American web developer and businessman, creator of Twitter and CEO"Square", mobile payment companies. In 2008, Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Technological Institute(Massachusetts Institute of Technology), placed his name on "TR35", a list of 35 innovators from around the world under the age of 35.

Dorsey was born November 19, 1976 in St. Louis, Missouri (St. Louis, Missouri). He became interested in routing and dispatching at the age of 13. Some of the open source software he developed at the time is still used by many taxi companies today. He graduated private school Bishop DuBourg High School and attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology before transferring to New York University, where he first got the idea for Twitter. Dorsey later moved to California (California), where for some time he worked as a programmer.

In 2000, Dorsey opened his own company in Oakland, through which he could call a courier, taxi and emergency services through the Internet. In July 2000, thanks to his experience as a programmer, and partly inspired by LiveJournal, a then-growing blog, and probably "AOL Instant Messenger", Dorsey came up with the idea of ​​an Internet communication service based on real-time short messages.

As he became familiar with the implementation of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered how easily the status of a user of the software could be shared among his friends. He went to the company "Odeo", which was then interested in text messages. Dorsey and Biz Stone developed the Twitter prototype in about two weeks. The promising idea attracted many users to Odeo, and Evan Williams, who left Google after selling Pyra Labs and Blogger, offered an investment.

Dorsey, Stone and Noah Glass co-founded Obvious, which later became Twitter, Inc. As chief executive officer, Dorsey brought the project to the attention of a number of venture capitalists who backed the company. On October 16, 2008, Williams assumed the role of CEO and Dorsey became chairman of the board. On March 28, 2011, Dorsey returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman.

In May 2010, it was released mobile device to accept plastic cards on a platform developed by Dorsey called "Square". In December 2009, the company had 10 employees, and in June 2011 there were already more than 100. The company's office is located in San Francisco (San Francisco), and the value of "Square" is estimated at about 3.2 billion dollars.

If I have calculated correctly, then today, my friends, unofficial twitter day, also known as TwitterDay . The holiday can be said to be national, because it falls on the 140th day of the year as a sign of the 140-character limit on posting notes on the same Twitter. In connection with this event, I decided today to publish a post about the founder of Twitter - Jack Dorsey (Jack Dorsey).

It seemed like he just wanted to know what his friends were up to. It is from this simple desire and arose big business, one of the most successful projects in all modern world- Twitter. Its founder, Jack Dorsey, to this day says that his main goal was to communicate with friends, and not billions of fans and crazy fees.

Jack Dorsey: childhood and youth

Jack was born into a fairly ordinary and unremarkable family in November 1976 in St. Louis (Missouri, USA). From the early childhood he was fond of computers and dreamed of creating a huge map that would indicate the location and occupation of all New Yorkers in the present tense. The family traveled a lot and in any city where Jack did not stop, he immediately rushed for local card and could wander around the neighborhood for days on end, referring to the paper route.

Dorsey was treated well at school, but no one imagined that his passion for computers, which was not at all fanatical, would lead to the creation of the world-famous Twitter.

It all started quite simply and boringly: a teenager wrote computer programs for different kind services (fire, ambulance, taxi), which helped workers choose the most appropriate and fastest way to move around the city.

One fine day, when Dorsey was only 14 years old, he heard about how the drivers of one of the services were talking on the radio, talking about what they were doing. this moment busy and where they are. Surely this was the first impetus for the development of modern Twitter.

Important for young Jack was the work of a courier. The boy watched the couriers as if spellbound, before he was fascinated by their work. He was not interested in the very fact of handing over a letter or parcel, but in how smoothly and accurately the couriers choose their route of movement. Jack even decided to work as a bicycle courier himself, enlisting his brother in the work. However, soon the need for such a "hobby" disappeared by itself.

A sip adulthood Jack Dorsey

In 1991, Jack tried to get a summer internship at the computer company Mira Digital Publishing. The director of the company was very busy at the moment when Jack came to get settled and asked him to wait no more than a minute. So several hours passed. With such willpower and incredible perseverance, Jack proved to all employees of the company that he was worth something. The result is quite simple: in just a week, from a simple summer intern, he turned into a real boss of adult and experienced computer scientists.

After graduating from school, Jack enters Science and Technology University of his own state, but literally in a couple of years he can’t stand it and runs away to New York. It is here that the young genius dreams of making his dream come true: not only to create the most convenient map with the movements of taxis and couriers, but also to make each "point worker" talk about his occupation right at this moment.

