Jack Dorsey: The person who reshaped global communication

Author: Thejaswini M A

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Preface

The conference room was silent. In October 2008, Jack Dorsey looked around the table at the members of Twitter’s board, trying to find an ally, but there was none.

Evan Williams was unwilling to meet his gaze. Venture capitalists spoke in cautious tones 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 new leadership. Williams will take over as CEO. Dorsey can continue to serve as chairman, but his daily control over Twitter has ended.

He didn’t 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 sharp pain. This platform originated from his obsession with scheduling communication during his teenage years. 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.

Obtain work through hacking techniques

Jack Patrick Dorsey grew up in a Catholic working-class family in Missouri. His father manufactured mass spectrometers, and his mother ran a café. As a 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 real business problems.

His obsession is not accidental. Dorsey has realized the tremendous role that short, frequent updates play in coordinating complex systems. Emergency dispatchers do not waste time because 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. A dispatch management services company established a website but did not list contact information. When Dorsey discovered a security vulnerability, he did not exploit it but instead emailed the company president, explaining the vulnerability and the method 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 taxi companies. By the age of 18, he dropped out of New York University just one semester away from graduation. He had too many ideas in his mind and could not bear to wait for the diploma to arrive.

What if people could send short status updates to friends, just like dispatchers update their locations and activities? What if you could know everyone’s current dynamics in the network without having to call or send long emails?

A platform that sweeps the globe

In 2000, Dorsey moved to California and founded a company focused on scheduling couriers and emergency services online. This venture failed. For the next five years, he worked as a freelance programmer, continually refining his ideas while 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 status update concept. He described it as a platform that combined the broadcasting 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” was inspired by Flickr and follows the five-character SMS code format.

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 occurred at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in 2007. Attendees used the service to coordinate parties and share real-time updates. During the festival, the daily tweet volume surged 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 crashed frequently. Employees complained about his management style. There were reports that he would leave work early to attend yoga classes and fashion design courses.

The board has lost patience.

October 2008 arrived 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 makes him sober. Dorsey can create products that people love, but he has not yet 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 the inability to accept credit card payments. Millions of small business owners, unable to access merchant services, feel incredibly frustrated just like McKelvey.

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 provided everyone with a broadcasting platform, then Square grants every entrepreneur the payment processing capabilities that only large companies could possess.

The company was officially launched in 2010.

This time, Dorsey has learned from Twitter’s lessons. He has established a more robust operating system, hired experienced managers, and focused on sustainable growth rather than viral spread.

By 2015, Twitter was in trouble under new leadership. User growth had stalled, and stock prices were falling. Competitors like Facebook and Instagram were attracting more attention.

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

He has offices in both companies and schedules his daily agenda 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 complexity and seek straightforward solutions.

The dismissed CEO learned to become a leader.

Creating the currency of the future

During the process of rebuilding his career at Dorsey, he discovered Bitcoin. This cryptocurrency embodies the principles he learned in scheduling systems: 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 subsequently added another $170 million. Through Square’s Cash App, he enabled millions of people who had never owned cryptocurrency to access Bitcoin.

Dorsey also established Spiral, a department that funds open-source Bitcoin development. Unlike most profit-driven 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 censorship became increasingly strict. The 2016 election revealed how foreign forces used Twitter to spread false information. Congressional hearings and advertiser boycotts also became commonplace.

After the 2020 election, challenges reached a peak. Twitter began labeling controversial tweets and ultimately suspended high-profile accounts, including President Trump, after the Capitol riot 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 banning of Trump’s account. “But I also think it is important to examine the broader implications of this action on global public discourse.”

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

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 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.

What runs through it 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 personal sovereignty rather than institutional control.

Dorsey remains focused on the future, just as he did when 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 extend beyond 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. See you in the next article.