Jack Dorsey: “A Founder Is Not A Job, It’s A Role”

Jack Dorsey never wanted to be an entrepreneur. But you can’t predict your life, and we’ve just learned from his keynote speech that you can’t predict the path of a company either. “A founder is not a job,” he explained. “It’s a role. It’s an attitude. It’s something that can happen again and again and again.”

“A lot of people see Ev, Biz and myself (and this green deer) to be the founders of Twitter,” he said. “It’s true, but companies exist and evolve over time and have multiple founding moments.”

He explained that employees, investors, and friends have shaped the path of the company. “A lot of energy goes into that founding moment,” said Dorsey, “but the company has to adapt.”

He went through a list of non-founders, including Marissa Mayer. “Marissa isn’t a founder of Google or Yahoo!, but she has the context, drive, recognition and moral authority to change and create a founding moment within a company.”

Twitter was not started because we wanted to start a company. It started because we had a good idea that came out of a failed company.

He left us with an incredibly wise piece of advice to founders: “An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.”