The next step - a device in a fairly large company, Dispatch Management Services Corp, was also not without light humor. Jack hacked into the company's security system, found email address chief executive officer and began to write him detailed instructions and advice on how to secure the firm and prevent such intrusion from outside.

In fact, the whole idea threatened Dorsey with a prison term, but the company's employees appreciated the humor and talent of the young computer scientist. By the way, here Jack learned about new system short messages in real time, thanks to which it was possible to find out what this or that courier is doing at the moment.

For several years, Jack Dorsey has been developing ambulance software and helped promote the new dNet.com project. But unfortunately, this program crashed and for five whole years young computer genius left without a job. And in order not to die of hunger and somehow survive, he became a freelancer and even tried himself as a massage therapist. Who would have thought).

Thanks to complete freedom, for five years, Dorsey was able to fully study and understand projects called AOL Instant Messenger (similar to the Russian "ICQ") and LiveJournal (LJ). He noted for himself that both of these systems allow officials to talk about their actions in real time. Then Jack decided that simple people are also entitled to it. No sooner said than done. The young man was able to sketch out a program, as they say, on “toilet” paper, but now run it in real life cost a lot of money, which was not. Therefore, he decided to start small - gave people computer program, which allowed sending one letter to several recipients at once: RIM 850.

After some time, Jack was unrealistically lucky - as soon as he got a job at Odeo, he immediately received a new task: to come up with grandiose project to pull the company out of the financial crisis. Then Twitter was invented.

Twitter literally means "twitter". This is not difficult to guess just by looking at the logo - a small bird.

Twitter - start

The first entry on Twitter appeared on March 21, 2006 (this is the official birthday of the system). Jack then wrote: “Setting up my Twitter.” People were able to try the system as early as June of that year.

The network was received with a bang, but still no one could fully believe that it could bring big money. The head of Odeo once said that Twitter is a very interesting, but completely useless thing, comparable only to ice cream.

Fortunately, Jack did not take too close to heart the first reviews of his offspring. Almost all of them said that the program is useless, stupid and has no right to life. It is at this point that Odeo runs out of money and can no longer fund Twitter. But there was not very poor and influential person, who saw an interesting idea in Twitter. He gave the first half a million dollars to further development. The benefactor - Fred Wilson, became not only the main financial sponsor, but also a real consultant for the promotion and promotion of the project. Largely thanks to him, Twitter became what it is today.

Twitter today

Every day Twitter becomes more and more popular network and according to modern statistics, every month Twitter is visited by about 150 million unique visitors.

Now Jack Dorsey, the main "father" of modern Twitter, is on the list of the 400 richest people in the world, and his fortune is estimated at about $ 1.1 billion. And it all started with the fact that he just wanted to know what his friends were doing).

Good luck friends, success!

p.s. Don't forget to join me on this network.

Good afternoon, readers of my blog. Today you are presented with another article from the series “Business Rules: Tips from Millionaires” and its hero is a young, successful and extraordinary businessman - Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey belongs to the category of businessmen who have significantly changed the world over the past 10 years, this is the category of Internet billionaires who have united hundreds of millions of users all over the planet with their projects. I have previously analyzed advice from Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, talked about the thoughts of the creators of Google and Amazon, and today the turn has come to Dorsey, the founder of Twittera.

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Success doesn't come by chance

Dorsey, like thousands of other millionaires around the world, knows that success never comes by accident. And all the stories about not doing anything and suddenly a fortune fell on their heads are either a lie or a lack of desire to disclose real reasons your success.
I will say that you have to work, work hard and work long, if you want to achieve quality new level so that your business can provide not only you, but also your parents, relatives, give dozens or even hundreds of other people the opportunity to earn money.

Communication generates interesting thoughts

“I try to follow everything that is discussed in my company. It may seem surprising, but I devote 90% of my working time to communicating with employees who are not my direct reports. This makes it possible to get their opinion, to get a basis for reflection and analysis,” says Jack Dorsey in an interview with the American business channel.
This is right, because you must always be open to other ideas, you must be able to listen and analyze the thoughts of your colleagues, partners or subordinates. Remember that you should not put yourself above others, be simpler, more open and incredible solutions to the tasks set will miraculously come into your life.

