It’s nice to see people in a power position in the valley give up their time for charitable causes. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, recently offered up his time for probably the most expensive cup of coffee ever, to benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The current top bid is a whopping $605K, and the auction ends in two days if you’ve got the cash to donate. → Read More
Square has announced the hiring of a new Business Lead, Francoise Brougher, and she comes straight from spending eight years at Google. For the past three years, Brougher held the title of SMB Global Sales and Operations for the online advertising unit at Google. Although Square has grown its footprint considerably, in part because of its high-profile partnership with Starbucks, the company has… → Read More
He might not be bulletproof, but simultaneously running Twitter and Square qualifies Jack Dorsey as a superhero. This week a new unauthorized comic book about him was released, called “Jack Dorsey: Co-Founder of Twitter #1″. Check out these page scans posted by Comic Book Resources that preview his quest to recover stolen quantum networking technology. → Read More
Square, the startup disrupting the payments industry with its easy smartphone/tablet card-reader, has today launched Square Directory. It is a web-based search engine that allows users to find new merchants and restaurants based on their location, and the particular items they may be hunting at the time. The service already has over 200,000 businesses listed in the directory.
Square Directory… → Read More
When Twitter struck a deal to move to San Francisco’s mid-Market neighborhood, the tradeoff seemed pretty straightforward: In exchange for relocating to an economically challenged area, the company would get significant tax breaks. But Jack Dorsey said at the Techonomy Detroit conference today that there’s another benefit.
Dorsey, who is product lead at Twitter and founder and CEO at Square… → Read More
It’s pretty interesting to learn about how a company got its name, and every company has a story. We learned about Square’s today, and it was almost called “Squirrel”, according to founder Jack Dorsey and Square’s Creative Director, Robert Anderson. MG Siegler broke this three years ago, but here are the full details, in tweets, fittingly. → Read More
“We probably need to change the name of this conference,” Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey said today from the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. As much as we love this conference, the media — and everyone else for that matter — tends to overuse the word “disrupt” when talking about the potential change inherent in technology. It tends to be used in conjunction with “fluff”… → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2012 in San Francisco, Jack Dorsey took the stage to give us a 10-minute run-through of how he got to where he is today. I’m not sure that there’s enough time in the day to accurately portray the adventures Dorsey have experienced, but he certainly tried. → Read More
People don’t give technology enough credit as an art form — the specifics of infrastructure and hard science behind it ultimately overshadow its more inchoate creativity.
But the cliched trope of a socially awkward engineer coding in a hole somewhere is on its way out. Instagram is a mass product used to cover news events, Twitter is a celebrity playground and you can use Square to pay at… → Read More
There isn’t a CEO in the world who wouldn’t do well to try and emulate the late Steve Jobs in some way, shape or form. He was a visionary, and took Apple from a relatively low point to being one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. But trying to be him, or just like him, would be a vain endeavor.
An hilarious tipster brought to our attention that Jack Dorsey, a Twitter… → Read More
The payments space was even further shaken up last night, with the news that Square will take over all U.S. credit and debit card transactions for Starbucks. And those who use the Pay with Square app (iPhone and Android) will be able to pay for their sugary caffeinated drinks with nothing more than their phone. This morning in New York, a handful of journalists sat down with Square CEO Jack Dorsey… → Read More
It might not be the funding announcement we’ve been hearing rumors about, but today Square announced that they’ve partnered with Starbucks.
Beginning this fall, Square will begin processing all U.S. credit and debit card transactions at participating Starbucks stores across their 7,000 locations. Pay with Square users will be able to find a nearby Starbucks in the Square Directory from their… → Read More
The legend goes something like this: as a child, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s father would relentlessly hound him to “Get better”, so Jack eventually banned the phrase from being tweeted. Go ahead and try it, the tweet won’t go through. But the legend? It’s a hoax.
Here’s the real story… → Read More
Earlier this fine Sunday afternoon, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey took the stage at the DLD Conference, the annual pre-Davos meeting of minds held in Munich, Germany.
In an interview with not one but two journalists (Holger Schmidt from FOCUS Magazine and Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick), Dorsey talked a great deal about Twitter and a little bit about Square.
Dorsey didn’t reveal… → Read More
Square is still working on raising its $50 million-or-so next round of venture capital, and we’ve heard from several sources why it’s taking so long. It seems Square is no longer content to be in the $1 billion valuation club, which is admittedly getting a little crowded. I mean, once they’ve let Spotify in, they’ll let any hot app in, right?
