Jack Dorsey: “New York Will Have A Thriving Tech Community And We Will Help Build That”

Erick Schonfeld

Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the executive producer of DEMO. He is also a partner at bMuse, a product incubator in New York City. Schonfeld is the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily... → Learn More

Thursday, October 6th, 2011
Jack and Bloomberg

At a press conference with Mayor Bloomberg to celebrate the opening of Twitter’s New York City offices, co-founder Jack Dorsey gave the Big Apple his endorsement as a startup capital. “New York will have a thriving tech community and we will help build that,” he says.

Twitter already employs 30 to 40 people in New York City and its new office can accomodate 100 people. At Twitter’s current rate of hiring in the New York City, that should hold it for at least a year. Dorsey points out that New York City has more Twitter users than any other city and the state has the second largest number of Twitter developers.

Twitter’s increased presence in the city will contribute to the budding startup culture. Dorsey notes the importance of mentorship and support networks to building a startup ecosystem. “With every new tech startup, the desire to get together and talk about the challenges” goes up, he says.

New York City also excites Dorsey as a petri dish to experiment with mobile products especially. “New Yorkers live in a very different way because of the density,” he points out. “I am most excited about . . . opportunities to explore the density of the city.”


Company: Twitter
Website: twitter.com
Launch Date: March 21, 2006
Funding: $1.16B

Created in 2006, Twitter is a global real-time communications platform with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com, more than 200 million monthly active users around the world. We see a billion tweets every 2.5 days on every conceivable topic. World leaders, major athletes, star performers, news organizations and entertainment outlets are among the millions of active Twitter accounts through which users can truly get the pulse of the planet.

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Jack Dorsey is the creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack’s early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work, Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it...

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