Business Secrets: Consistency and Discipline

Dorsey once said - "I love consistency and discipline, because this is what any company with great ambitions should be built on." Now, as I build my business, looking at how friends and acquaintances do business, I understand even more the importance of consistency and discipline. If everything is clear for you, everything is planned, you know what you are going to do today and what result you should get, then the work will be done with maximum efficiency and much faster.
Remember the most important thing - you need to start with yourself. You can not demand discipline from partners or subordinates if you yourself are a fan of violating the approved plan. This can bring a disruptive to the company.

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Have a weekly schedule

Analyzing the speeches and statements of Jack Dorsey, I came across one very interesting detail. It has a rather thematic weekly schedule, a kind of plan in which each day has its own function. This allows you to concentrate exclusively on one task, to do it efficiently and on time. It will not be possible to reschedule for tomorrow, because you already know that tomorrow is another task, so you have to build a day in such a way that you can do everything. As for me, it is a very interesting model.
By the way, here's what Jack himself says:
“Every day I have a certain theme. Decide on Monday managerial problems. On Tuesday I sort out questions regarding products, technology and design. The medium is marketing and communication. Thursday is meeting day. As a rule, I communicate with developers and partners. On Friday I develop programs of corporate ethics and culture. Saturday is a well-deserved rest, but on Sunday I develop company development strategies and conduct important interviews.”

Making the complex simple is the goal

Social media has indeed greatly simplified what used to be incredibly difficult. Now you can communicate with a person being in different parts of the globe, you can exchange information in seconds.
Dorsey is also a supporter of the need to create a product that can greatly simplify a person's life. Only in this case can he become world famous and useful.
If you are creating an Internet project, then think about how it will help the user, why it is worth choosing your site, what is its feature.

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Don't rely on luck alone

One of the most powerful qualities of an entrepreneur that you must develop in yourself is not to rely on luck, but to learn to recognize successful situations.
Jack Dorsey, from an interview with Forbes magazine
Relying on luck is, at the very least, stupid and imprudent. You have to work, develop the company and simultaneously develop yourself. Successful opportunities always come into our lives, you just have to be able to see them, use them in time and get the maximum benefit from this situation.

The Great Future of Jack Dorsey

As I said, Jack Dorsey belongs to the category of entrepreneurs who, already at a young age, created and brought to a worthy level companies that changed the whole world. I am sure that he has a great future, and soon we will see new ones, revolutionary projects that will make people's lives even easier.
Jack gives not so much advice for young businessmen. Perhaps because of his youth and lack of desire to be conceited. Well, I'm sure we'll hear more about this brilliant entrepreneur, and I'll just add to my list with great and motivating tips from the founder of Twitter.

big business or successful startup can be born from the most unexpected idea. The Twitter project arose from the desire of an inquisitive programmer, Jack Dorsey, to constantly be aware of what his comrades were doing. In this regard, a microblogging service appeared on the Internet, which now influences the fate of the world. And Dorsey and his friends were able to raise tens of millions of dollars of investment in a company whose original purpose was not to make a profit.

Success Story, Biography of Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on November 19, 1976. As a teenager, he loved computers and could sit for hours studying one of the first versions of IBM. He really wanted to draw a “living” map of New York, along which numerous small dots would run - couriers, ambulances, police crews, fire brigades, taxis ... Passion for cities was instilled in Jack by the constant travel of his father Tim Dorsey, who was as a medical device engineer and received many lucrative offers all over America. The Dorsey family managed to change several areas in their native St. Louis, as well as settle briefly in Denver (Colorado). And wherever Jack went, he immediately bought a local roadmap and wandered around the city until late at night. His mother believes that this was a kind of protection from new people.

Childhood and youth Jack Dorsey

The first thing people remember about Jack is a quiet boy. He stuttered a lot and preferred to remain silent. Young Dorsey dealt with it on his own. Desperate to be cured with the help of doctors, he deliberately began to participate in school competitions in oratory. And after several unsuccessful attempts, he spoke. Later, this "offensive" way of solving problems helped him survive in difficult conditions New York and San Francisco.

As told in home school Jack Bishop DuBourg High School in St. Louis (more than one generation of Dorsey graduated from it), he was an ordinary American student: he played for the tennis team, loved drawing and art history, wrote for school newspaper and, of course, was in a computer club. Moreover, the latter was a great hobby for him, but not a disease, as for the same Bill Gates or any other novice hacker and programmer. But he certainly had talent.

