, where the conversation needs to go, what's being talked about, what's not being talked about, and we see that every single day on Twitter. And one of the best parts about it is it's just very, very fluid. It really goes to wherever the world needs attention, in real time. I haven't seen a technology that's faster in that sense. 

Lessons from the House of Mouse

You're also on the board of Disney, and one of the things about that company that I find fascinating is that through acquisition, through culture shift, they've taken some things that weren't working so well and made them work. I mean, the Pixar acquisition brought in John Lasseter, who helped the whole animation division. Marvel, as a company, was just dying, frankly, as far as comic books goes, but movies have brought the mythology to a whole new level. What have you learned or taken away from seeing how Disney does what it does with story, with product, to revitalize things?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a testament to [Disney CEO] Bob Iger's leadership. He's been phenomenal in terms of driving the company to where it is today. And I learn something every conversation I have with him. I think one of the things that was really enlightening to me was just how much he focused, when he came back into the company. The company was not doing well.

You know, stock was at a [multi-year] low, and morale was, you know, pretty low. And he took on a lot of challenges at once. He focused on, "What is Disney? We're storytellers. Our craft is story, and we're gonna strengthen that. And we're gonna do so through creativity. We're gonna do so through technology, and we're gonna do so through optimism." And that last word was really important. Just having an optimistic approach to the work, and not only saying it, but demanding it in all the people around him on his team.

How do you demand it?

Well, if you're not gonna be optimistic, you're not in the company. You know, we want people to be happy at work, and we want people to feel fulfilled at their jobs and their work. And if we have negativity around what we're doing, it's gonna be a drag on every single thing that we do.

So, that was something that was just very refreshing to hear, and it's worked. In every board meeting we have, you feel it. You feel the creativity. You feel the desire to continue to advance technology and use technology to tell better stories, and you feel the optimism.

Hmm. What's your favorite Disney movie?

(LAUGH) My favorite Disney movie is actually Ratatouille.

Wow.

And you know, it's a story of--

That's a sleeper.

I love the sleepers. (LAUGH) I don't know.

I liked it. I saw (LAUGHTER) it, but that's not one that you hear every day.

Yeah, it's, you know, kind of a story of risk taking, of differences, against all odds. But it's fun, and it's joyful, and it's quirky, and radical at the same time. So, I love watching it.

What was the first Disney movie that you remember seeing?

Probably Snow White.

Bambi, I think was mine. (LAUGHTER) And it was kind of mortifying to see what happened with the mom in the beginning.

Yeah. I remember that moment, too. (LAUGHTER) It was the death of my childhood.

It was like Game of Thrones for little kids. It was--

--it really was.

--like, "Seriously? That's against the rules."

It really was, yeah. 

The most important metric

Finally, I've noticed that you ask people a lot for feedback on Twitter when you have a conversation?

Uh-huh.

What do you do with that information? You don't always write it down, but what are some of the better pieces of feedback that you've heard and done something with?

I think a big part of our job is to make sure that we're constantly getting feedback. But people are paying us with their attention, with their money, with their mindshare, to make decisions. So, we need to take all that feedback.

We need to understand people are trying to say with that feedback, where there's alignment, where there's dis-alignment, and make decisions around it, and also add our own insight around where the technology and where the world is going, and what we want to see in the world, and what we want to use, and balance that out.

So, it's a constant, constant conversation and debate. But that's our work. That's what we do. And as we make the right decisions, people use it more. And if we make the wrong decisions, they don't. And then, you know, the accountability is to make sure that we shut it down and move on, and we do so quickly and rapidly.

In terms of the best feedback, you know, it's just Twitter is a story of how people have changed the product just by using it. I think it's one of the ultimate stories. The app name, the hashtag, the re-tweet;  these are all things that the people using our platform invented. And then we took that, and we linked it. We built a search engine around it. We made it a one-button push. We made it easier, so they could do more of it.

And that's the ultimate feedback, is just noticing what people are doing and making it easier for them to do more of it. Those are just three occurrences, but there've been so many on Twitter. Like, tweetstorm is another one, where you know, this is an emerging pattern. People want to express themselves in higher velocity, and it's not just about length, because what we're seeing is people actually take the individual tweets and then quote re-tweet them, or re-tweet them as parts.

Like, "Mark Andreessen said all this, but this is really important, and here's why." "Kanye said all this, and this is really entertaining or insightful or creative, and here's why." And we want to enable more of that. So, we look and listen all the time.

Hmm. Okay, I lied. One more. What's your favorite metric? The one that maybe everybody doesn't have access to, but you look at it most often when you're looking at how the product is doing, how the product is changing?

You know, I think, you know, we wanna make sure that Twitter's providing--

I mean like a data point. Like, an actual--

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know, like daily usage. Like, people are coming. And you know, what I do every morning when I wake up is I look out the window, look at the weather. I know exactly what I'm gonna need for the day, in terms of my outfit, umbrella, whatever it is. I know what it's gonna be like.

And the other thing I do is I open up Twitter search. And when you don't have a search query plugged in, it goes to trends. So, I see trends right away. And trends show exactly what's happening right now in the world. And why that's interesting and why I bring up the weather is it tells me what I'm gonna be talking about when I get into work.

Beyonce just released an album. I'm gonna be talking a lot about Beyonce. All my coworkers are gonna be talking about Beyonce. They're gonna be thinking about Beyonce. They're going to be tweeting about Beyonce. And my family and my friends, they're gonna know that Beyonce happened, and now I know, too, because I saw it on Twitter, and it makes me smarter. So, I wanna enable everyone in the world, and anyone in the world, to be able to have that sort of ability to wake up and, "This is what's happening and this is the fastest way to see it."

And not only that, I can actually get in a conversation about it right there. I can actually start talking to people. I can even talk to Beyonce about it, right, and all her fans and the people that are passionate about her work. And that's really meaningful. That's really important. So, I want to make sure that we're providing something that people want to use every single day.

All right. Jack, hey.

Awesome.

I appreciate all the time.

Thank you so much.