Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey

Dorsey at the 2012 Time 100 Gala
Born November 19, 1976[1]
St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Residence San Francisco, California, U.S.
Alma mater Missouri University of Science and Technology (dropped out)
New York University (dropped out)
Occupation computer programmer, entrepreneur
Net worth Increase US $2.5 billion (January 2015)[2][3]

Jack Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American computer programmer and businessman widely known as a co-founder of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company.[4] In 2008, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[5] For 2012, The Wall Street Journal gave him the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology.[6]

Early years

Dorsey was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri,[7][8] the son of Marcia (Smith) and Tim Dorsey.[9][10][11] He is of part Italian descent.[12] His father worked for a company that developed mass spectrometers and his mother was a homemaker.[13] He was raised Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati.[14] He went to Catholic high school, at Bishop DuBourg High School.

By age thirteen, Dorsey had become interested in dispatch routing. Some of the open source software he created in the area of dispatch logistics is still used by many taxi cab companies.[9] Dorsey attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology before subsequently transferring to New York University, where he first came up with the idea that became Twitter.[15] While working on dispatching as a programmer, he later moved to California.[16][17]

long view of stage with Stone and Dorsey speaking in front of a slide presentation
Biz Stone and Dorsey accepting a Crunchie award for best mobile startup

In Oakland in 2000, Dorsey started his company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web.[18] His other projects and ideas at this time included networks of medical devices and a "frictionless service market".[18] In July 2000, building on dispatching[9] and inspired in part by LiveJournal and possibly by AOL Instant Messenger, he had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.[18]

When he first saw implementations of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered whether the software's user status output could be shared among friends easily.[9] He approached Odeo, which at the time happened to be interested in text messaging.[9] Dorsey and Biz Stone decided that SMS text suited the status message idea, and built a prototype of Twitter in about two weeks.[9] The idea attracted many users at Odeo and investment from Evan Williams[9] who had left Google after selling it Pyra Labs and Blogger.

Twitter

Main article: Twitter
Dorsey in 2008
Dorsey at a Twitter Town Hall during 2011 alongside United States President Barack Obama

Williams, Stone and Noah Glass co-founded Obvious, which then spun off Twitter Inc. with Dorsey as the CEO.[9][19] In his role during the pivotal days of the company's founding, a compilation chronicling the originally named "twttr" and the time leading up to the official launch, is shown in a timeline of tweets revealing Twitter's beginnings.[20] As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company.[21] He reportedly lost his position for leaving work early to enjoy other pursuits such as yoga and fashion design.[22] On October 16, 2008,[23] Williams took over the role of CEO, while Dorsey became chairman of the board.[24][25] On March 28, 2011, Dorsey returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman after Dick Costolo replaced Williams as the CEO.[26]

As the service began to grow in popularity, Dorsey chose the improvement of uptime as top priority,[27] even over creating revenue – which, as of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn.[28] Dorsey described the commercial use of Twitter and its API as two things that could lead to paid features.[28] He describes his three guiding principles, which he says are shared by the company, are simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship.[28]

Management Philosophy and Achievements Twitter rose twenty percent higher, going as high as forty-eight dollars, adding almost five billion dollars to it’s market capitalization in what forms up to be its best one-day performance since it jumped seventy-three percent on its first say of trading last November (Schaefer, 2014). As smartphones became more developed and successful, sending messages via the Internet has become easier than through SMS. Twitter has 2.2 billion visits a month according to SimilarWeb analytics tool (Astrum People, 2015). After the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2007 is when the extensive popularity of the innovation began (Astrum People, 2015). The instillation of multiple screens by the company’s employees displayed real-time messages from the users of the service (Astrum People, 2015). The amounts of daily tweets were managed to increase by the creators of Twitter from twenty to sixty thousand. In May of 2008, the billionth message was sent through Twitter just a year later (Astrum People, 2015). The company’s market capitalization reached the point mark of $1.5 billion, as the company began to develop (Astrum People, 2015).

Square, Inc.

Main article: Square, Inc.

Dorsey developed a small business platform to accept debit and credit card payments on a mobile device called Square, released in May 2010. The small, square-shaped device attaches to iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android devices via the headphone jack, and as a mini card reader allows a person to swipe her or his card, choose an amount to give to the recipient and then sign his or her name for confirmation. Square is also a system for sending paperless receipts via text message or email, and is available as a free app for iOS and Android OS.[29][30] The company grew from 10 employees in December 2009[31] to over a hundred employees by June 2011. Square's office is located on Market Street in San Francisco.[32] In September 2012, Business Insider magazine valued Square Inc. at $3.2 billion.[33] Dorsey is CEO of Square, Inc.[34]

Other projects

Producer Tom Anderson and correspondent Lara Logan interviewed Dorsey for a segment of CBS 60 Minutes called "The Innovator: Jack Dorsey" which aired during March 2013.[35] In 2013, talking to CNN, Dorsey expressed admiration for Michael Bloomberg and his reinvention through design and simple interfaces of what it means to be mayor.[36] Dorsey thinks becoming mayor of New York City is an aspiration that would raise the bar for him.[36] Dorsey served as a judge for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in 2011.[37]

Dorsey was announced as a new member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company on December 24, 2013. The press release referred to Dorsey as a "talented entrepreneur" and explained that his experience is aligned with the corporation's "strategic priorities."[38]