According to Dorsey himself, he would have been an excellent urban planner, but his childhood passion for maps took over. First, he tried to convert road atlases into digital format, and then, using an electronic bulletin board (Bulletin Board System is the prototype of the Internet), he placed moving objects on his map. It turned out to be a kind of real city, but in miniature. However, this is all, as they say, fun. First real experience as a programmer, Jack got in the same St. Louis when he was 14 years old. The boy wrote programs for taxi dispatchers and fire departments. According to one version, the idea of ​​Twitter came to him just at one of the moments when he once more I heard the drivers talking to each other about where they were and what they were doing. According to another source, the roots of the idea stretch back to Jack's earlier infatuation.

« I found the work of couriers magical he says. - I liked to track the physical path of information from one point in a city to another, or even around the world. Someone took a package, put it in a bag, went somewhere, and then, pulling it out of the bag, passed it to someone else».

But not only the consistency in the actions of people delighted the boy. In the course of his own childhood research into exactly how the courier system works, Jack discovered that there was also a parallel digital transfer of information that involved only coordinating efforts. He liked the idea of ​​a digital representation of the movements around the city, and the concept of the work of couriers as a physical manifestation of these movements, so much that he decided to implement his own courier services on a bicycle. To do this, he put his own brother behind the wheel, and, sitting on the trunk, he began to mark the path of their common course. He really enjoyed writing software and visualizing his work, although after a while Jack realized that there was no need for bike messengers in St. Louis.

Intern, massage therapist, programmer…

In the summer of 1991, he got an internship at Mira Digital Publishing. Her boss, Jim McKilvey, was caught by Dorsey during the delivery of a very important project. Promise to talk in a minute, Jim immediately forgot and continued to work. An hour passed, another, the young talent stood in the same place and patiently waited. Persistence took its toll. A few weeks later, teenager Jack Dorsey was in fact running a team of thirty-year-old computer scientists. Employees of the company once joked with the boss, asking what his position is now, to which Jim McKilvey replied: "Assistant to the summer trainee."

After leaving his homeland of St. Louis, Jack Dorsey entered the Missouri University of Science and Technology, but two years later fled to New York, the city he had dreamed of since childhood. Passion for urbanism ceased to be just entertainment. Now Jack dreamed of making the moving dots on the map communicate with each other and tell where they are now and what they are doing. Precisely to the question: “What’s happening?” - and modern Twitter users answer. But in the late nineties, the embodiment of the idea was dispatch programs for courier services and taxis.

To the profile company Dispatch Management Services Corp. Dorsey settled down, too, rather peculiarly. By hacking into the firm's website security system, Jack obtained the direct email address of DMSC top manager Greg Kidd and began sending him letters with advice on how to patch the hole Dorsey had created himself. Despite the potential threat of arrest, Jack liked the company and was hired.

There he was told about the still nascent short message system (SMS), as well as about new program, thanks to which the dispatcher could view in real time on the map all the actions and movements of couriers.

Dorsey spent several years building software for yellow cabs and ambulances, and was instrumental in launching Greg Kidd's new dispatch company, dNet.com. However, after the so-called "dot-com" crisis in 2000, the project failed, and Dorsey remained unemployed. For almost five years he "freelanced" and even went to massage therapy courses.

Break in career growth allowed Jack to immerse himself in the latest news of the Internet - AOL Instant Messenger (an instant messaging program like the Russian "ICQ") and LiveJournal (in other words, LiveJournal). At this time it dawned on him. Why not make LiveJournal more alive? On the virtual map The Dorseys talked about their occupations in city services, but not ordinary residents. But they, too, could send their statuses to friends without being tied to a home computer. True, it was much more difficult to technically implement this idea than on a piece of paper. The only thing Jack could do was to write a program that allows you to send one letter to several recipients at once for the BlackBerry prototype - RIM 850. But this contraption cost a lot of money, and the birth of Twitter was postponed.

Dorsey took a job at Odeo, an internet start-up company. She was in San Francisco in the famous Silicon Valley. It was also led by a talented programmer and businessman Evan Williams, who previously worked in the team of Sergey Brin at Google. In 2006, Odeo began to experience financial, and most importantly, ideological difficulties. Evan suggested that his team split into groups and come up with some new products. And then one day, sitting on the playground and eating Mexican fast food, Jack Dorsey talked about his idea for a service that would allow you to exchange statuses on the Internet. The missing technology, SMS, has just matured. Interestingly, while Russian and European teenagers have been sending text messages to each other for a long time, in the USA, the country high technology, have just begun to master this uncomplicated service.

