Jack Dorsey, Twitter Co-Founder and CEO also Founder and CEO of Square

Teknologi.id - Jack Dorsey is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur who is co-founder and CEO of Twitter, and founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. Jack Dorsey was born in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) on November 19, 1976. While being a teenager, he loved computers and could spend hours studying one of the first versions of IBM. Jack’s first programming experience occurred when he was 14 years old. The boy wrote a few programs for taxi dispatching and firefighting services. Some people say that the idea of Twitter came to him just in one of those moments when he heard the drivers talking with each other about where they were and what they were doing. After leaving the native school Bishop du Bourg High School in St. Louis, Jack Dorsey entered the Missouri University of Science and Technology, but two years later moved to New York  City. His passion to urbanity was becoming something bigger than just a simple entertainment. For several years Dorsey has worked on the creation of software for taxi and ambulance cars in Dispatch Management Services Corp. In 2000, the project failed and Dorsey was left unemployed. He has been freelancing for almost five years and even went to massage therapy courses. Later, Dorsey was hired by Odeo Company, which specialized in the Internet startups. It was located in Silicon Valley (San Francisco), headed by the talented programmer and businessman Evan Williams.

The rise of Twitter and Square

In 2006, Odeo began to experience financial crisis, and most importantly, the ideological difficulties. Evan suggested his team to divide into a few groups and come up with several new products. Then, one day, sitting on the playground and eating Mexican fast food, Jack Dorsey told the world about the idea of service that would allow users to share their minds online. This is how SMS service was introduced to the U.S market. Jack proposed to use SMS in order to send messages by a special program that would then spread them around friends list (hence the limitation in the number of allowed characters  is 140). It took Dorsey and his friend two weeks to write a code and to come up with a name Twitter and the blue bird logo. The first entry in the microblogging service Twitter appeared on March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey wrote in his account: “just setting up my twttr”. The first public version of the service appeared in June 2006.

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

At the beginning, Americans were saying that Twitter is nonsense. Even Evan Williams once compared the project with an ice cream, saying that it’s also both tasty and equally useless. However, with the development of smartphones it has become easier to send messages via the Internet than via SMS. In May 2008, the billionth message was sent through Twitter. According to SimilarWeb analytics tool Twitter has 2.2 billion visits monthly. The company began to develop and as a result its market capitalization reached the point mark of $1.5 billion. In October 2008, Dorsey was moved from his post of the Executive Director of Twitter and stopped his active work in the company. But then on October 05, 2015, Jack Dorsey was assigned as the permanent CEO of Twitter. Today, Jack Dorsey combines his time at Twitter with the development of Square, Inc.  Dorsey explains that Square is a specialized reader, which is inserted into a mobile phone through the headphone jack. There is a magnetic stripe reader of bankcards inside, which allows obtaining information about the credit card being placed in it.

Work hard

One of Dorsey’s personality traits is that he works very hard. He spends eight hours at Twitter and then goes to the neighborhood street, in order to work another eight hours at Square. Both of his companies are rapidly evolving and require full commitment from him. So how does Jack Dorsey have enough time and energy to manage everything? He has per-minute working plan for every single day.

“The only way to work in 16 hour mode – is to be very disciplined and plan your working day” – Dorsey says.

Here’s Dorsey’s work schedule for every day:

• Monday: Meetings and running the company’s work;
• Tuesday: Work on the key product components;
• Wednesday : Marketing, positioning and growth;
• Thursday : Developers and partnerships;
• Friday: The company itself and its culture.

Weekends are running a little slower Dorsey says. On Saturday, for example, he walks, and on Sunday he focuses on feedbacks and strategy of his companies.

“There always those distracting events appear, but I quickly deal with them and say to myself – this Tuesday I only work on product meetings and I have to focus on them.”

As of October 20, 2015, Jack Dorsey has a net worth of $2.3 Billion and admitted by Forbes as one the richest billionaires on the planet. He is single. Jack considers his greatest achievement to date is building a company of people who love their work. (DWK)