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Jack Dorsey – Journey from Twitter to Square Cash app development that changed the digital world.

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Square is a leading financial company in America. It’s a payment app called Square Cash is one of the useful apps that made card payment easier and handy. In fact, this app supports multiple devices like iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android devices. It works like a mini card reader and a person can swipe the card easily. The person behind setting up square Cash is Jack Dorsey.

A well-known entrepreneur and philanthropist hailed from America. He is also one of the founding members of Twitter. Presently, he is serving as the CEO of Square Cash.

Jack Dorsey Childhood And Early Day

He was born on 19 November 1976 and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His father Tim was a worker at mass spectrometers. Belonging to the Catholic background, Jack raised in a Catholic environment. In fact, he studied at Catholic Bishop DuBourg High School.

During his teenage, he tried fashion modeling. As well, he was interested in dispatch routing. That time, he developed open source dispatch software. This software is still working and many taxicab firms rely on it.

Education

Jack attended the University of Missouri, Rolla. There he studied for almost two and a half years. Thereafter, he joined New York University, which he dropped out later on. While studying at New York University, the idea of Twitter popped into his mind.

Jack Dorsey
Image Source: usatoday.com

Early career

Dusting his early days of career, he worked as a dispatch programmer. He set up the firm related to this field in 2000. The company was located at Oakland, especially for couriers, and taxi dispatch services via the web.

As well, Jack tried Web-based realtime status communication service during these days. That time, instant messaging was new. After seeing the implementation of instant messaging, he thought to implement it in a different way. So that’s how Jack along with his friends set up Twitter. Today, Twitter is used by millions of users.

Jack Dorsey as Twitter’s CEO

At the start of Twitter, Jack Dorsey served as the CEO of Twitter. His role in developing Twitter is appreciable. Under his policies, the firm raised two rounds of investment. Initially, Twitter was not designed to earn a profit. However, Dorsey showed the use of Twitter as a Commercial App. Thus, making it popular among marketers, celebrities, and now influencers.

Sooner or later, he left the position to enjoy his life in his way. Jack’s interest in Fashion designing was still alive. After leaving the CEO position he focused on Fashion Design and Yoga.

Square Inc- Another business venture of Jack Dorsey

In 2010, he developed a unique payment platform called Square Cash. Jim McKelvey was the partner in business with Dorsey. It is located at Market Street in San Francisco They design a platform that can turn any mobile phone into a payment machine. Yes, it’s right. Through connecting a small device to phone(iPhone/Android) one can use it as a mini card reader. Thus, allowing to swipe cards easily. Also, it is useful to send paperless receipts. For that, it uses Email or simple text messages. Recently, the firm announces to open a bank in 2021.

Other work

Apart from being a well-experienced app developer, he served as a judge for NYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s NYC BigApps competition. As well, he was Democratic Party candidates’ on-record donor. He was also suggested to be the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company. Moreover, Jack is one of the board members of the Berggruen Institute’s Governance Center.

Awards and recognition

Jack is a recipient of the Crunchie award for the best mobile startup. As well, he was one of the 35 innovators in the world, under the age of 35. In 2012, the Wall Street Journal honored him with Innovator of the Year Award. In the same year, he was awarded as a Founder of the Year by TechCrunch. Moreover, he was remarked as the most eligible bachelor in 2013.

However, he shifted his focus from work to enjoy other pursuits of life. Thus, declining the business. Because of this, the Wall Street Journal announced him as the worst CEO of America in 2017. As well, Fox Business ranked him as a 4th worst CEO. But he gives his best to popularize Twitter and Square Cash. In fact, both apps have numerous users in the present situation.

Red Hat : The Biggest Linux Distributor & First $1B Open-source Software Company

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Founding Red Hat at the time when the market was changing rapidly, was quite a big step, as the co-founders of Red Hat, Marc Ewing and Bob Young followed their gut feeling and kept their ears opened to every good advice from the experts. While building a business model, obviously one should focus on the product that he/she will be building under the name of their business, but at the same time for long term sustainability, one has to be future ready and take the steps carefully.

