Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time with Jim McKelvey

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 co-founder of Twitter) to launch Square. In this episode, Jim McKelvey recounts the startup’s against-the-odds survival and reveals the business strategy that made Square impenetrable—what he calls the Innovation Stack.