Well, Jack suggested using SMS to send messages to special program, which would then forward them to the entire list of friends (hence the limit in the number of valid characters - 140). In just two weeks, Dorsey and his friend wrote the code and came up with a name for the product - Twitter, which means "twitter" in English. The logo - a blue bird - also became relevant.

First Twitter

The first entry in the Twitter microblogging service appeared on March 21, 2006. Jack Dorsey wrote on his account: "Setting up my twttr." And the first public version of the service appeared in June 2006.

At the beginning, the Americans were twisting at the temple and saying that Twitter was complete nonsense. Even Evan Williams once compared the project to ice cream: they say, just as tasty and just as useless.

So, no one could have imagined that Twitter would become a serious means of communication. After all, the first responses about the service were reduced to the opinion: "Cool, but pointless." There were also more vicious reviews. So, for example, one of the commentators reacted very negatively, calling the program "the most stupid of all he has ever met!". Despite such skepticism, the service gained momentum. And this despite the fact that at the time of the rise in popularity, Jack and his friends were in for an unexpected surprise.

Odeo, which has so far supported the initiatives of young programmers, has run out of money. Less than a month after founding Twitter, Jack had to think about raising capital and how to survive as a separate company. But it didn't take long to worry! " We haven't digested what happened yet. Dorsey recalls, when we received a note inviting us to breakfast. We met with its author in one of the hotels in San Francisco. There was a rather short but productive conversation. Returning to the office 30 minutes after breakfast, we found a scanned image in the mailbox: a check for half a million dollars».

Fred Wilson offered himself not only as a sponsor, but also as a strategic consultant for Twitter. According to the stories of the guys, despite the total employment, he always found time for advice. Moreover, his strategy was focused not only on the big picture, but also on the smallest features of the use of the Twitter program by active users. " By the way, which is no less important, Fred was just that every day. Obviously, that's why he loved our brainchild so much.', suggests Jack.

A new sponsor came to the site with a lot of questions and requests. This made it possible to clarify the thoughts of the young founders both around the product and around the company as a whole. In the end, Fred provided Twitter with more than just money: he helped drive the product in a successful direction.

Further development of Twitter

However, with the development of smartphones, it has become more convenient to send messages via the Internet than via SMS (Today, according to the Financial Times, Twitter has 150 million unique visitors from around the world per month.).

The novelty began to gain wide popularity after the South by Southwest film festival in 2007, where the company's employees installed several screens that broadcast messages from users of the service in real time. Thanks to this move, the creators of Twitter managed to increase the number of daily messages posted on Twitter from 20,000 to 60,000. A year later, in May 2008, the billionth message appeared on Twitter. The company began to develop, and its capitalization as a result reached 1.5 billion dollars.

Ability to share short messages along with millions of people has turned Twitter into a dangerous political weapon. In Iran, users gathered a huge crowd for protests in a few days. Something similar happened in Moldova, Guatemala and Uganda. And the US State Department even invited Jack Dorsey to come to Iraq in order to teach the local prime minister how to use the program: they say that the Iraqis complained that they had no idea what was going on in their government. In a word, it was a success.

The creators of Google openly declare that their goal is to make the world a better place. The creators of Twitter have no such ambitions, but recognize that the ability to share information freely can have an impact on global scale. Twitter has proven this time and time again. active role both in the case of the terrorist attack in Mumbai and in the election scandal in Iran. There, after the announcement of Ahmadinejad's victory, Iranian dissidents used the service to contact outside world, to make global community intervene in what is happening in the country. The Iran topic, which received all the messages with the IranElections tag, quickly became one of the most popular.

By the way, former adviser U.S. Security Commissioner Mark Pfeiffel launched an initiative last July to nominate Dorsey and the other creators of Twitter for Nobel Prize world for the fact that during the unrest in Iran, news from that country came uninterrupted, although the work of foreign correspondents in it was very difficult.

And here is what Jack Dorsey himself said about this - “ It seems to me that the most important thing is that people used technology, ordinary people on the street reported what was happening to them. And the most important result of this was that the world faced a number of problems that we had not even considered before. And this information was received not from the traditional media, to which we are accustomed, but first-hand, from people who experienced these events that developed before their eyes. In some cases, people were even punished for their actions. It really inspired us, first of all.

