Jack Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur widely known as a co-founder and CEO of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. 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. For 2012, The Wall Street Journal gave him the “Innovator of the Year Award” for technology.
Early life
Dorsey was born and raised in St. Louis, the son of Marcia (Smith) and Tim Dorsey. He is of part Italian descent. His father worked for a company that developed mass spectrometers and his mother was a homemaker. He was raised Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati. He went to Catholic high school, at Bishop DuBourg High School.
By age fourteen, 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. Dorsey attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology before subsequently transferring to New York University, but he dropped out. He first came up with the idea that became Twitter at New York University. While working on dispatching as a programmer, he later moved to California.
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. His other projects and ideas at this time included networks of medical devices and a “frictionless service market”. In July 2000, building on dispatching and inspired in part by LiveJournal and by AOL Instant Messenger, he had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.
When he first saw implementations of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered whether the software’s user status output could be shared among friends easily. He approached Odeo, which at the time happened to be interested in text messaging. Dorsey and Biz Stone decided that SMS text suited the status message idea, and built a prototype of Twitter in about two weeks. The idea attracted many users at Odeo and investment from Evan Williams who had left Google after selling Pyra Labs and Blogger.
Summary
| Jack Dorsey | |
|---|---|
|
Dorsey at a London cafe in November, 2014
|
|
| Born | November 19, 1976 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Residence | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Missouri University of Science and Technology (transferred) New York University Tandon School of Engineering (dropped out) |
| Occupation | CEO of Square, Inc. and Twitter, |
| Net worth |  US$1.66 billion (May 2017) |
| Board member of |
|
Despite the fact that he is less than 40 years of age, Jack Dorsey is a billionaire who has made his fortune building and investing in technology companies.
You probably know Jack Dorsey best as the co-founder and co-creator of the ubiquitous Twitter, which went public in the fall of 2013. Twitter is used by hundreds of millions of people across the globe and has revolutionized the way that people communicate with each other. The situations in Syria and other countries illustrate the importance of Twitter as a news dissemination service in this day and age. Stories that never would have been reported have been ignited by a single Tweet, and this has empowered people all over the world.
Jack Dorsey co-founded Obvious Corporation along with Biz Stone and Noah Glass, and this company would eventually spin off Twitter, Inc., which owns the Twitter business and all of its intellectual property. While Dorsey is currently deeply involved with other businesses, he still finds time to serve as Executive Chairman of Twitter.
Dorsey, unwilling to rest on his laurels and forthcoming riches, founded Square in the spring of 2010. Square is a company that provides a small device that attaches to mobile devices, and this device allows merchants to easily accept debit and credit card payments. So, for instance, a hot dog vendor can apply for a merchant account, attach a Square device to their phone and accept debit and credit card payments.
Square recently completed a $200 million round of funding that values the company at a reported $3.25 billion. According to reports, Dorsey reportedly owns between 25-30% of the company, which significantly adds to his net worth total as well. Square is reportedly planning an initial public offering in 2014.
Source: