| Net Worth: | $10 Billion |
| Date of Birth: | Nov 19, 1976 (44 years old) |
| Gender: | Male |
| Height: | 5 ft 10 in (1.8 m) |
| Profession: | Software Architect, Businessperson, Entrepreneur |
| Nationality: | United States of America |
| Last Updated: | 2020 |
Jack Dorsey Net Worth and salary: Jack Dorsey is an American web developer and businessman who has a net worth of $10 billion. Though he may be most widely known as the co-founder and co-creator of Twitter, interestingly the majority of Jack Dorsey’s net worth actually comes from his stake in the mobile payments company Square. As of this writing, Jack Dorsey owns around 2% of Twitter’s outstanding shares. As of this writing, that 2% stake is worth just $800 million. As of this writing he owns around 43 million shares of Square. As of this writing, those shares are worth around $9 billion. He also controls around $1 billion worth of cash and other assets.
Early Life: Jack Dorsey was born on November 19, 1976 in St. Louis, Missouri. He became interested in computers and communications at an early age and began programming while still a student at Bishop DuBourg High School, in St. Louis. He was fascinated by the technological challenge of coordinating taxi drivers, delivery vans and other fleets of vehicles that needed to remain in constant, real-time contact with one another. When he was 15, Dorsey wrote dispatch software that is still used by some taxicab companies today.
Success: When Twitter was originally launched, it was ridiculed by some critics as a tool for the shallow and self-centered to broadcast the minutiae of their lives to the universe. In its early days, the site also suffered from frequent service outages. But as celebrities and CEOs alike began ‘tweeting’, Twitter was no longer the brunt of so many jokes. Suddenly the head of the “microblogging” movement, Twitter became a powerful platform for U.S. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain as a method for updating their supporters while on the campaign trail. Dorsey went on to become an investor in the social networking company Foursquare and launched a new venture, Square, which allows people to receive credit card payments through a tiny device plugged into their mobile phone or computer. In 2008, he was named by the MIT Technology Review TR35, as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal called Jack the “Innovator of the Year”. Dorsey joined the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company on December 24, 2013.
$1 Billion Donation
Up until April 2020, Jack owned roughly 60 million shares of mobile payments company Square. In April 2020, those 60 million shares were worth $3.6 billion. In April 2020 Jack announced he was moving $1 billion worth of those shares into an LLC he launched called Start Small which he said would focus on COVID-19 relief, women’s health, education and Universal Basic Income. At the time, that $1 billion represented 28% of his total wealth, which meant he had previously been worth $3.57 billion the day before he made the announcement. At the same point his Twitter shares were worth “just” $530 million at that time.
That imbalance in wealth has caused Jack to receive criticism from Twitter investors who don’t think he spends enough time actually performing the job of CEO. He is reportedly not a regular presence at Twitter’s main corporate headquarters in San Francisco. That absence was especially true in 2019 when he made it a goal to visit at least 30 of Twitter’s global offices while also spending 10-days at a silent mediation retreat in Myanmar.
On April 7, 2020, Jack made the following announcement (via Twitter, obviously): “I’m moving $1 billion of my Square equity (around 28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to find global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education and UBI [Universal Basic Income]. It will operate transparently…“
With the announcement he immediately made a $100,000 donation to America’s Food Fund.
By December 2020 Start Small had already given away $274 million and still held 15.2 million shares of Square. At that time, those 15.2 million shares were worth $3.12 billion, so the value of his donation had actually tripled!
Real Estate: In August 2018 Jack paid $4.22m million for a home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. He listed the home for sale in August 2019, finding a buyer two months later who paid $4.6 million.
His primary residence since 2012 is a large home in San Francisco which he bought for $10 million. In 2017 he paid $22 million for the house next door. The sellers bought that house in 1997 for just $2.85 million. When in San Francisco, Dorsey is known to walk roughly 5 miles to work every day.