Founders

Marc Ewing was born on 9 May 1969 and completed his graduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University, in 1992. Ewing was a bright student and was also involved in the 86open project in the mid-1990s in college. His grandfather had gifted him a red colour hat that he used to wear during his college days, and this way, he had become popular as the ‘red hat guy’ in the college.

bob young marc ewing
Image Source: irishtimes.com

The co-founder of Red Hat, Bob Young, was a native of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He completed his high school from Trinity College School in Port Hope and graduated as Bachelor of Arts from Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

Young, after completing his education, started a computer rental and leasing business and founded Vernon Computer Rentals, in 1984. But in 1990, he sold the company to Greyvest Capital and the money that came from the deal, made him an overnight millionaire. But the good time was not permanent, and he lost his millionaire status just in a few months as a result of some bad business moves from Greyvest Capital.

Young, still, was with Greyvest and to enhance his business he started attending the meetings, where programmers talked about the latest trends in the software program UNIX, running on the servers. He was an outsider but knew that those meetings were the key to his biggest business idea.

At the time Young was attending those meetings, he started a newsletter named New York Unix that had all information about the next meetings. In 1993, after losing his job at Greyvest, he incorporated the newsletter as his another business and founded ACC Corp Inc., which at the beginning was earning from the advertisements. At the same time, Linux was becoming a hot topic as it was free software and many of the companies were choosing Linux over Unix. Eventually, Young started selling Linux software, books and accessories.

Founding Red Hat

At the same time, Young was getting requests from the groups that were subscribed to his newsletter to write more about open source software and Linux. Young, too, was interested in writing about the same but had no idea about what an open-source software was.

He was struggling through the financial crisis, but the Linux based products that he was selling was the main source of his income. So he became more curious about finding more resellers for the Linux products. This led him to reach Marc Ewing, who had set up a little Linux shop in Durham, North Carolina, named as Red Hat.

The company, unmistakably, got its name from the same red hat that he used to wear in college. Marc was working on a Unix project and accidentally, built the first software under Red Hat, in 1994. The project he was working on was to run on a Unix system, but since it was too expensive, he developed the software for Linux.

The evolution of Linux also made Marc interested in the same, and as Linux was an open source software, he started working on fixing Linux.

Finally, on 29 July 1994, he released his first Linux distribution software that was easier to use version over the GPL version. The software became a hit overnight.

Young started officially distributing Red Hat’s software, and after discussing with many Linux experts, Young joined his hands with Ewing to incorporate Acc with Red Hat, and the two turned the co-founders of Red Hat Inc. with a partnership of fifty-fifty.

The two was working passionately for the company, without knowing the real worth of it. In 1999, the company went public, and for their surprise, the company achieved the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street.

In the same year, Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions, followed by the acquisition of the other companies including WireSpeed, C2Net and Hell’s Kitchen Systems, Planning Technologies, Inc., in the later years. In the year 2000, the company won the “Operating System Product of the Year” award for Red Hat Linux 6.1. In 2002, Red Hat introduced Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.

In 2005, Red Hat stock became part of the NASDAQ-100 and, in 2006, Red Hat stock moved from to trading on the New York Stock Exchange (RHT).

In 2012, Red Hat became the first open source software company that entered into the one-billion-dollar group, and in 2015, it surpassed the two-billion-dollar milestone. Just in another three years, in 2018, the company recorded the annual revenue of three-billion-dollar.

On 28 October 2018, IBM announced that it is planning to acquire Red Hat for US$34 billion.

The company headquarter was moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S. from Durham in 2002. As per the 2018 records, the company has raised to 12,600 employees.

Bob Young served as Red Hat’s CEO until 1999, and left the company in 2002, to found his print-on-demand, self-publishing company, Lulu.com. Red Hat is one of the fastest growing companies and one of the pioneers in the open-source software industry.

Zhou Qunfei : The Self-made Billionaire & the Founder of Lens Technology

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Zhou Qunfei, the founder of Lens Technology, is the world’s richest self-made billionaire, and one of the richest women in the tech sector. She despite facing a lot of difficulties and struggle, managed to accomplish what seemed impossible at a time. She, even, achieving so much in life, is still a grounded person and is not hesitant to sit down and work as a worker in her company. Travelling back and forth between China, Korea and the Silicon Valley, Apple and Samsung are one of the biggest clients of her organisation. Her rags-to-rich story is an inspiration to millions of women in a man dominating society.

