It's a pretty good birthday for Jack Dorsey, who doubles as CEO of both Twitter and Square. The latter company—which deals in mobile payments—began trading publicly for the first time Thursday, and shares were trading nearly $4 above the $9 IPO price. Dorsey, who turned 39 Thursday, owns 69.6 million shares, and USA Today calculates his windfall to be $277 million. The strong trading day for Square, combined with other solid debuts from the owner of Match.com and the email security firm Mimecast, is "a welcome relief for the beaten-down market for initial public offerings," notes the Wall Street Journal.
On Wednesday, Square's unexpectedly low IPO price led to a spate of worrisome headlines and stories about the state of Silicon Valley, and particularly so-called "unicorns," or startups worth at least $1 billion. "Square's financials leave much to be desired," one industry analyst tells Reuters. "But there's still a lot to like here, and think the success of their debut will say a lot about the current IPO environment." (In other tech news, Tinder's CEO recently gave a cringe-inducing interview.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