References

  1. ↑ "Jack Dorsey". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2014. Retrieved 22 December 2014.
  2. ↑ Jack Dorsey - In Photos: Youngest Billionaires of 2014. Forbes. Retrieved on 2014-10-14.
  3. ↑ Karsten Strauss, Karsten. "The New Billionaire Behind Twitter And Square: Jack Dorsey". Forbes. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  4. ↑ Strange, Adario (April 20, 2007). "Flickr Document Reveals Origin Of Twitter". Wired News (CondéNet). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  5. ↑ "TR35 Young Innovator". Technology Review (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). 2008. Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  6. ↑ "Innovator of the Year Awards". WSJ. Magazine (Dow Jones). 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2013.
  7. ↑ Evan-Williams.html Profile Twitter founders: Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Telegraph. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
  8. ↑ Taste of St. Louis first major event to use Square : Business. Stltoday.com (2010-09-29). Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Glaser, Mark (May 17, 2007). "Twitter Founders Thrive on Micro-Blogging Constraints". Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  10. ↑ Jack Dorsey, creador de twitter: 'En 140 caracteres la gente se siente más libre al escribir' | CIENCIA&TECNOLOGÍA. latercera.com. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
  11. ↑ The Virginian-Pilot Archives. Nl.newsbank.com (2009-11-26). Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
  12. ↑ Jack Dorsey Believes That Eating Purple Food Makes You Healthier. Vanity Fair (2012-03-21). Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
  13. ↑ Robehmed, Natalie (September 30, 2014). "The youngest billionaires on the Forbes 400: 11 under 40". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved October 1, 2014.
  14. ↑ Barker, Tim. (2009-11-15) Native son sets St. Louis atwitter 'He's always seen life a little differently,' uncle says of Twitter creator. : News. Stltoday.com. Retrieved on 2013-09-04.
  15. ↑ "Co-founder of Twitter receives key to St. Louis with 140 character proclamation". ksdk.com. KSDK. September 19, 2009. Retrieved September 29, 2009. After high school in St. Louis and some time at the University of Missouri-Rolla, Jack headed east to New York University.
  16. ↑ BusinessWeek (March 26, 2007). "Tech's Next Gen: The Best and Brightest". BusinessWeek (The McGraw-Hill Companies). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  17. ↑ Dorsey, Jack (April 8, 2009). "To be clear: I didn't attend Cornell (and didn't invent Twitter there).". Twitter. Retrieved April 13, 2009.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Dorsey, Jack (March 24, 2006). "twttr sketch". Flickr. Yahoo!. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
  19. ↑ Patrick Hoge. Executive of the Year: Jack Dorsey. ‘’San Francisco Business Times’’. December 23, 2011.
  20. ↑ @Jack Reveals the Beginning of #twttr. Chirpstory. Retrieved on 2013-09-04.
  21. ↑ Miller, Claire Cain (October 16, 2008). "Twitter Sidelines One Founder and Promotes Another". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  22. ↑ "The Approval Matrix". New York magazine. Oct 21, 2013.
  23. ↑ Miller, Claire Cain (October 20, 2008). "Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  24. ↑ McCarthy, Caroline (October 16, 2008). "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey steps down". CNET News (CBS Interactive). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  25. ↑ Jack Dorsey Tells David Kirkpatrick How It Felt to Be Ousted from Twitter and Discusses His Big New Idea: Square. ‘’Vanity Fair’’. March 3, 2011.
  26. ↑ "Jack Dorsey Officially Returns to Twitter". Mashable. March 28, 2011.
  27. ↑ Wagner, Mitch (June 24, 2008). "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: Improved Uptime Is Top Priority". InformationWeek (United Business ...Media). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Wagner, Mitch (June 24, 2008). "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Talks About Its Business Model". InformationWeek (United Business Media). Retrieved November 5, 2008.
  29. ↑ "Square". Square. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  30. ↑ Jessi Hempel. Jack Dorsey: The man with two brains. ‘’Fortune’’. June 1, 2011.
  31. ↑ Pollock, Jennifer (June 30, 2011). "CH+D Office Space: Square in San Francisco's Chronicle Building". California Home + Design. Retrieved September 19, 2011.
  32. ↑ "Square opens new headquarters in San Francisco, announces plans for expanded offices in New York and Kitchener-Waterloo" (Press release). Square, Inc. October 7, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  33. ↑ Shontell, Alyssa (October 3, 2012). "THE DIGITAL 100: The World's Most Valuable Private Tech Companies". Business Insider. Retrieved October 4, 2012.
  34. ↑ Strugatz, Rachel (16 January 2014). "Jack Dorsey Looks to Simplify Commerce With Square". WWD. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  35. ↑ Lara Logan, correspondent. Tom Anderson, producer (March 17, 2013). The Innovator: Jack Dorsey (13:14 running time). 60 Minutes: CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 18, 2013. More than one of |authors= and |last= specified (help)
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Tapper, Jake and Pham, Sherisse (March 21, 2013). "Jack Dorsey on his desire to be mayor of New York City, Steve Jobs, and being a bachelor". CNN (Turner Broadcasting). Retrieved March 25, 2013.
  37. ↑ "MAYOR BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF NYC BIGAPPS 2.0 COMPETITION". NYC.gov. 31 March 2011. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  38. ↑ Anthony Ha (24 December 2013). "Jack Dorsey Joins Disney’s Board Of Directors". TechCrunch. AOL Inc. Retrieved 25 December 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jack Dorsey.

Video

Business positions
Preceded by
Company founded		 Twitter CEO
2006-2008 		Succeeded by
Evan Williams