Fred Wilson Interviews Jack Dorsey

Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures, AVC) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square) had a really interesting conversation at the NYU Entrepreneur Festival.(Video on Fred's blog)

A few notes from the talk:

• A good company favors a VC with good questions & intelligent perspective over a VC with just a check. Checks are easy to come by, good insight is rare.
• Fast prototyping: Twitter v. 1.0 took two guys two weeks to code. Square took four weeks to MVP.
• "It's good to have friends with problems." Problems tell you where the business needs to go.
• Making something look pretty (or changing marketing) is easy. It's the deep stuff (the "soul") that's hard to get right.
• Obstacles are impermanent: example, Visa's objections to Square. (see also Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, re: brick walls)