Twitter's Jack Dorsey Was Turned Down for a Job at Camper

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The New York Times published an excerpt from tech reporter Nick Bilton's forthcoming book about Twitter's early years that covers the site's origin tale. The story is complete with misfits, backstabbing, and one international shoe company who's brand slogan is "Lifelovers welcome." It's Camper and just before Jack Dorsey got the break that led him to Twitter, he failed to get a job there. To wit:

In 2005, Jack Dorsey was a 29-year-old New York University dropout who sometimes wore a T-shirt with his phone number on the front and a nose ring. After a three-month stint writing code for an Alcatraz boat-tour outfit, he was living in a tiny San Francisco apartment. He had recently been turned down for a job at Camper, the shoe store.

He was in a coffee shop, licking his retail burns, when Evan Williams, who founded two sites that served as a proto-Twitter and was famous in the tech world at the time, came in. Ultimately, it was Dorsey's nose ring that hooked the two up:

Dorsey, who was shy after battling a speech impediment as a child, was reluctant to introduce himself personally. Instead, he opened his résumé on his computer, deleted any signs of his desire to work for Camper shoes, found Williams's e-mail address online and sent a message to see if Odeo was hiring. Williams, whose investment in Odeo had turned him into the company's C.E.O., soon called him in for an interview. He and Glass, both college dropouts themselves, preferred rabble-rousers to Stanford grad students and Dorsey, with his nose ring and disheveled hair, seemed like a perfect fit.

The full story is a doozy and can be found at the New York Times.
· All Is Fair in Love and Twitter [NY Times]
· Twitter Really Sucks at Driving Traffic for Brands [Racked]