Early Life

Zhou Qunfei was born in 1970, in Xiangxiang, Hunan province, in a family with bad financial conditions. Her father had retired from the army. He had become partially blind and lost a finger in an industrial accident before Zhou was born. Zhou lost her mother when she was five. Her father made his living by making bamboo baskets, chairs and repairing bicycles. As a child, Zhou started raising animals to earn a small profit to help her family financially.

zhou-qunfei
Image Source : vivify

Zhou completed her secondary education from a local school and moved to the Guangdong province, to live with her uncle’s family, at the age of sixteen, to become a migrant worker in Shenzhen. She aspired to join a government job, but due to lack of a diploma, she had to drop the idea. But, being a bright student, she took jobs nearby the Shenzhen University so that she could easily complete her studies along with work. With her dedication, she was able to pursue various courses and received multiple certifications in the subjects including accounting, computer operations, customs processing.

Founding Lens Technology

Although Zhou had started earning with her part-time jobs when she was a little kid, her first full-time job was with the small family-run firm making watch parts, where she was paid 180 yuan a month. In just three months, she wrote a humble resignation letter to her boss, as she was unable to co-op with the working conditions of the company. Her resignation moved her boss, who instead of accepting the resignation, promoted Zhou to a higher rank.

After working for a few years in the same company, in 1993, Zhou founded her own company that sold high-quality watch lenses, at the mere age of 22. The company’s first employees included her brother, sister, their spouses, and their cousins, who started their work in a three bedroom apartment. Zhou used her savings of HK$20,000 (~USD$3,000), to start the company. She got involved in every operation of the company and became proficient in each of it, including the repairs and creating improved designs of factory machinery. Her big break came when the Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation approached her with a contract to make mobile phone screens, in 2001. In 2003, she again received an order from Motorola, to develop glass screens for their Razr V3. By the time, mobile companies had started using glass screens replacing the plastic screens for the mobiles.

Earning major profits in mobile phone screen manufacturing, in 2003, Zhou founded Lens Technology and started producing touch screen for smartphones. The company received its name, in order to be more visible for its potential customers, in the online searches. The company soon received orders from HTC, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and also from Apple, in 2007, the biggest breakthrough for Lens Technology, and became the topmost touchscreen supplier. The company also supplies the watch glass for the apple watches. By the year 2017, the company had established 32 factories at different locations and had hired 90,000 employees. In 2015, Zhou made the company IPO public on the ChiNext A-share market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and Lens Technology became China’s largest technology IPO, in the first quarter of 2015 and raised Zhou’s net worth by 452%.

Personal Life

Zou is married twice, and her first marriage was with her former factory boss. She has a daughter with him. In 2008, she married Zheng Junlong, an old colleague from Lens Technology, and the two have a son together. Along with working as her hobby, she also enjoys mountain climbing and playing ping-pong.

Zhou is China’s richest woman and is listed at number 61, in the Forbes list of 2016 Power Women. She was also named the number 18 on the Fortune 2016 Most Powerful Women of Asia-Pacific list.

Zhang Ruimin : The CEO & Chairman of World’s Leading Appliance Maker Company

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Business is not easy to run, especially, if there are no risk takers or competent leaders. When a company is under major crisis, it’s the leader’s job to step up and take necessary actions to overcome the difficulties. Companies that survive the worst storm come out strong with exceptional energy to surpass their competitors. Haier is one such company which has emerged so strong after it almost sunk that today it has become world’s fourth largest white appliances company. And all the credit goes to Zhang Ruimin who is now the chief executive officer of Haier Group.

Early Life

Born on 9th January 1949, in Laizhou, Shandong, China, Zhang Ruimin’s parents worked in a local garment factory. During his high school, the Cultural Revolution was shaping up rapidly. As a result, he joined the Red Guards along with other students. During the revolution, most of the schools remained closed so students could not attend classes. At such free times, Zhang visited Mao’s birthplace and also attended rallies.

The revolution also resulted in shutting down of most universities, therefore, halting education once again for Zhang and other students. He started working at the state-run construction company, in Qingdao, in 1968.

Early Career

Due to the unprecedented circumstances, Zhang could not complete his education properly. But, the fire to learn and educate himself, kept burning inside him. Therefore, he used to travel back and forth, for the management courses, on his bicycle, in between his shifts. Zhang was also a voracious reader, and read extensively on management.

zhang-ruimin
Image Source: thinkers50.com

After years of hard work, Zhang was promoted to workshop supervisor and, after a long 12 years of service, in 1980, he was promoted to deputy director of Qingdao. In the next couple of years, Zhang got promoted to higher positions. First, as the deputy manager of ‘Household Appliance Division’ of Qingdao municipal government, and next, as the general manager of Qingdao Refrigerator Plant. The second position came to him by surprise, as the previous manager left, and the company needed someone experienced for the position. The company was in deep financial trouble when Zhang took the General Manager’s position.