Secondly, a discussion was born about how we can better use these technologies in the future to create more of this kind of discussion so that people can learn first hand about what is happening in the world..»

Smelling the money, Evan Williams spun off Twitter from Odeo and talked the board of directors into removing CEO Jack Dorsey. In October 2008, Dorsey was removed as CEO of Twitter and ceased vigorous activity in company.

Buying into Evan's richer experience in business management, the company's management listened to him, however, putting Dorsey at the head of the board of directors - and then only because the founder had a large stake in Twitter (according to some reports, worth about $100 million).

« Evan Williams classical type from Silicon Valley, says Steve Blank, a professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford University. - Inspired, talented startup with good ideas but unable to implement a cutting-edge business strategy once things start to pick up».

In 2010, Evan Williams could not stand it and handed over his post to another top manager of Twitter Inc. — to Dick Costolo, who subsequently made the decision to bring back the Dorseys. This was due to the development of new products in the market.

Upon taking office in March 2011, Dorsey initiated the firing of four product managers who played key role in the implementation of the service strategy under the leadership of the co-founders of the company Evan Williams and Biz Stone.

The return to Twitter was marked by another increase in Twitter users, which was facilitated by various events, information about which appeared on Twitter earlier than in other sources. Also, the return of Jack Dorsey to Twitter was marked by the appearance of the Russian interface, which could not but affect the increase in the Russian-speaking audience of this service.

Jack Dorsey - It seems to me that Twitter will undoubtedly find a place in Russia. More and more Russians get to know Twitter, we get more and more reviews, these reviews are translated into English. And we tailor our product to the features Russian culture. I think Twitter has great potential. Not only in the sense that users can tell each other about what is happening in Russia, but also tell foreigners about everyday life in Russia and how this everyday life can be combined with the life of the USA, Canada, Europe, Africa, the whole world.»

Now Jack Dorsey combines his new position with the development of his startup Square, a mobile payment service.

Not for profit

The New York Times I recently pointed out venomously that Twitter is known as a start-up with a lot of noise, but little profit. However, the company received a takeover bid from Facebook and rejected it. Because for three years in a row, all the efforts of the creators of Twitter were really aimed not at making a profit, but at growing the user base and improving the service. They were so passionate about it that analysts could not understand whether the company would even make money? And if so, how will she do it?

So why did Jack Dorsey never manage to make a huge fortune on Twitter? Is it all about his character and inexperience? Some experts believe that the problem is that he was way ahead of his time. According to this theory, Twitter is one of the first products of the so-called web 2.0. Its essence is this. Users receive a site at their disposal, and its functions are determined independently. With its help, you can correspond, talk about a delicious lunch, engage in self-promotion and self-promotion of your business, inform about cataclysms faster than traditional media, and also gather huge masses of people. For comparison: Facebook and Google, on the contrary, are extremely limited in their toolkit, which makes user behavior more predictable, and the resources themselves convenient for making money through advertising. And finally, Twitter is practically impersonal. As Jack Dorsey says, “You are not dealing with the person himself, as in social networks, but with what he writes.”

And here is what the same Stanford University professor Steve Blank said a few years ago about Jackie Dorsey - “ In general, he was not particularly interested in money: modesty brought up from childhood affected. Already world famous, Jack mostly lives in rented apartments and spends a lot of time using his big name to raise funds for various charitable foundations».

In October 2009, Twitter was able to make its first profit. According to BusinessWeek, he earned $25 million by signing contracts with Google and Microsoft. The heart of the deal: Twitter posts are made available to Google and Bing search engines. And on January 8, 2010, Reuters reported that, judging by the open vacancies on Twitter, the company seriously intends to think about getting a profit. She is looking for four specialists for a monetization project. In this regard, there is an assumption that the company plans to sell analytical services or sell accounts to businesses, while guaranteeing users that fraudsters are not hiding behind the nickname of a well-known company. By the way, at the end of last year, Stone spoke about the possibility of introducing paid services. For example, blog promotion. Another way to make money is advertising. But apart from Japan, there are no banner ads on Twitter yet.

