Jack Dorsey

February 9, 2011
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Dorsey grew in St. Louis, Missouri, and by age 14, he had become interested in dispatch routing. Some of the open source software he created in the area of dispatch logistics is still used by taxicab companies. He went to high school at Bishop DuBourg High School, and attended Missouri University of Science and Technology before subsequently transferring to New York University, where he first conceived the idea for Twitter. While working on dispatching as a programmer he later moved to California.

In Oakland in 2000, Dorsey started his company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web. His other projects and ideas at this time included networks of medical devices and a "frictionless service market". In July 2000, building on dispatching and inspired in part by LiveJournal and possibly by AOL Instant Messenger, he had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.

Twitter, Inc.

 Dorsey, Stone and Williams co-founded Obvious which then spun off Twitter, Inc. As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of funding by the venture capitalists who back the company. On 16 October 2008 Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board.

As the service grew in popularity, Dorsey had to choose improving uptime as top priority, even over creating revenue – which, as of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn. Dorsey described the commercial use of Twitter and its API as two things that could lead to paid features. His three guiding principles, which are shared by the whole company and through its culture, are simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship.

Square, Inc.