A glassblower is in his shop, selling one of his pieces. The customer can’t pay with a card, so the small business owner loses a precious sale. He had a problem, but there was no product to solve it. He decided to create his own solution. He noticed his cellphone and thought “these devices can become whatever I want.” So, he wanted to turn one into a credit card machine. This innovative glassblower is Jim McKelvey, and with his partner Jack Dorsey (aka the founder of Twitter), he created Square. This card reader changed the game of mobile payments, and McKelvey visits Bold TV to tell how they have survived in the market, even enduring attacks from Amazon.
Square Surviving the Amazon Attack
Amazon is the most vicious predator if you’re a startup. They copied Square, undercut their prices by 30 percent, and expected them to go out of business. How could Square survive? They decided to wait it out, and Amazon backed off a year later. What made them quit? Square’s innovation stack. They had created so many little innovations that Amazon could not completely rip them off. McKelvey discovered that if a startup has an innovation stack, they’ll have almost no competition. That’s why he decided to write The Innovation Stack –– to give entrepreneurs a fighting chance against big tech.
The Epic Adventure of Entrepreneurship
It’s all so heroic: people with no qualifications that change the world. So McKelvey also wrote a comic book about epic entrepreneurs and innovators. Learn more about Square and The Innovation Stack to learn how to build an unbeatable business one crazy idea at a time. People will call you crazy when you are doing something that hasn’t been done before. But that’s only because they’ve never seen it. The only way to prove your idea is to show people it’s possible. One thing about entrepreneurship: sometimes stupidity and courage feel like the same thing. Check out the conversation!
