Tech CEOs who may vie for the mantle of King of Silicon Valley.
JACK DORSEY, TWITTER CO-FOUNDER, SQUARE CEO Like Steve Jobs, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has returned to the fold of a company he started and then left. He worked with fellow technorati like Biz Stone and Evan Williams to set up short-message service Twitter in 2006; it caught on after conference goers at the 2007 South by Southwest music festival started using it. He stepped down as CEO in 2008, but returned to focus on product development earlier this year, and always kept a board seat. Now, Twitter is valued at about $8 billion and is considered a hot IPO prospect for next year or 2013. While overseeing product at Twitter, Dorsey, 34, also serves as chief executive of Square, an electronic payment service introduced last year. Many have compared Square’s group of products, including card readers and an app that users download, to Apple products, citing their elegance and ease of use. Dorsey, famous for often mundane Tweets about subjects such as the weather and what he ate for breakfast, lives within walking distance of both the Twitter and the Square offices and shuttles between the two.
REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton