On October 22, 2015 Jack Dorsey, the current CEO of the social media platform known as Twitter, announced that he was going to give exactly 1/3 of his own stock to the company’s employee equity pool. The stock is worth about $200 million and 1 percent of the company in total. It would be split up between employees, according to Dorsey.
Dorsey was named CEO of Twitter at the beginning of October and he is also a co-founder of the company. Dorsey’s generous move to give 1/3 of his own stock to the company says a lot about who he is as a person. On October 22, 2015 Dorsey tweeted that he wants to “reinvest in the people.” Dorsey explains that he’d “rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small. I’m confident we can make Twitter big!”
Dorsey’s decision to share his stock with his employees came out a week following the announcement that Twitter was going to cut its workforce by eight percent – approximately 336 of its current workers. The job losses largely affected employees with engineering positions in the company. Letting go of his employees was a tough decision for Dorsey, but he remarked that it is essential for the long-term growth of the company. “We will focus on enhancing our top products and efficiency,” he says.
Wall Street has lost confidence in the social media platform. Its stocks are down 18 percent from last year. Earlier last week Morgan Stanley reduced Twitter to its lowest rating around user growth and engagement. It was time for a change in the structure of the company. It will be interesting to see where the company will go next. The company’s second quarter results were not as good as expected, leaving a negative impact on Twitter shareholders. Third quarter results were released on October 27.
This is the second week in a row that Jack Dorsey gave stocks away. The week leading up to October 22, he donated forty million shares to charity from his company called Square, a mobile payment company that he is the CEO of. Within the past two years, Dorsey has given 15 million shares, equivalent to 20 percent of his equity, back to Square, and he has committed to giving an additional 40 million more shares to charity. He has chosen to donate these shares to the Start Small Foundation.
The Start Small Foundation is a new organization created by Dorsey, which invests in artists, musicians, and local businesses in unprivileged communities around the world. All of the shares Dorsey donated are for sale through the organization. This gives Square customers the opportunity to buy into Start Small’s program. Square focuses its support around small businesses while also giving the unprivileged a chance to compete with the rest of the world.