On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2020. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Jim ↗
In their words
I've studied hundreds of companies and I've lived through it myself, and I can tell you there's nothing that special about the people who end up building these multi-billion dollar companies. But there's a process that's special.
In my case I just wait until something really pisses me off, something I find lacking in the world that I want to bring into the world, and then I just try to build a team to build that. That's how Square started, that's how LaunchCode started.
Outsiders have a natural advantage if they're trying to do something new. The human urge to copy something that works is overwhelming. It's built into our genome, it's built into our society, it's built into almost every institution.
Around the web ×1
Quick answers
Who is Jim McKelvey?
Co-founder of Square (now Block), which he started with Jack Dorsey in 2009. He is also founder and CEO of Invisibly, deputy chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and author of The Innovation Stack.
What is the innovation stack?
His term for the set of interlocking, novel solutions a company is forced to invent when it takes on an unsolved problem. He argues that stack, not any single idea, is what makes companies like Square, Bank of America, IKEA and Southwest durable.
What did he talk about at TechTO?
In a July 2020 fireside hosted by TechTO co-founder Alex Norman, he covered how Square survived an attack by Amazon, why outsiders have an edge on new problems, and how adversity tends to precede the best companies.