Jack Dorsey wanted to base his tech start-up, Square, in New York City — but he was in a hurry.
The 36-year-old Twitter co-founder said he changed his plan and based the payments platform in San Francisco because access to engineering talent was easier out West — and he wanted to build Square quickly.
Dorsey, a New York University dropout, made the comments at the school alongside his longtime investor Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, who was chosen to be an early backer of Twitter because of his Big Apple moxie.
“He’s got that New York aggression,” Dorsey said of Wilson. “In Silicon Valley you have a lot of passive aggression.”
That attitude gave Wilson’s Union Square Ventures a leg up in its bid to invest in Twitter, he said.
The two were the featured event at NYU’s Entrepreneurs Festival, which runs through this weekend.
Twitter, which turns seven this month, is a $10 billion company likely headed for a public offering. Four-year-old Square raised $200 million last year at a more than $3 billion valuation.