Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said he knew Twitter hit the big time in
2009 when he watched a presidential speech and saw senators using their phones
while the president spoke.
His first reaction was "how rude" -- until the St. Louis native got a
tweet from his home-state senator, Claire McCaskill. He then realized that
some senators were using Twitter to communicate with their constituents.
Now Dorsey, 35, has co-founded a second company, Square Inc., that
enables users to accept credit-card payments through their iPads, iPhones and
Android phones.
The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2010, and Dorsey knew
Square hit the big time later that year when his mother reported seeing a
merchant using Square in St. Louis.
The feeling was amplified this year when Starbucks signed on as a major
user of Square.
On Tuesday, Dorsey visited the University of Illinois campus to help
recruit students as employees for fast-growing Square. It was the first of
several campus stops, with visits to Michigan and Carnegie-Mellon scheduled in
coming days.
Dorsey, who has a slight build, got an enthusiastic response as about 140
students packed a lecture hall in the Digital Computer Lab to hear about
Square and, at Dorsey's invitation, provide their own thoughts on where Square
might go.
In an interview with The News-Gazette, Dorsey recalled his early interest
in dispatching and the influence it had on his eventual creation of Twitter.
Dorsey said he grew up in St. Louis with a love for maps and a police
scanner in the house.
Consequently, he was interested in programs that would allow him to draw
maps indicating where in the city ambulances and police cars were being
dispatched.
Those quick, real-time communications between dispatchers and emergency
vehicles eventually led to the some of the ideas that spawned Twitter.
Dorsey said he had the idea for Twitter in 2001, but didn't send out the
first tweet until 2006.
The idea for Square, on the other hand, germinated in 2009, and the
company was created the next year.
Twitter took longer to develop, he said, because "in 2001, the technology
wasn't there. It was ahead of its time."
With Square, he had a demonstrable product, and "capital follows a good
idea," said Dorsey, Square's CEO.
Square is already processing more than $6 billion in payments a year and
plans to increase its workforce to more than 500 by the end of this year,
according to the company.
Dorsey said he believes the biggest impediment to true innovators these
days is themselves.
He said they have to get ideas out of their head and onto paper and have
confidence in themselves to succeed.
Dorsey tweeted regularly during his visit to Champaign-Urbana, commenting
on his plane trip, the abundance of fast-food restaurants here, the presence
of Wolfram Research and even the volume of music in the Hilton Garden Inn
hallways, among other things.
Among his tweeted comments:
-- "Packed, tiny flight to Champaign-Urbana" (with accompanying photo of
the airplane's narrow aisle).
-- "What always strikes me when I return to the Midwest is how the
abundance of fast food makes every other option disappear. We can do better."
-- "Wow, I didn't know that Wolfram was here. Definitely an early hero of
mine."
-- "This hotel really gets into its hallway music. The freight train
across the street is more subtle."
