Jack Dorsey: The Person Who Reshaped Global Communication

Author: Thejaswini M A; Compiled by: Block unicorn

Introduction

The conference room was silent. In October 2008, Jack Dorsey looked around the table at the Twitter board members, trying to find an ally, but there was not a single one.

Evan Williams did not want to look him in the eye. Venture capitalists spoke cautiously about "operational challenges" and "management issues."

The platform often crashes. Employees complain that he leaves early to attend yoga classes. The board has lost confidence in him.

Fred Wilson announced the decision: they want a new leadership. Williams will take over as CEO. Dorsey can continue as chairman, but his day-to-day control of Twitter has ended.

He did not argue. At 31, he had never managed a company of this scale, and the pressure was suffocating. But as he walked out of the building that housed his creativity, he felt a pang. This platform stemmed from his teenage obsession with scheduling communication. Now, this vision belonged to someone else.

Being fired from the company he founded taught him lessons that business school never covered. For Dorsey, this was just the beginning.

Obtaining Work Through Hacking Techniques

Jack Patrick Dorsey grew up in a working-class Catholic family in Missouri. His father manufactured mass spectrometers, and his mother ran a café. As a young child, Jack suffered from a speech impediment and spent a long time indoors, where he was exposed to computers and communication systems.

Dorsey wrote scheduling software. Real-world taxi companies use his code to coordinate their fleets and solve practical problems for their actual business.

His obsession is not accidental. Dorsey has realized the tremendous impact that brief, frequent updates can have on coordinating complex systems. Emergency dispatchers do not waste time, as clear communication can save lives. What if the same efficiency could improve everyday communication?

At Bishop DuBourg High School, he worked part-time as a fashion model. After school, he would hack into systems, not to destroy them, but to understand how they work.

A hacking incident that changed his life occurred at the age of 16. The Dispatch Management Services company set up a website but did not list any contact information. When Dorsey discovered a security vulnerability, he did not exploit it; instead, he emailed the company’s president to explain the vulnerability and how to fix it.

Dorsey took this opportunity to start a conversation.

Chairman Greg Kidd decided to hire him within a week. A teenager from Missouri is now working for a logistics company in Manhattan, learning how to coordinate transportation and resources in real time.

At the age of 14, the scheduling software he developed was actually used by a taxi company. At 18, he dropped out of New York University just one semester away from graduation because he had too many ideas in his mind and couldn't bear to wait for the diploma to arrive.

What if people could send short status updates to their friends, just like dispatchers update their location and activities? What if everyone in the network could know each other's current dynamics without having to make phone calls or send long emails?

The platform sweeping the globe

In 2000, Dorsey moved to California and founded a company focused on scheduling couriers and emergency services online. This venture failed. Over the next five years, he refined his ideas as a freelance programmer, waiting for the right opportunity.

This opportunity arose in 2006 when he joined the struggling podcast company Odeo. During a brainstorming session, Dorsey proposed his concept of status updates. He described it as a platform that combined the broadcast characteristics of blogs with the immediacy of instant messaging.

Dorsey collaborated with Noah Glass and Biz Stone to create the first prototype of Twitter in two weeks. The name "twttr" follows the five-character SMS code format, inspired by Flickr.

On March 21, 2006, at 9:50 PM, Dorsey posted the first tweet: "just setting up my twttr."

These 24 characters have changed the way millions of people communicate.

Twitter's breakthrough moment came at the South by Southwest music festival in 2007. Attendees used the service to coordinate parties and share real-time updates. During the festival, the daily tweet volume skyrocketed from 20,000 to 60,000. Jack Dorsey's intuition about status updates during his teenage years proved to be correct.

But success brought challenges he was not prepared to face. During his tenure as CEO from 2007 to 2008, Dorsey struggled to meet Twitter's operational demands. The service frequently crashed. Employees complained about his management style. Reports indicated that he would leave work early to attend yoga classes and fashion design courses.

The board has lost patience.

October 2008 came like Judgment Day. They fired him from his own creation. Co-founder Evan Williams took over. Dorsey retained the title of chairman, but everyone knew the truth. The genius young man who conceived Twitter was deemed unfit to manage it.

This lesson is painful, but it also wakes him up. Dorsey can create products that people love, but he has not been able to build an organization that can scale.

He did not back down, but chose to transform.

His former boss, Jim McKel), recently lost a glass art transaction due to his inability to accept credit card payments. Millions of small business owners, like McKelvey, feel incredibly frustrated at being unable to access merchant services.

Their solution is a small, square device that plugs into the headphone jack of a smartphone. Anyone can accept credit card payments anywhere. The first Square card reader cost only $10, turning each phone into a point of sale system.

