Get to know Jack Dorsey
You might have seen Twitter’s CEO’s name, Jack Dorsey, floating around this week in Australian news. His other company, U.S. payments giant, Square, announced plans to acquire the Australian buy now, pay later company Afterpay. The move is the biggest merger and acquisition in Australian history. Let’s get to know Jack Dorsey.
On March 21, 2006, Dorsey posted the first tweet.
Dorsey and his co-workers Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams together founded Twitter in 2006, during which time Dorsey worked as CEO. In an interview Dorsey said that the idea for Twitter came from the rise of everyone having mobile phones and text messaging and “suddenly [I] could update where I was, what I'm doing, where I'm going, how I feel. And then it would go out to the entire world". Dorsey was then moved from the CEO role in 2008, instead becoming chairman of the board. He later resumed the role of CEO back in 2015.
Square
Dorsey co-founded a company in 2010 called Square. It’s a financial service and digital payment company that is known for its square-shaped device that attaches to Apple or Android devices and acts as a mini card reader. Dorsey is the CEO of the company and is one of few people to run two multi billion-dollar companies at the same time.
He’s controversial, and often dubbed as a not-typical-CEO
Dorsey has notably said that he does not care about “looking bad” and follows some unconventional practices. From starting the day with an ice-cold bath to eating one meal per weekday as part of an intermittent fasting regime, Dorsey does not live the typical CEO life.
He is also a vocal Bitcoin advocate (check out his Twitter bio), often tweeting about the topic. Dorsey enabled users of Square’s Cash App to purchase Bitcoin in 2017. The app is one of the leading places for consumers to buy Bitcoin in the U.S. Recently Dorsey was on a panel with Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, talking about the cryptocurrency.