The brilliant web developer, co-founder of Twitter, founder of payment platform Square, avid fashion designer, and yoga expert, Jack Dorsey has had a pretty wild and topsy-turvy career in silicon valley. An introverted and awkward-in-social-gatherings kind-of man, Dorsey eats only one meal a day, does not own a proper office cabin in his founder company Square as he prefers to roam about and work on his iPad, and has a penchant for the finer things in life. He is known to date models and is enchanted by urban high-rise buildings. There is more to his character, personality, and life than we can put together in one blog, but we will give it our best try. Let’s go in-depth into the life of this internet magnate.
Early Life and Education
Jack Dorsey, son of Tim and Marcia Dorsey, was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His mother was a homemaker, while his father worked for a spectrometer manufacturing company.
He attended Bishop DuBourg High School and later attended the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1995 for two years before transferring to New York University in 1997. He dropped out of the latter in the final semester to work on an idea that eventually became Twitter.
In his youth, he worked as a fashion model. He was also interested in dispatch routing and at the age of 14, developed software in dispatch logistics that is in use even today. In 2000, he started his company in Oakland to dispatch taxis, emergency services, and couriers from the web. At the same time, he got the idea to develop a web-based real-time status/short message communication service that came to be known as Twitter later on.
Twitter, Square
Dorsey wanted to share the Twitter software’s user status output amongst friends. He approached Odeo who got interested in the idea. Later, Dorsey and Biz Stone built a prototype of Twitter in two weeks. Evan Williams was the first investor and co-founder. Jack Dorsey continued to be the CEO of Twitter until 2008. He rejoined in 2015 but stepped down from the board in May 2022.
He was fired from Twitter in 2008 as he used to leave the office early to pursue his other interests in fashion design and yoga. The company went through major turmoil in his absence, but as soon as he joined back in 2015, the tables had begun to turn. In the meantime, his mobile payments company Square was doing very well. In fact, it ousted rival company PayPal in 2016.
Other Projects
A Twitter spin-off called Bluesky, which is creating a decentralized social networking protocol and app, was founded by Dorsey recently. The Governance Center of the Berggruen Institute has Dorsey on its board of directors. A chapter of Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of Titans features advice from Dorsey.
Dorsey is an outspoken supporter of Bitcoin and has spoken at events like “The B Word.” He has stated that he would be working on Bitcoin if he weren’t also working on Twitter and Square.
Awards and Recognitions
- He was recognized as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 in 2008 by the MIT Technology Review TR35.
- He received the “Innovator of the Year Award” for technology from The Wall Street Journal in 2012.
- Dorsey won the title of Founder of the Year at the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards in 2012, which were presented by TechCrunch.
- He was regarded by Forbes as the most eligible bachelor in the world in 2013.
- According to Fox Business, Dorsey was named the fourth worst CEO of 2016 due to his part-time involvement with Twitter, stagnant growth, and declining stock prices.
- Dorsey was ranked among the 20 worst CEOs in America in 2017 by 24/7 Wall St.
Interesting Tidbits from his Life
- He committed to donating $1 billion, or 28% of his net worth, to the Covid-19 relief effort and other charities in April 2020 in exchange for gifts of his Square stock.
- Square, which Dorsey and Jim McKelvey cofounded in 2009, was renamed Block in December 2021 after going public.
- Dorsey dabbled in fashion design and was a licensed masseuse before becoming interested in technology.
- Nearly one-third of Dorsey’s Twitter shares were distributed to staff members in 2016.
- Today, he is worth 4.4 billion dollars.
- Dorsey was obsessed with emergency dispatch communications as a kid. He was fascinated with the voices on the police scanner. “They’re always talking about where they’re going, what they’re doing, and where they currently are and that is where the idea for Twitter came,” Dorsey told the CBS program “60 Minutes.”
- He has big plans for himself and hopes to run for mayor of New York City someday.
- Twitter is a part of Dorsey’s morning routine. He wakes up to check the weather and world happenings on Twitter.
- As he was always impressed with the dispatch logistics, he hacked his way to his first job. He could not find any vacancies in any related job, so he found a bug in one of the dispatch companies in New York. He reported the bug in an email and was hired a week later.
- Around the time he was fired as Twitter’s CEO, Dorsey reportedly spoke with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. Dorsey turned down the offer from Zuckerberg, who at the time considered purchasing Twitter because there was no clear role for him to play.
Conclusion
Although known as the ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey feels that his payments platform Square will someday change the way people communicate as it speaks the language the world knows: Money. In an interview with 60 Minutes, he said, “it’s the one thing that touches every single person on this planet and at one point in their life they feel bad about it.” The man is an enigma and quite mysterious. He is not an open book, and at any point in his mind, there is some genius plan going about.