Square embodies the same philosophy as Twitter: eliminating barriers and democratizing access. If Twitter gave everyone a broadcasting platform, then Square empowers every entrepreneur with the payment processing capabilities that only large companies could possess.

The company was officially launched in 2010.

This time, Dorsey learned lessons from Twitter. He established a stronger operational system, hired experienced managers, and focused on sustainable growth rather than viral spread.

By 2015, Twitter was struggling under new leadership. User growth stagnated, and stock prices fell. Competitors like Facebook and Instagram attracted more attention.

The board has demanded that Dorsey return to the position of CEO, but has put forth an unprecedented condition: he must continue to serve as CEO of Square. Critics question whether anyone can effectively manage two large publicly traded companies simultaneously.

He has offices in both companies, scheduling his daily itinerary down to the minute, relying on the leadership team for strategic direction.

This arrangement worked. Twitter stabilized, Square continued to grow, and went public in November 2015. Both companies benefited from Dorsey's design acumen and his ability to simplify and seek straightforward solutions.

The fired CEO learned to become a leader.

Building the Currency of the Future

In the process of rebuilding his career in Dorsey, he discovered Bitcoin. This cryptocurrency embodies the principles he learned in the scheduling system: decentralization, peer-to-peer communication, and the elimination of intermediaries.

"Bitcoin has changed everything," he declared in 2018. If he wasn't managing Twitter and Square, he would be fully dedicated to Bitcoin.

He is not satisfied with just verbal support. In 2020, Square invested $50 million to purchase Bitcoin, and then added another $170 million. Through Square's Cash App, he enabled millions of people who had never owned cryptocurrency to access Bitcoin.

Dorsey also founded Spiral, a department that funds open-source Bitcoin development. Unlike most profit-oriented corporate crypto projects, Spiral's mission is altruistic: to improve Bitcoin's infrastructure for everyone.

However, at the time of his second tenure as CEO of Twitter, the platform's scrutiny has become increasingly strict. The 2016 election revealed how foreign forces exploited Twitter to spread misinformation. Congressional hearings and advertiser boycotts have also become commonplace.

After the 2020 election, challenges reached their peak. Twitter began labeling controversial tweets and ultimately suspended high-profile accounts, including that of President Trump, following the Capitol riots on January 6.

Musk defended these decisions, arguing that they were necessary, but he also acknowledged their impact. "I believe this is the right decision for Twitter," he wrote regarding the suspension of Trump's account. "But I also think it's important to examine the broader implications of this action on global public discourse."

This experience reinforced his growing belief that centralized platforms hold too much power. He began funding research into decentralized alternatives, including the Twitter-backed Bluesky project, which develops an open social media protocol.

On November 29, 2021, Dorsey resigned as CEO of Twitter for the second time. His resignation letter explained the reason: "I have decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders."

Unlike the first departure, this exit is voluntary and planned. He has prepared his successor, Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, and believes that Twitter needs leadership free from the burdens of the founder era.

Less than a year later, Elon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion and began implementing his vision. Dorsey retained 2.4% of the shares but has made almost no public comments on these changes.

After leaving Twitter, Dorsey became a proponent of decentralization. He donated 14 bitcoins to support Nostr, a decentralized social networking protocol that does not require central servers or corporate control.

At Block, he doubled down on Bitcoin projects. The company has developed 3-nanometer Bitcoin mining chips and launched Bitkey, a self-custody wallet designed for mainstream users. Block's mining hardware features a modular design, with an expected lifespan of ten years, as opposed to the industry standard of 3 to 5 years.

Today, Dorsey stands at the intersection of technology and ideology. Through Block, he is building financial infrastructure for a post-traditional banking world. Through Bitcoin advocacy and Nostr funding, he is promoting alternatives to existing internet platforms.

At the core is his belief that individuals should have control over their financial and digital lives. Bitcoin eliminates dependence on banks and governments. Nostr eliminates dependence on platform companies. Self-custody wallets eliminate dependence on exchanges.

These are expressions of political philosophy that emphasize individual sovereignty rather than institutional control.

Dorsey remains focused on the future, just as he dreamed of real-time city maps. His current projects reflect his belief that the most important internet infrastructure is still under construction.

The police scanner that initially inspired him still influences his thoughts on communication. The best information is concise, clear, and actionable.

They tell you where someone is and where they are going.

Everything else is noise.

Dorsey's achievements are not limited to Twitter or Block. He demonstrates that complex systems can be simplified without losing functionality.

The scanner is still crackling. He is still listening. He is still mapping everything that is happening in real time.

This concludes the introduction to Jack Dorsey.