Things a Little Bird Told Me summary

In 2008, when Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg offered to buy Twitter, its founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, jokingly told him that they would sell – for a ludicrous $500 million. Although this price was obviously much higher than Twitter’s actual valuation at the time, Zuckerberg agreed.

Williams and Stone weren’t serious about selling their company, but surely Zuckerberg’s incredible offer was tempting?

At some point, many of us find ourselves bored with our jobs and feeling that our well of creativity is drying up. We become desperate to try something new, but at the same time are terrified of the risks involved.

“What if I’m simply no good at it?,” we wonder. “What if it fails?”

We all have to deal with failure at some point in our lives, and being aware of this can keep many of us from trying something new.

But it doesn’t need to be the case: there are lots of productive ways to deal with failure.

If a great idea springs to your mind, is your first instinct to keep it to yourself? If so, you’re probably making a mistake.

Why?

Do you remember how torturous even the easiest classes in school were if you didn’t care about the subject matter? Or perhaps you recall getting an “easy A” in a difficult class because it was a subject you loved?

In that vein, you have to be a passionate, avid user of your product for it to become a success.

Most of us are aware of Google’s motto “Don't be evil.”

However, in striving to succeed with your company, it’s not enough to merely refrain from doing evil. Rather, if you want your company to succeed, you must actively do good – which, in business, means offering your partners, employees and users a good deal.

Imagine you were alive fifty years ago and an earthquake hit a nearby town where your friends lived. Would there have been anything you could’ve done to help them? Probably not, as you wouldn’t have even been aware that the earthquake happened until you saw the paper the next morning.

Today, however, technology has made the world a much smaller place, as information travels faster than ever before. Services, like Twitter, connect people across the globe, enabling them to speak their minds freely, understand each other and even help each other out.

The key message in this book:

When you’re developing an idea, it’s important to set yourself limitations, as these are often a springboard for creativity. At the same time, you should be prepared to take big risks, and learn how to handle inevitable failures. Once you’ve realized your idea and created your product, continue perfecting it by being open to other people’s criticism and establishing win-win deals with partners, employees and users.