Resurrecting Refrigerator Plant

Once, on a business tour to Germany, Zhang noticed some crucial problems in terms of reputation and quality. The company was performing in both the cases. While on his way back, he decided to conduct a demonstration for his workers to make them understand the importance of quality of products.

This was the time when a customer came to Zhang with a faulty refrigerator, and they both went through the whole inventory of 400 refrigerators for replacement. During this process, Zhang found out that their products had a whopping 20% failure rate. He called for all his workers and assembled around 76 faulty refrigerators. Each worker was then handed a sledgehammer, and he ordered the workers to destroy each of those 76 refrigerators. The cost of each refrigerator at that time was so high, that it could cover their two years’ worth wages. Zhang himself took part in destroying the faulty products because he believed if they didn’t destroy them the products would destroy the company one day.

This act not only created a positive attitude in workers but, also gained the company lots of publicity, which helped them to reach big markets in Tianjin and Beijing. Zhang’s management style changed the complete scenario of the company. And, by 1986, the company saw major profits, marching up to 83 per cent.

Haier Group

Qingdao Refrigerator was renamed to Qingdao Haier Group, in 1991, and Zhang was still handling the post of the general manager of the company. He also enrolled himself at the University of Science and Technology, in China, for a master’s degree in business administration. After he graduated, in 1994, and the year before, he was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Haier Group.

As a CEO he decided to spread Haier abroad and reach international markets. The company started shipping products to the Middle East and Africa. The company, soon, started expanding to numerous countries, including the United States of America, with its total workforce ranging at 30,000 people. Financial Times listed Zhang among the ’50 most respected business leaders in the world.’

Personal Life

Zhang Ruimin’s wife was a party secretary at a textile factory in Qingdao. He has a son who studied business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Garrett Camp : The Co-founder of the Online Discovery Platform StumbleUpon

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If you are skilled enough you are destined to achieve the goals you set even before you are a graduate. Garrett Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur, was still a student when he started his own business along with three of his college mates. The company gained popularity and within a year, bringing him into the spotlight and making him one of the Top Innovators under the age of 35.

Early Life

Garrett was born on October 4, 1978, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to an economist father and an artist mother. Later, his parents started a business of architecture. Garrett completed his high schooling from a local government school. Later, he joined the University of Calgary and received a degree in electrical engineering, in 1996. During his junior year, at the college, he went through an internship, in speech recognition technology from Nortel Networks, Montreal. After graduating from the University of Calgary, he enrolled in the Masters in Software Engineering, in the same University and researched on the collaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and information retrieval.

Garrett Camp
Image Source: designerfund.com

Founding StumbleUpon

Garrett was still in College when he came up with the idea of StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon was the first discovery engine, that was used to find web content for the users. Garrett founded StumbleUpon, with his friends at the University and established its office in San Francisco. The company received its first funding from the Silicon Valley’s Angels Investors. In 2007, eBay acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million. The company expanded its service to 25 million registered users in the next year. Camp re-acquired the company in 2015, as it went under debt, and helped the company recover its original status, once again. The company is still running its website successfully.

Other Ventures

In 2009, with Travis Kalanick, Garrett co-founded Uber, a transportation network company as UberCab. He made the initial funding for the project of $250K, himself. The idea behind Uber was to make the black taxis affordable for the people. Till mid-2012, Uber launched UberX and Uber SUV, making its way in the list of Forbes Top 10 Companies of 2012. Uber has become popular among the people as an affordable medium for travelling and is running its business in 500 cities across the globe.

In 2013, Garett started another venture named Expa that helps other startups financially, by raising funds from the major investors of Silicon Valley.

In 2007, Garrett was listed among the Top Innovators under the age of 35, at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference, at MIT and Bloomberg Businessweek named him one of Tech’s Best Young Entrepreneurs in 2008. He spoke at the Wireless Influencers and South by Southwest, many a time and attended the DEMO Mobile 2013, as the judge and the panel member. In 2015, his total wealth was estimated to be US$5.3 billion by Forbes.