As Cool As All That

Goldman is gold, man.

There’s a great new profile about Jason Goldman I think you should read. Mr. Goldman is currently Co-founder of The Obvious Corporation and board member at Branch and Medium. When I met him, he was the VP of Product for Twitter, following Evan Williams there after serving as Product Manager for Blogger at Google. 

The BuzzFeed piece, called “The Silent Partner,” was written by Rob Fishman. I have a few reasons for pointing it out to you.

First, it’s a great piece about what it takes to be an effective product manager in a world which values personalities over products.

Second, the article highlights one of the lesser-known architects of Twitter’s early—and continued—success.

Lastly, I feel like there is a direct connection between Mr. Goldman and this blog: He was the first person to encourage me to set my reluctance aside and reach out directly for a position at Twitter.

@sg True story: 1st time I met@goldman was at Disrupt. After talking a bit about jobs at Twitter, he gave me your email address.So kind.
— Stephen R. Fox (@F6x) April 2, 2013

I met Mr. Goldman in 2010 at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. He was one of the Expert Judges for their Startup Battlefield.

Afterwards, I approached him, talked briefly about why I loved the service, what I thought it needed to do to gain wider adoption, and how I could help bring in more users. Without hesitation, he suggested I get in contact with Sean Garrett, who, at the time, was VP of Communications at Twitter.

I was then, and remain now, very grateful for Mr. Goldman’s generous time and gracious advice. Our brief conversation is basically what led to the start of this collection of posts you’ve stumbled upon here. Although I haven’t had any significant talks with him since, I think the article accurately conveys the magnanimity I found so easily while talking with him years ago.

So, enjoy the piece. And know that he’s essentially the reason these posts even exist. There will be more, and I hope you’ll read them when I see you on the ‘morrow, on the Web.