Jack Dorsey: biography and personal life

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:45

Jack Dorsey is the famous creator of Twitter. American businessman, talented programmer, developer of new web services. Founder and CEO of mobile payment company Square. His name is featured on the TR35 list, which lists the names of 35 world-class young innovators.

Family

Jack Dorsey was born on 1976-19-11 in the USA, in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. His father Tim Dorsey worked as a medical equipment engineer. And traveled to work in many American cities. Jack's family changed several places of residence. His mother has always been a housewife.

Childhood

Few people can begin to nurture the will in the first grade, like Jack Dorsey. His biography has been interesting since childhood. Before school, Jack was a timid and modest child. And not because of the warehouse of character, but because he was shy, because he stuttered badly.

When Jack started school, he was among a lot of kids. And I was forced to make a choice: to overcome stuttering or withdraw into myself. Jack chose the first option. He signed up for public speaking classes. And in training he performed on stagejust like everyone else.

At first it turned out badly, but over time, he not only stopped stuttering, but also began to win victories in public speaking competitions. Jack Dorsey was very fond of drawing, art history, tennis. Contributed to the school newspaper.

Serious hobby

It was Jack's father who brought the very first IBM into the house when they first appeared on the free market. And he started attending computer courses since high school. Jack has always been attracted to city maps. He dreamed of creating a "live", where he could see how couriers, cars, etc. move. And thanks to the advent of computers, he opened up the possibilities for fulfilling his childhood dream.

First programming experiences

Initially, Jack tried to digitize conventional road atlases. Then he began to place moving objects on the electronic board. But Jack Dorsey got his first programming experience at the age of 14, in St. Louis. As a teenager, he was already able to write programs for special services and taxi dispatchers. Some of his designs are still in use today.

Jack found the work of couriers very interesting. He admired the coherence of people's actions. He began to look at how the courier system worked. As a result, I found out that there is a digital transfer of information. He began writing the first software while sitting on the trunk of a bicycle driven by his brother. But in St. Louis, such services were not in demand.

Start of laboractivities of Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey (photo can be seen in this article) graduated from a private school in 1995. Then he entered the University of Science and Technology in Missouri. He studied there for only two years. He dreamed of moving to New York. And one day I found a flaw in the security of the Dispatch Management Services web resource. Her office was in New York. Jack first hacked the company's web resource, and then contacted the manager and pointed out the vulnerability.

Greg Kidd, head of Dispatch Management Service, did not report to the police. On the contrary, he took advantage of Jack's talent and offered him a job. Dorsey immediately transferred to one of the universities in New York. For several years he combined work and study.

His responsibilities at the company included writing software for New York taxi and ambulance control rooms. During this time, he became Kidd's partner. And together they founded a new dispatch company, DNet. She was engaged in the delivery of orders from online stores. But the company went out of business in 2000.

The Birth of Twitter

Being unemployed, Jack went home and spent almost 5 years freelancing. Created new programs, tried himself in other professions. For example, as a massage therapist. But he wanted more. And when Kidd again called him to work in a new company, he immediately agreed.

This time he came to Greg in Oakland, where the former partner settled down for permanent residence. Jack first wrote software for a ferry company. But Dorsey's talent was noticed into Odeo. Jack was offered a job with the company and accepted. Its director was Evan Williams, an experienced programmer.

Jack Dorsey started working for Odeo. But she began to have difficulties with investors, who gradually withdrew their support. This prompted Jack to realize his childhood dream - the creation of a new web service. Evan was interested and gave the go-ahead for the development of the project.

After two weeks, the web service was ready and got its name Twitter. Initially, Jack was assisted in the work by the company's lead programmer Florian Webber. But after the creation of Twitter, other employees began to join the project.

Jack's web service became a separate company as a result. On March 21, 2006, he posted his first tweet. A few months later, the public version of the program was released.

Twitter history

After the launch of Twitter, the service began to gain more and more popularity. Evan Williams was well aware of the potential of the new project. And he convinced the board of directors to remove Jack from the leadership of the web service. Evan proposed his candidacy to replace him. Despite the fact that the founder of Twitter is Jack Dorsey.

Investors, given Williams' years of programming experience, agreed with Evan's arguments. In the fall of 2008, Jack was removed from the leadership of the twitter project. But he got a seat on the board of directors, as he owned a large stake in this web service. But Evan could not cope with the brainchild of Jack and in 2010 was replaced by another programmer -Dick Costolo. A year later, he returned leadership of Twitter to its creator, Jack Dorsey.

Square project

While the leaders of Twitter were changing, the Square project was created. Jack Dorsey took advantage of the forced break from working on the old service and concentrated on creating a new one, which he called Square. It was officially developed in 2009.

Initially, the idea of the project was to accept payments from bank cards using mobile devices. Jack created a mini-card reader that connected to smartphones through a headphone jack. And the mobile phone becomes a mini-terminal for accepting payments. Square earns a small percentage of every transaction.

Success exceeded all expectations. And Square is used by thousands of establishments. In 2012 alone, the company processed over $8 billion in payments. The popularity of the new server attracted investors to it. And the company's volumes continue to grow.

Millionaire Jack Dorsey: celebrity personal life

At the moment, Dorsey is considered one of the most enviable and rich suitors on the planet. He is still single. He devotes most of his time to his favorite work and new ideas. But information leaked to the media that Jack began dating Kate Grier, who is a member of the Conversations association.