121–130 of 272 posts
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I don't think he can do that to Square and their investors as nice as the story sounds.
He has ran both companies simultaneously in the past via 16 hour work days: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-do...
From an update to the article: [Update: On the conference call, Costolo said he initiated internal conversations about leaving at the end of last year, and that following discussions in Feburary and his decision to step down, Twitter decided to begin the CEO search. Costolo said he chose to leave now because he thought staying on through the CEO search would cause scrutiny to intensify. During the Q&A, Twitter execs…
I'm hoping that Nick Bilton writes a follow-up with this new Costolo to Dorsey transition. I wouldn't be surprised if Jack ends up removing the interim title and stays full time.
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Then you end up with the "postal service".
Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.
See this comment for a more detailed explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6710602
Also, it's pretty hard not to be "wildly successful" when you get a legally enforced monopoly. Comcast is also "wildly successful", but we certainly don't want to expand that model.
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Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime. If our "leaders" stopped actively sabotaging the USPS, it could be doing even better.
>Which is wildly successful and doesn't cost us taxpayers a dime You might want to double check your info on that one. The US Postal Service lost $32 Billion over the past four years. USPS losses: * 2011: $5.1 Billion * 2012: $15.9 Billion * 2013: $5.5 Billion * 2014: $5.5 Billion 2011/2012: http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/15/news/economy/postal-service-... 2013: https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2013/pr13_0…
How come Twitter doesn't lift the character limit on tweets? Then you could allow content writers to write a more coherent thought (IE not breaking it into a 20+ message tweet storm) and then normal length tweets could serve just as comments. Lifting the character limit could make Twitter a publishing powerhouse over night. With the right API support, writers could write their content on Twitter and have it appear as…
The origins of the 140 character limit are interesting; it was originally put in place because Twitter was SMS-based, and SMS limits the number of characters to 160. 140 allowed some wiggle room. But retaining the character limit changes the platform entirely. "Lifting the twitter limit" does not a publishing platform make; it changes everything that Twitter is. I think Jack explained the psychological reasons very w…
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You've got it the other way around. A forceful push is very likely to lead to a huge severance package (because that's the cost of getting someone to go quietly and stay for the transition). So the fact that he doesn't get a severance package leads me to believe it was voluntary.
It's a high class way for him to leave, that may set up other options for him in the future (VC, Professorship, etc) that wouldn't be there if it was an ugly breakup. Given that the stock traded at all time lows, no severance was justified. https://www.google.com/finance?cid=32086821185414
Having a founder and product visionary (Jack) in the driver's seat at Twitter is absolutely the right move. Sure, Jack has his quirks, and seems a little bit crazy and minimalistic, but that's exactly what makes him the right person for the job. Twitter is executing on its vision now just fine, but that's just the problem: There hasn't been any vision left in the company. No truly big moves have been made, and the pr…
For chrissake's they are still under their "Code Red", otherwise known as reorg-infinity.
And the cost-cutting will continue (as it should) for an unprofitable public company- get rid of the crossfit instructors, the chef, have less good food, etc.
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You can be good to your employees and bad for stockholders. One way to do this is to hand out bonuses instead of dividends. Agreed. But don't the employees have higher stakes running on the long term success of the company compared to investors who are known to be in for short term profit and hence can't the former be a better indicator? Eg: Mass employee exodus results in company going bust while the team can still…
Employees often have less business acumen then an old lady selling on the open market. I find it amusing that people who can code think they can do anything and everything. Despite what you like to to believe, those MBAs do have value. Lots of it.
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The origins of the 140 character limit are interesting; it was originally put in place because Twitter was SMS-based, and SMS limits the number of characters to 160. 140 allowed some wiggle room. But retaining the character limit changes the platform entirely. "Lifting the twitter limit" does not a publishing platform make; it changes everything that Twitter is. I think Jack explained the psychological reasons very w…
Incessantly tweeting whatever thought is current in one's stream of consciousness is like mental diarrhea, and is usually about as appealing.
I rather enjoy seeing what's on the mind of the smartest people in the world (and even moreso what they're reading), and that's what I try to structure my Twitter feed for.
I try to tweet things that are at least somewhat insightful, but maybe I really suck at it. The great thing about Twitter is that if people don't think I'm interesting they can unfollow me. I really love that. Being on Twitter is like being in a room with whomever you would like to at any given time.
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You can be good to your employees and bad for stockholders. One way to do this is to hand out bonuses instead of dividends. Agreed. But don't the employees have higher stakes running on the long term success of the company compared to investors who are known to be in for short term profit and hence can't the former be a better indicator? Eg: Mass employee exodus results in company going bust while the team can still…
Employees often have less business acumen then an old lady selling on the open market. I find it amusing that people who can code think they can do anything and everything. Despite what you like to to believe, those MBAs do have value. Lots of it.
But in my experience (not what I believe) very very few MBAs have value. The few I have seen have been the ones who have done executive MBAs (mainly people with a lot of experience going to get some theory knowledge) and they apply very little and very specific knowledge from their MBA.
My favorite experience with 'fresh' MBA students (still in university, no real work experience) was when I sat on a panel of local expat business people (in the Czech republic) doing a Q and A for MBA students from the US somewhere. They came off a day of exploring Prague, and had sat through some chamber of commerce and Ministry of Trade and Industry presentations so our panel was up to talk about our real world experiences building businesses out here. We all gave a short speech about what we've done and lessons learned out here-specifically what is great about business out here but also what pitfalls to look out for- then opened up for questions from the students.
The first question came from a student who I think was trying to emulate a hard-nosed, no nonsense businessman, who quite aggressively asked "Hold on, hold on hold on! So, can you just tell me whether I should bring my business here or not? The first presentations are telling me that everything is wonderful out here, now you lot tell me it's not so easy. So which is it then?!?"
I (admittedly a little bit annoyed, as I was doing the panel for free, I just wanted to help some future business people out) said to her: "Your job as a business owner is to gather data, evaluate it and make what you think is a sound decision based on it. You saw basically 2 sets of presentations today, one from people who are selling the Czech Republic, and one from foreigners who have actually built businesses here. So, you need to evaluate both sides of the coin, and come up with your own decision. If you can't do that you may well end up buying a lot of bridges and investing blindly in things that can't fail."
That gathered a few laughs, and even the woman who asked came up to me afterwards and asked me a few more questions (but still in a bullish type of way). But the local Chamber of commerce and the ministry never invited me again to be a panel member.
That was a round about way of trying to say that newly minted MBAs, their heads full of case studies, tends to see the business world in shades of black and white. That theories always work, that the business would be successful if you only did this. But the real world tends to be a little more murky, and until those MBAs gain a little more experience and are granted a little wisdom, they offer very little more value than an interesting tweet.