The Strategist

Dorsey is Investing in Workforce



10/23/2015 - 15:09



Founder and CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey announced the transfer of a third of his stake in the company to their employees. The statement was made one week after Dorsey announced the start of a difficult operation for drawing the company out from stagnation.



Jean-Frédéric via flickr
Jean-Frédéric via flickr
- I’m giving about 1/3 of my Twitter shares (1% of the company) to our pool of shares for employees, to invest directly in people", - Mr. Dorsey wrote in his account on Twitter. Given that the current market capitalization of Twitter is $ 19.8 billion, value of the shares transferred to employees amounts to almost $ 200 million. The company employs almost 4 thousand people, so on average, each employee will receive shares of approximately $ 50 thousand. In his message, Jack Dorsey, whose state is estimated at $ 2.4 billion, has not specified whether the company’s top managers will receive a share as well.

Recall, the founder of Twitter has recently returned to the position of General Manager - he was invited on board to take the company out of stagnation. Last week, Mr. Dorsey announced the first anti-crisis measures, that is, work on the improvement of existing and creation of new services, as well as reduce costs, including layoff of 8% of the workforce (336 persons). The head of the microblogging network said he announced the cuts "heavy-heartedly", and assured that each redundant will be given a decent compensation package, and assisted in finding a new job.

It is not the first time when Jack Dorsey gives his shares to employees - in December 2013, he gave out 10% of his stake in his other brainchild, Square company. Last week, when Square made an application to regulators about the upcoming IPO, Mr. Dorsey said that will give to charity more than 40 million of his shares in this company.

November last year, IPO of microblogging service Twitter has brought $ 1.82 billion to its shareholders, and the whole company was valued at more than $ 14 billion. At the same time, Twitter’s prospects of monetization remain dim, analysts warn. The company is heavily dependent on advertising revenue (in 2012, they provided 85% of its revenue service, in the first half of the 2013th - 87%) and constant growth of the user base, for which there are no guarantees.

source: nytimes.com