Twitter was started in March 2006 only to be officially unveiled about 4 months later. The first tweet ever was by Jack Dorsey (who is co-founder and also a name I shall mention a few more times later on in this article). The tweet issued on 21 March 2006 at 1550hrs simply read “just setting up my twitter”. Today the platform is a hotbed of news content and prominent government leaders actively tweet there virtually daily. It is also a preferable platform for businesses looking to engage other businesses. It is a highly respected authority on mature, professional, candid and credible content. That is part of why I thought to take the lessons focus to Twitter today. What can we learn from the Twitter company?

Original Ideas Can Morph Into Something Else And Huge

Jack Dorsey used to work for a certain podcast company several years before Twitter came along. That company, called Odeo had been co-founded by two people, one of whom later became the co-founder of Twitter with Jack. So at some point, the company was ailing owing to financial issues. One day whilst the top management were discussing how to sort things out Jack suggested an SMS-based way to engage with people in the ecosystem of the podcast company. That was the original intention for the innovation that later on gave birth to Twitter. You could be working on something and it might seem miniature and irrelevant. However, you might find it becoming a global business empire in the near future so carefully consider what you are doing right now.

3 Attributes Of A Great Business Leader According To Jack Dorsey

Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey highlights his approach in what defines a great business leader. Firstly, it is one who puts together a strong team vying for a common destination. Secondly, it is one who involves the people to affect and be affected by a decision during decision-making. Let me elaborate a bit here if you are contemplating making a business decision make sure you involve staff and customers in the process of making the decision. Lastly, dream big so as to provoke inspiration in your taskforce and the consumers you serve. In fact, that is the core of what makes a business leader great – you chart new courses and surmount new mountains. If you master these 3 invaluable approaches you will become a great business leader.

Negative Team Players Must Go

As a company policy, Twitter is not hesitant to get rid of employees adversely affect the company’s culture. If an employee is found to have a disruptive influence on company dynamics e.g. morale they are fired. As entrepreneurs always remember that a business is primarily as good as its staff so take this seriously.

An Idea Can Take Years To Become Relevant

The Twitter idea was first thought of in the year 2000 but it was not yet relevant. The concept of sending each other SMSes (especially over the internet) was not yet widespread since people were still stuck up on voice calls. What then did Jack Dorsey do? He simply shelved the idea of waiting for a time when it would be ripe to introduce it to the market. The same goes for some of you out there. You might have discovered a witty business idea but which is not yet relevant – just hold onto it and wait for the opportune time. The Twitter idea took a good 6 years to finally become relevant.

Simplicity Equals Perfection

The true essence of perfection lies in perfecting every detail and keeping the number of details minimal in order to perfect. I do hope you got that statement because it is laden with a deep truth that every entrepreneur must know. The basic idea of a tweet was 140 characters (of course you can incorporate other items such as media, hashtags and so on). The 140 character limit has since been doubled though it might interest you to know that analytics done by Twitter has shown that it has not really led to longer tweets).

Back to our subject matter; when building a product or service take time to breakdown the business idea, get rid of the intricacies and provide or dwell majorly on what is paramount. If you do that you will surely arrive at simplicity. A funny story is even told of how Jack Dorsey once chose the tiniest bedroom when his family moved into a new home. This somehow shows how deeply ingrained the concept of simplicity has characterised the building of the Twitter interface.

Do Not Be Too Quick To Sell A Business

Did you know that Facebook once offered to buy Twitter for half a billion dollars towards the end of 2008. Frankly speaking, Twitter was still small at the time and had a fair share of struggles of its own at the time. Had they taken up the offer they could have made quite a lot of money – I mean, half a billion dollars was quite a huge amount. However, Twitter refused the offer and kept building the company. Today Twitter has a market cap of at least US$30 billion has a net worth of over US$4 billion. So learn to hang on to your business and develop it despite the odds (even if alluring offers come along the way). Inquisitively assess every offer that comes along and always bear in mind that a business can always grow to become better than what it is today.

As a parting shot and to further buttress the preceding talking point, did you know that Twitter only started realizing profits 2 years ago? Remember it was started in the year 2006 so take a lesson from that – patience does pay. There you have it, 5 business lessons to learn from the Twitter company.