22 Riveting Facts About Jack Dorsey for 2023

Jack Dorsey made headlines in November 2021 when he announced his resignation from Twitter, the company he founded and worked in as CEO for 15 years. 

A college dropout, Jack was incredibly inventive from a young age, coming up with software that’s still in use today. He co-founded Twitter when he was just 29 years old. However, he also enjoyed an abundance of hobbies—and that often got in the way.

Want to know more? Read along to learn some cool Jack Dorsey facts to get to know the man behind the tweet.

Some Compelling Facts About Jack Dorsey (Editor’s Choice)

• Jack Dorsey was born in 1976.
• His first tweet was on March 21, 2006.
• The concept of Twitter arose from Dorsey’s obsession with police scanners.
• He attended two universities and dropped out of both of them.
• Jack Dorsey is the 247th wealthiest person in the world.
• He co-founded Block Inc. with his former boss, Jim McKelvey.
• As a teen, he developed open-source dispatch software that is still in use today.
• He hacked his way into his first job.

The Biography of Jack Dorsey: A Wunderkind

A child of relatively humble beginnings, he struggled in his boyhood. Later on, Jack showed a keen interest in many fields, but his natural talents were more pronounced in some areas than others.

1. Jack Dorsey was born in 1976.

(Source: Britannica)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he is of half-Italian, half-Irish descent.

Jack’s father was involved in spectrometer development, his mother was a homemaker who also owned a coffee shop.

2. Jack Dorsey’s childhood was troubled due to a speech impediment.

(Source: RollingStone)

It was apparently that bad that he didn’t even want to speak to his family. He went to speech therapy for a couple of years and it got better over time but he was still afraid of talking. 

So what did young Jack do? He joined the speech team at his junior high school. Talk about facing your fears!

Nonetheless, he says he’s still relatively untalkative, and people often find communication with him exhausting.

3. He was raised Catholic.

(Source: St. Louis Today)

While he’s never talked much about religion, Jack Dorsey was raised in a Catholic family. What’s more, he went to Bishop DuBourg High School, a private Roman Catholic high school in his hometown. 

However, it’s not known if he still considers himself a Catholic today or if he’s developed different inclinations.

4. He attended two universities and dropped out of both of them.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Like many fellow tech entrepreneurs, Jack Dorsey’s education ended abruptly with him dropping out of college. Twice.

He initially enrolled at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in 1995 but moved to NYC and transferred to New York University in 1997.

Another two years later, just one semester shy from graduating, he dropped out again. Seems like two years was the absolute limit of his attention span. 

5. He was interested in botanical illustration.

(Source: CNBC)

In the early noughties, his attention was divided between several interests, including botanical illustration. Although Jack Dorsey had no background in the arts, he reportedly visited the Missouri Botanical garden to study a banyan tree.

He was also interested in massage therapy but soon abandoned that ambition because of the realization that in San Francisco “everyone was a massage therapist”.

6. He was also into fashion design.

(Source: CNBC)

This was a much more serious interest of his, to the point where he attended figure drawing classes and went to a fashion design course in the evenings after work as a Twitter CEO.

Becoming a fashion designer was apparently his exit strategy from Twitter and the tech field. He never got to use this strategy.

So far, at least.

The Career of Jack Dorsey: A Self-Made Billionaire

We’ll be honest with you—his story is not unlike that of many of his fellow tech billionaires. A college dropout, Jack Dorsey achieved much thanks to his entrepreneurial spirit and natural talent for developing software.

But that’s where the similarities end. For once, he seems to have a hard time staying in the same place doing the same thing for too long.

7. As a teen, he developed open-source dispatch software that is still in use today.

(Source: Biography)

He was 15 years old at the time, though he had been fascinated by maps and the logistics behind dispatching since much earlier. Two decades later, his software might not be as popular as Gmaps but Taxicab companies still use it a lot. 

8. He hacked his way into his first job.

(Source: VentureBeat)

Thought this was something that only happened in movies? Well, it isn’t.

A software enthusiast from a young age, Jack Dorsey wanted a job at a dispatch company in New York but he couldn’t find any contact information on its website. Instead of looking for a suitable opportunity elsewhere, he found a security loophole in the company’s web server and straight-up emailed the boss.

He got the job a week later. Guess it’s true—as long as you are motivated, anything is possible.

9. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was on March 21, 2006.

(Source: Twitter)

At exactly 10:50 pm, the co-founder of Twitter tweeted: “just setting up my twttr.” A most memorable quote, destined to one day appear in history books all over the world.

Fun fact: Twitter’s founder’s handle is just “@jack”. Good luck getting one like that now.

10. He co-founded Square (now Block) with his former boss, Jim McKelvey.

(Source: The Guardian)

Dorsey’s mother had a coffee shop that Jim would frequent with coworkers.

That’s how he first met his future business partner. Jack’s mother got him an interview at one of Jim’s companies, where he worked for three summers. He was so good at the job, Jim would call him “Jack the Genius.”

Years later, Dorsey got Jim to join him in his new company, Square.

11. Jack Dorsey has a net worth of $9.86 billion.

(Source: Bloomberg)

This makes him the 247th wealthiest person in the world.

He’s had some ups and downs, though. In 2018, his fortune reached $6.3 billion but plummeted threefold to $2.6 billion in April 2020 due to the pandemic’s effect on stock markets. In October 2021, Jack Dorsey’s net worth peaked at $14.9 billion but has declined since.

Fun fact: 88% of Dorsey’s wealth comes from his 11% stake in Block. His stake in Twitter is worth “only” $850 million. No wonder he chose to focus on the financial company.

