Jack Dorsey’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Jack Dorsey is a computer programmer and internet entrepreneur from America. He is best known as the founder of Twitter and Square, a mobile payments company.

Early life and education

Dorsey was born on November 19, 1976, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Tim and Marcia Dorsey. He attended Bishop DuBourg High School in St. Louis.

He was fascinated by the world of computers and electronics at an early age – he was particularly interested in dispatch routing, the process of dispatching taxicabs, couriers, etc. to customers. Dorsey learned computer programming while at school and wrote open-source software for dispatch routing, which is still being used by some taxicab companies.

As a teenager, Dorsey regularly attended punk rock concerts, Wall Street Journal reported.

After finishing schooling, Dorsey attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and later transferred to New York University Tandon School of Engineering. He dropped out of the university and moved to Oakland, California in 2000 to build a dispatching business.

Technology business career

While working on dispatching, Dorsey came up with the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service. The idea, which later manifested into Twitter, was influenced by LiveJournal and AOL instant messenger. He pitched the idea to the executives at Odeo, a text messaging company based in Silicon Valley. The executives at Odeo – Biz Stone and Evan Williams – were impressed by the idea. Within two weeks, Dorsey built a prototype of Twitter, and impressed the investors at Odeo.

Twitter

• In 2006, Stone and Williams along with Noah Glass formed a company by name of Obvious, which later became Twitter. They bought Twitter domain name for $7,000. Dorsey was the CEO of the company. To look the part of a silicon valley CEO, Dorsey removed his nose ring.
• Dorsey was later pushed out of Twitter as the CEO because of his growing interests in other pursuits and hobbies such as yoga and fashion design. His frequent party appearances were not taken lightly by his colleagues. Evan Williams then became the company’s CEO and Dorsey maintained a “passive chairman role and silent board seat.”
• In March 2011, Dick Costolo replaced Williams as the CEO, and Dorsey returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman after. The event received widespread media coverage. Nick Bilton in his book Hathcing Twitter said, while founding Square, Dorsey went rogue and planted numerous media stories about how he’d founded Twitter, and was the sole visionary behind it. Dorsey was instrumental in getting Williams fired, the book reports.
• On June 10, 2015, Costolo resigned from Twitter effective July 1, 2015. Dorsey was named the CEO of the company on October 5, 2015, after serving as the interim CEO for few months during the void.

Square

• In 2009, Dorsey with Jim McKelvey founded Square, a mobile payment company that allows individuals and merchants to accept debit and credit cards on their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet.
• The service was launched in 2010. The highly successful venture is traded as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange since November 2015.
• Square received angel investments from Marissa Mayer, Kevin Rose, Biz Stone, Dennis Crowley, Shawn Fanning, MC Hammer, and Esther Dyson. Square has more than 1000 employees.

Personal life

• In around 2010, Dorsey dated Kate Greer, who lives in New York. Kate at one point was an intern of relationship columnist Julia Allison.
• In early 2013, Dorsey was spotted with English model Lily Cole.
• Dorsey’s net worth is estimated to be around $1.25bn, according to Forbes.