Background

Ethnicity: Jack Dorsey is of English, Irish, and Italian descent.

Jack Dorsey was born on November 19, 1976, in St. Louis, Missouri, the United States, to Marcia Smith and Tim Dorsey. His father was an engineer of medical equipment and worked for a company that developed mass spectrometers. As a result of his father’s job which required the family to move frequently from one place to another, young Jack developed a love for maps. Jack grew up alongside his brothers Andrew and Dannie Dorsey.

Education

Jack Dorsey began programming while attending Bishop DuBourg High School in St. Louis, Missouri. He developed an early interest in computers and was a member of his school’s computer club. He also spent considerable time studying the available model of IBM computers. He was known to be a quiet boy as he suffered from stuttering. Jack was determined to overcome this challenge and participated in a variety of oratory competitions and was finally able to speak normally.

His childhood fascination with maps developed into a serious hobby in his teenage. He became interested in the challenges of coordinating the taxicabs, delivery vans, ambulances, etc. and created software programs for taxi dispatching and firefighting services when he was just 15. When he wasn't checking out specialty electronics stores or running a fantasy football league for his friends, Dorsey frequently attended punk-rock concerts.

Like many of his fellow tech billionaires, Dorsey never graduated college. He briefly attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology and transferred to New York University before calling it quits.

Career

Jack Dorsey started working as a programmer and moved to Oakland, California in 2000 in search of better career prospects. Also in 2000 he first considered using text and instant messaging (based on the principles of dispatch software) as a way of keeping in touch with friends. Dorsey approached a now-defunct Silicon Valley company called Odeo to pitch the concept. Meanwhile, his company failed and Dorsey struggled for the next few years. He made his living by freelancing and even went to massage therapy courses. However, he never forgot his dream of creating the short message service he had envisioned.

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted the world's first tweet: "just setting up my twttr." Dorsey was named the company's chief executive officer. He removed his nose ring in an attempt to look the part of a mature Silicon Valley executive, though he kept his boyish, mop-like haircut and abstract, forearm-length tattoo whose shape represented, among other things, the human clavicle bone. The company grew rapidly and within five years of its founding, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day.

Twitter was initially derided by some as a tool for the shallow and self-centered to broadcast the minutiae of their lives to the universe. Late-night comedy host Conan O'Brien even featured a segment called "Twitter Tracker" that mocked users of the service. 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 United States Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008, as a method for updating their supporters while on the campaign trail.

In 2009, Dorsey teamed up with fellow entrepreneur and computer science engineer Jim McKelvey to form Square Inc. Primarily started as a mobile payments company, Square eventually branched into financial and merchant services as well. It launched in 2010 and by 2012 had more than two million users. Square initially was available only in North America, but it expanded to overseas markets in 2013 when its services became available in Japan.

In November 2013, Dorsey saw his personal fortune grow tremendously thanks to Twitter's initial public offering. The company's stock had a starting share price of $26, but the price quickly rose to $45 during its first day of trading. Within hours, the value of Dorsey's approximately 23.4 million shares made him a billionaire.

Nowadays, almost 85% of Twitter’s revenue comes from online advertising on its site. Twitter offers three main ways for a company or an individual to advertise on its website: by promoting a tweet that will appear in users’ timelines, promoting a whole account, or promoting a trend.

Achievements

• 

  Jack Dorsey was a pioneer in establishing a microblogging service. 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 United States Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain as a method for updating their supporters while on the campaign trail.
  
  In 2008, Dorsey was named by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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". As of July 2020, Jack Dorsey has a net worth of $6.3 Billion and admitted by Forbes as one of the richest billionaires on the planet.

Works

More photos

• design

  • Twitter

    2006

Religion

Jack Dorsey was raised Catholic. His uncle Dan Dorsey, a Catholic priest in Cincinnati.

Politics

Jack Dorsey has contributed to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang.

Views

In 2016, Dorsey gave one-third of his Twitter shares to employees. Gradually expanding his philanthropic efforts, Dorsey contributed to the #TeamTrees climate change initiative in October 2019 by funding the planting of 150,000 trees. In 2020, Dorsey announced that he was forming a new charity fund that would help in global relief efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic. He said that he was putting an estimated 28% of his total wealth, or $1 billion, into relief efforts for the global coronavirus pandemic.

Quotations: "Don't avoid eye contact and don't be late."

"My goal is to simplify complexity."

"Meet customers where they are; question how to make the tools customers use more valuable."

"Amazing what people make up based on what they choose to see."

"Pick a movement, pick a revolution, and join it."

"Great companies don't just have one founding moment. They have many founding moments."

"Build what you want to see in the world."

"You don't have to start from scratch to have a massive impact on the world."

"Everything we do is about getting people to be more open, more creative, more courageous."

"Make every detail perfect, and limit the number of details to perfect."

Personality

Jack Dorsey is an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and web developers. As a person, he is very optimistic and believes in human potential and democratic society. He has said that all his ventures have the same goal, he wants to create such innovative ideas that help society work efficiently and in a humane manner. Jack Dorsey is a great admirer of cities and architecture. In one of his interviews, he said his favorite activity is strolling in urban areas. He often meanders on the streets of New York and San Francisco.

Dorsey is a big fan of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He once praised Bloomberg as a "guiding light" for tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Although he currently lives in San Francisco, Dorsey once told Vanity Fair that he loves the Big Apple, saying just thinking about it feels like "a rush of energy." Jack Dorsey first moved to Manhattan when he was 19. He aspires to be the city's mayor someday.

Dorsey a big believer in cryptocurrency, frequently tweeting about its virtues. In particular, Dorsey is a fan of Bitcoin, which he described in early 2019 as "resilient" and "principled." He told the Tales of the Crypt podcast in March that he was maxing out the $10,000 weekly spending limit on Square's Cash App buying up Bitcoin.

To inspire employees, Dorsey takes them to the Golden Gate Bridge. Specifically, he takes them to Lands End. He thinks good software should operate as a bridge. People shouldn't be thinking about the engineering behind it. They should think of it as functional and simple. "We see the bridge like this perfect intersection between art and engineering. It has pure utility, in that people commute on it every single day," he says. "When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away."

As a kid, Jack Dorsey did not watch television a lot instead, he preferred to read books. His favorite genre in books is fiction and he recalls that he was so fond of reading that he even used to take his books with him even when he went to watch football games.

Interests

• reading

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Elon Musk

• Politicians

  Michael Bloomberg, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang

• Writers

  Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali by Edwin F. Bryant, The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

• Sport & Clubs

  football

• Music & Bands

  Kendrick Lamar

Connections

Jack Dorsey has dated many women including British model Lily Cole and yoga instructor Kate Greer.

Father:

Tim Dorsey

Mother:

Marcia Smith

Brother:

Dannie Dorsey

Brother:

Andrew Dorsey

ex-girlfriend:

Lily Cole

ex-girlfriend:

Kate Greer

Acquaintance:

Barack Obama

In 2011, Dorsey got the chance to interview Barack Obama in the first Twitter Town Hall. Dorsey had to remind Obama to keep his replies under 140 characters, Twitter's limit at the time.

Acquaintance:

Elon Musk

Dorsey stated that Elon Musk is his favorite Twitter user. Dorsey said Musk's tweets are, "focused on solving existential problems and sharing his thinking openly."

He added that he enjoys all the "ups and downs" that come with Musk's sometimes unpredictable use of the site. Musk himself replied, tweeting his thanks and "Twitter rocks!" followed by a string of random emojis.

References

• Jack Dorsey on Twitter