12. Jack Dorsey has received two awards for the worst CEO of the year.

(Source: Entrepreneur’s Handbook)

He was ranked #4 in 2016 and #7 in 2017. Guess that’s an improvement?

Both publications listed his lack of commitment to Twitter as the main reason. As CEO of two prominent public companies, he couldn’t focus sufficiently on helping the social media platform out of stagnancy. This led to falling stock prices and sluggish growth, if any.

13. Jack Dorsey resigned as CEO of Twitter on November 29, 2021.

(Source: Inc)

Dorsey decided to leave rather abruptly amid criticism that he wasn’t taking good care of the company. 

He tweeted his entire resignation letter, in which he argued that the main problem of a founder-led company is that he is prone to become “a single point of failure.” He further claimed that “there aren’t many founders that choose their company over their own ego,” likely a jab at fellow CEOs of big tech companies.

14. Jack Dorsey sold an NFT for $2.9 million.

(Source: CNBC)

You’ve certainly heard of NFTs—they’re non-fungible tokens that serve as proof of ownership for digital goods. Since they are digital assets, they can be anything from images to movie clips. 

Jack’s NFT is a tweet. His very first tweet. Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi won the auction and now “owns” it—though it’ll continue to exist on Twitter for all to enjoy… for free. So what he really gets is more akin to a virtual autograph. Cool.

Dorsey then converted the sizable sum into ~50 Bitcoin and donated it to GiveDirectly, an East African charity aiding those who live in poverty in the region. 

The Jack Dorsey Lifestyle, or How to Combine Tech and Meditation

While his wealth can’t compare to that of Elon Musk’s or Jeff Bezos’, he’s still one of the world’s most affluent people. Yet, he walks to work.

An ambitious but eccentric man, Dorsey doesn’t do things the way his business partners or people in general expect him to.

15. He doesn’t have an office.

(Source: Business Insider)

Or a desk. Instead, he uses an iPad. 

He says going around the office makes him conscious of the fact that many employees are working there doing their best.

Want another one of our fun facts about Jack Dorsey? He worked up to 18 hours a day while leading both Twitter and Block.

16. He aspires to one day become mayor of New York.

(Source: VentureBeat)

He first moved to Manhattan when he was 19, and it appears to have found a permanent place in his heart.

As to why he didn’t go into politics from the get-go, he says he thought majoring in computer science would enable him to enact significant changes in the world more quickly than civil service would. Can’t deny that one.

17. He donated $350,000 to #TeamTrees in October 2019.

(Source: #TeamTrees)

This is one of our favorite Jack Dorsey facts.

#TeamTrees is a fundraiser organized by YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober. Its goal was to raise 20 million dollars before 2020 in order to plant 20 million trees.

In late 2019, multiple high-profile billionaires donated to the initiative, including Dorsey who helped plant 350,000 trees.

18. He finds being called a “nerd” insulting.

(Source: Financial Post)

We know this courtesy of Forbes, which referred to him as a ‘nerd’ in an article.

The then-leader of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was unhappy about the perpetuation of the stereotype that a programmer must be a nerd.

In all honesty, he’s got a point. Moreover, even if we were to assume most programmers were nerds, considering that he dabbles in the arts and has been into meditation for 20 years, it’s safe to say he isn’t your typical programmer. 

19. He planned to live in Africa for half a year.

(Source: New York Post) 

But later called that “a mistake.” This change of heart probably had to do with the emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020.

He went to several African countries, including Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, in late 2019 and later said he would like to experience life on the continent long-term. 

Perhaps he’ll consider it again post-Covid.

20. Does Jack Dorsey eat meat? Yes, he does.

(Source: ABTC)

He is famous for meditating, so many have wondered if he also follows a vegetarian or vegan diet. He doesn’t.

But what is surprising is that he only eats one meal a day—in the evenings. He typically has dinner from 6:30 to 8:30 or 9:00pm at the latest.

21. Jack Dorsey doesn’t have a wife.

(Source: Distractify)

He keeps his private life private, so information on his love interests is scarce at best. As far as we know, he still isn’t married. He has dated a number of influential women over the years, though.

In the 2000s, paparazzi saw him with actress Lily Cole. He had an on-and-off kind of relationship during the 2010s with entrepreneur Kate Greer, who owns a popcorn company.

Jack was later seen with model Raven Lyn Corneil, for whom he reportedly bought a $5 million house. They must’ve broken up, though, because he later sold the house.

Jack Dorsey’s partner nowadays seems to be swimwear model Flora Carter, who was seen by his side on a beach in Miami last year.

22. Jack Dorsey made fun of Facebook’s Metaverse.

(Source: Business Insider)

Thought Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg were best friends? They both created big social media platforms that made them rich, so they must be buddies, right? Yeah, but it turns out they don’t get along that nicely.

Zuckerberg’s recent media appearances made it abundantly clear what he’s going for—a metaverse, a virtual space people would use in lieu of social platforms as we know them today.

Many found his ambition worrisome, with one Twitter user explaining that the term “metaverse” was coined by American author Neal Stephenson to describe a dystopian society ruled by corporations. The user was wondering whether Neal was right in his prediction.

Jack Dorsey simply replied: “He was.”

Wrap Up

Well, all this should give you a good idea of why Jack Dorsey is famous.

Say what you will about him, but Dorsey is an impressive person.

Though many would readily describe his career decisions and personal lifestyle as jarring, he doesn’t enjoy an inordinate media presence. On the contrary, he seems to keep to himself rather successfully, to which we would say it’s probably a good thing.

This brings an end to our Jack Dorsey facts collection. We hope it was a fun and educational read. 

As for us, we can’t wait to try out his iPad-only workstyle. Stay tuned if you want to learn how that goes!