Recorded September 14, 2021.
In 2009, when glassblowing artist Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn’t accept American Express cards, he decided there had to be a better way for small merchants like himself to process credit card payments. So, he teamed up with fellow St. Louis native, Jack Dorsey (Cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would allow small business owners to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. Founding Square led McKelvey to discover a phenomenon he calls “Innovation Stacking” which he believes is at the core of world-changing businesses throughout history. He believes that “Innovation Stacking” – which is a series of interlocking inventions that build on one another – is the secret to the success of Square and other companies that exist to solve never-before tackled issues.
In this session, McKelvey shares his insights on building a first-of-its kind business as outlined in his recent book, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. He describes how he innovated Square through early challenges, survived an attack from Amazon and ultimately grew the company to its current $128 billion dollar valuation. He also talks about what we can learn from long-established companies including IKEA, Southwest Airlines and Bank of America, which – like Square – made a series of ground-breaking, competition-proof internal innovations allowing them to achieve enormous success and create transformational change. Moderating the conversation is Cresset’s newest advisory board member Suneel Gupta.