Square is now angling for a whopping $2 billion… → Read More
Dick Costolo just wrapped up his keynote at All Things D. It wasn’t livestreamed, so for those of you who missed out, there were some interesting tidbits about user numbers, defense of Twitter’s stewardship of its developer community and some hints about the ad business.
Rather than any newsy bombshells, my biggest takeaway was what I’ve written before about Twitter’s third CEO in its short… → Read More
That was fast. Just like that Square passed $3 million in transactions processed, on a Saturday no less, according to a Tweet an hour ago by CEO Jack Dorsey.
The mobile payments startup is seeing an acceleration in transaction volume. It took about 10 months from its public launch for Square to reach $1 million a day in payments going through its mobile app. Getting to $2 million a day only… → Read More
This is the post I haven’t wanted to write for weeks. This is the post no one wants to write. No one wants to say Twitter is in trouble. That’s like shooting your best friend’s dog.
But I’m increasingly convinced that Twitter is operationally in trouble, for a lot of the same reasons that Fortune’s Jessi Hempel outlines in her cover today, and other reasons I’ve been hearing about for months. → Read More
The deal is finally almost done for the realignment of the television business. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner gets $30 million for the final three years of the series, with no cuts of talent and only a partial concession to AMC’s insistence on cutting 2 minutes of the show for more ads. This “concession” is to keep the first and last shows at 47 minutes and then go to 45 for the rest of the 13… → Read More
I’m at Columbia Business School tonight to talk with Jack Dorsey, a founder of both Twitter and Square. As I wrote earlier today:
It’s really more of an interview, with questions from the students and the audience at large. If you have a question for Dorsey, leave one in comments below or Tweet them at me during the event @erickschonfeld. I’ll be asking Dorsey about his new role at Twitter… → Read More
Jack Dorsey is in demand these days. The inventor of Twitter is now back as head of product, while still acting as CEO of his other startup, Square. Tonight, Dorsey and I will guest lecture together at Rachel Sterne’s Columbia Business School course on Social Media And Entrepreneurship. Sterne is also New York City’s chief digital officer, so it should be a social media extravaganza. We’ll be… → Read More
Today’s return of Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey to the company he created to once again head up its product efforts raises the question of what will co-founder Evan Williams be doing now. When he handed over the CEO reigns to Dick Costolo last October, the company said he was going to focus more on the product side of things. Dorsey is now the head of product and the two co-founders have a… → Read More
Jack Dorsey is back at Twitter in a big way. He just tweeted that he is now taking on the lead product role at Twitter, the company he co-founded and where he’s remained as chairman. To reflect his new operating role, his title will now be executive chairman. Dorsey will remain CEO of Square.
News that Dorsey was negotiating with Twitter for an expanded role came out last week. There was some… → Read More
A recent Vanity Fair profile of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ends with an anecdote about an inspiring speech he gave to the assembled staff at his new mobile payments startup, Square. The internal “TownSquare” meeting took place on his 34th birthday last November, and it is a remarkable statement by a young CEO who is finding his voice and trying to impart it onto his company. Fortunately… → Read More
While everyone is going gaga over Lady Gaga at Twitter, it’s the gradual return of another creative genius to 795 Folsom Street that’s got die hard Twitter fans all hot and bothered. Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, as first reported by Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson, is currently in talks with Twitter management to expand his role. We’ve confirmed independently that this is… → Read More
Did you know it was exactly five years ago today that Jack Dorsey and a few other team members working at Odeo first started to work on what would become Twitter? How do I know? Dorsey is tweeting about it right now.
While programming began five years ago, it wasn’t until eight days later, on March 21, 2006, that Dorsey sent the famous first (non-automated) tweet: “inviting coworkers”. → Read More
Jack Dorsey gets the Vanity Fair treatment in a long profile written by David Kirkpatrick (author of The Facebook Effect). It goes over familiar ground for anyone who’s been following Dorsey—his obsession with maps and cities, the founding of Twitter, his ouster, and more recently new company Square (which is doing just fine, thank you). But Kirkpatrick pulls it all together into a cohesive… → Read More
Twitter Chairman and Square founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose last night to talk about Dorsey’s unique position of being responsible for two technology startups based on the idea of simplicity: Twitter and Square. Watching this interview you realize that Dorsey’s accomplishments have little to do with luck, and more with his focus on creating the purest products by throwing away any… → Read More
While much of Silicon Valley spent the last two weeks skiing or otherwise reveling in all that money made this year from acquisitions, partial liquidations and secondary deals, Square founder Jack Dorsey was apparently hard at work. TechCrunch has learned that Square is in the process of closing a large round of funding. The company is being valued, we hear from multiple sources, at somewhere… → Read More
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