Name: Sarah Schumacher's review of The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey
Item: The Innovation Stack
Rating: 5
Author: Sarah Schumacher

Jim McKelvey

From the cofounder of Square, an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur and what it takes to build a resilient, world-changing company 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. With no expertise or experience in the world of payments, 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 achieving widespread adoption from merchants small and large. But just as Square was taking off, Amazon launched a similar product, marketed it aggressively, and undercut Square on price. For most ordinary startups, this would have spelled the end. Instead, less than a year later, Amazon was in retreat and soon discontinued its service. How did Square beat the most dangerous company on the planet? Was it just luck? These questions motivated McKelvey to study what Square had done differently from all the other companies Amazon had killed. He eventually found the key: a strategy he calls the Innovation Stack. McKelvey's fascinating and humorous stories of Square's early days are blended with historical examples of other world-changing companies built on the Innovation Stack to reveal a pattern of ground-breaking, competition-proof entrepreneurship that is rare but repeatable. The Innovation Stack is a thrilling business narrative that's much bigger than the story of Square. It is an irreverent first-person look inside the world of entrepreneurship, and a call to action for all of us to find the entrepreneur within ourselves and identify and fix unsolved problems--one crazy idea at a time.

Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

The Innovation Stack

Ritik Sahni

Sarah Schumacher

A great book on how to develop an eye for the patterns that help startups succeed. Square’s origins are discussed, but the book is not about Square. A fun read and lots of mind fodder.

This wasn’t in the book, but while reading it I was thinking about how Jim McKelvey is another great example of how the most creative, successful people intentionally indulge in their wide array of interests. There are some attempts at names for these people lately: multi-potentialite, multi-passionate entrepreneurs, etc. (I am one). Because creativity is simply linking ideas, seemingly unrelated activities actually make one more creative and end up benefitting ALL THE THINGS. Jim is a glass-blower, who cofounded Square, founded LaunchCode, is a coder/engineer, there was a mention of a book publishing company in there somewhere, now he’s an author, and I mean, the guy hand-built the prototype for the first Square card reader. If it looks like someone is really good at one thing, it’s highly likely they’re good at lots of other things. I love seeing this.

Side note: if the idea of that interests you, Range by David Epstein is also a great book.

Only the parts about early Square and anecdotes of Jack Dorsey were interesting to me. But those parts were hard to follow because the author tries too hard to crack an inside joke or come up with a clever metaphor instead of describing what is going on. Somewhere in the book the author says something like "I didn't show this writing to anyone or asked anyone to read through it" and I was thinking... maybe he should have

Ritik Sahni &
The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey

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Ritik Sahni &The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey

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Join the club

Ritik Sahni &
The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey