What is The Innovation Stack? | Jim McKelvey (Square Co-founder)

In 2009, a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards. Frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, McKelvey joined his friend Jack Dorsey (the cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. After finding out that major credit card companies were profiting off small businesses at a rate of forty-five times higher than big billion-dollar corporations, McKelvey realized that his problem was a big issue for a lot of people, and a good reason to start a company. 

In this episode, Jim McKelvey recounts the startup’s against-the-odds survival of a direct attack from the most dangerous company on the planet—Amazon — and reveals the business strategy that made Square impenetrable: —what he calls the Innovation Stack. 

Drawing on his firsthand experience as the cofounder of Square, McKelvey shares how they approached the problem of credit cards with a new perspective, questioning the industry’s assumptions, experimenting and innovating their way through early challenges, and ultimately achieving widespread adoption from merchants small and large—with no expertise in the world of payments. 

Check out Jim’s new book “THE INNOVATION STACK: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time” here: https://www.jimmckelvey.com/books/