Jack Dorsey recounts how he almost became a massage therapist after his first startup failed

I moved to Berkeley and we started a company called dnet, which was a complete and utter failure. It was just a disaster. And the company folded. This was around 1999, 2000. After that, I went into contracting. But little by little, my wrists started hurting. I was fearful that I was developing carpal tunnels. So I started asking my friends here in Berkeley, what should I do? And they said, you should get a massage. But I'm not someone who just goes to get the massage. I want to learn how to give massages. And I moved back to St. Louis at this time, and I decided I'm not just going to get a massage, but I'm going to become a massage therapist. So I enrolled myself into the Healing arts Center in St. Louis, and I took 1,000 hours of massage therapy. And I'm a licensed therapist, only in Missouri, fortunately. And I was actually going to dedicate my life to it. I was fed up with technology. I always appreciated building with my hands and working with my hands and doing something that I could feel with my hands. And I missed that. Massage gave me that. So I thought I had the brilliant idea. I was about ready to move back to San Francisco in 2005. Thought I had the best idea ever. My idea was that I would go out to California and I would do chair massage for programmers. And while I was massaging their shoulders and their wrists and whatnot, I would also give them advice on their code. So it was not only massage therapy, it was code therapy. And I thought this was the best idea ever. I started telling people my idea, and they're like, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. When I'm getting a massage, I do not want to talk about programming. I said, no, just give it a chance. Give it a chance. And then I moved to San Francisco again, and I realized, whoa, everyone here is a massage therapist. There's no way I can compete. So I went back to programming.