Jack Dorsey’s Circular Focus in Square
Following Vanity Fair’s Sean Parker sketch, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and now Square makes the editorial cut under David Kirkpatrick’s steel pen. The focus on both is primarily their focus and their market timing.
While Parker carries a precise gut instinct for the right opportunities, Dorsey employs a predictive ability towards where community needs lie.
Intriguing about both is their singular or circular focus. Having worked with Jeff Skoll, dined with Larry Page and met Zuckerberg at a Google Zeitgeist conference – I notice the clean lines of their expression mimic the intensity of their entrepreneurial passions.
Theirs is a cleanness of personality; an ability to concentrate on one thing above all others, which is ironically anti-social given their social projects.
Also ironic, Parker had to convince Zuckerberg to think big on Facebook, and Dorsey’s direction has been for purity of the product design of Twitter and now Square, a plug-in to smartphones and tablets for credit card transactions.
Peter Thiel—the billionaire hedge-fund manager and co-founder of PayPal, who became Thefacebook’s first investor—says that around that time “Sean consistently argued that Facebook was going to be really big. If Mark ever had any second thoughts, Sean was the one who cut that off.”
Via the Dorsey VF piece, “Twitter Was Act One,” there’s definitely a management learning curve, which has put Jack Dorsey into a better stead.
More control over his products is also what connects these digital characters. Call it a focused ownership and particular attention to detail, like another chief innovator: Steve Jobs. Read more >>
Open Angel Forum and AngelList
Two relatively new resources for startup entrepreneurs looking for angel investments. AngelList springs from the VentureHacks group, while Open Angel Forum was founded by Jason Calacanis, after he challenged all of the angel forums and keiretsus who charged fees to startups seeking angels.
Via WSJ: Earlier this year, Internet entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis started Open Angel Forum, which holds free pitch events in various cities where entrepreneurs selected from a pool of applicants can pitch to about 20 to 30 angel investors. [...] Another free service, AngelList, started in February by angels Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, vets dozens of deals before highlighting the best ones in emails each week sent to a group of 200 investors.
These are open source solutions, like Y Combinator, for startups and angels:
- Open Angel Forum: http://openangelforum.com/
- AngelList: http://venturehacks.com/angellist
- Y Combinator: http://ycombinator.com/