Cards, money, phone

In the spring of 2009, rumors spread around the market. It was rumored that Jack Dorsey took on a new project that had nothing to do with Twitter. And closer to the fall, details began to leak. It turned out that the project was called Squirrel ("Squirrel"). So strange name, according to the same legend, was explained by the fact that a miniature gadget for accepting "street" payments using bank cards looked like an acorn. However, the product presented at the end of the year looked very different: a small cube with a pin on one of the faces. As a result, the device had to be called Square, a cube.

Then investors were worried about the question: how exactly did Jack Dorsey and his new company intend to make money on Square, because another brainchild of Dorsey - social network Twitter - has not yet learned how to generate a stable cash flow.

The developer said that Square is a specialized card reader that is inserted into a cell phone through the headphone jack, present in almost all mobile phones - a cubic device measuring approximately 2.5 x 2.5 x 3.0 cm. Inside is a magnetic stripe reader for bank cards that allows you to get information about bank card placed in it. The user's mobile phone is equipped with special software that receives incoming data from the reader and saves payment information. The principle of operation of Square resembles the principle of operation of a cash terminal equipped with a card reader.

To conduct a transaction, the application must obtain the user's fingerprint, this is done by two different ways: either through the multi-touch screen of the smartphone, or through the scanner on the Square itself.

« My goal was to create a device that would allow extremely simple and at the same time reliable organization of mobile payment systems. financial world You will be surprised how easy and fast it is to pay from your mobile phone. I know that many telecommunications and financial companies are looking for some small, cheap and innovative solutions for mobile payments. Look at modern economy- in Western countries up to 90% of settlements are carried out according to credit cards, but these cards are not accepted everywhere and not always. It is not comfortable”, - Jack Dorsey said at the presentation of his new brainchild in December 2009.

Square charges a fee for every transaction that goes through its system. According to Jack Dorsey, this fee is less than the percentage of plastic card companies or other payment providers. Although, according to the principle of operation of card systems, the seller, having received a payment through a plastic card company, gives it a percentage, and then gives a percentage to the Square service for using its “free” software. All convenience lies only in the fact that the seller's smartphone begins to play the role of a payment terminal.

Roilof Botha, an executive at Sequoia Capital (the company that invested $27.5 million in SQUARE), said in 2011 that they have been tracking the progress of Square's service over the past 18 months. However, he noted that in the United States, millions of small business firms currently do not accept plastic cards for payment. According to him, this gives Squre a huge potential client audience, and small businesses also receive analytical information on their transactions.

A 2012 estimate of Square's value was provided by PrivCo, a research firm that analyzes the financial data of private companies. PrivCo CEO Sam Hamedi remarked: “ Mobile startup Square recently received a $200 million investment. According to official figures, this company expects a minimum of 300 percent growth in revenues, compared with received in 2011 $ 42.5 million. The next round of investment has already increased the value of the company to $ 3.25 billion.(Square's main investor is Rizvi Traverse, an obscure investment company that also has interests in Playboy, Facebook, and Twitter.)

Just the other day, Starbucks invested $25 million in the Square payment system. And Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz got a seat on the company's board of directors. For Square, the investment is small, however, a partnership with the largest chain of coffee houses is more important than money - it will allow most Americans to accustom the new service to the new service.

Today, Jack Dorsey, thanks to the mobile payments startup Square, made the list of the 400 richest Americans for the first time (#392). Forbes magazine estimates his fortune at $1.1 billion.

« Expect what no one expects and be as unpredictable as possible". Newly minted billionaire Jack Dorsey keeps this quote from the story "Cruddy" by American writer Linda Barry in his notebook.

Dorsey works very hard. He spends eight hours on Twitter, and then he goes to the next block to work another eight hours at Square. Both of his projects are developing very rapidly and require full dedication from him! So how does Jack Dorsey manage to keep up with everything?

He has a minute-by-minute plan for the working day. Here is his methodology on how to work 16 hours a day.

« The only way to work in this mode is to be very disciplined and plan your work day »

Every day has a purpose:

1. Monday: Management meetings and work on "churn"
2. Tuesday: Work on the product components of the business
3. Wednesday: Marketing, positioning and growth
4. Thursday: Developers and partnerships
5. Friday: The company itself and its culture

Weekends, says Dorsey, are a little slower for him. On Saturday he walks, and on Sunday he pays attention feedback and reflections on the strategy of his companies.

« There are always distractions, but I quickly eliminate them and tell myself it's Tuesday, we're working on a product, I should focus on product meetings.».

Jack Dorsey lays out his simple approach to creating amazing ideas (video on English language and without subtitles):

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