Square: Jim McKelvey. He Lost a $2,000 Sale, Then Built a $10 Billion Company

How I Built ThisHow I Built ThisFeb 23, 20261h 14min

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Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, shares how losing a $2,000 sale sparked the creation of a $10 billion company. He discusses the unique challenges of building Square - not just creating the product, but navigating entrenched financial systems, regulations, and monopolies designed to keep outsiders out.

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11:34· 38spersonal lesson

The superpower that built a $10 billion company wasn't coding

11:34 / 12:13

And that's probably the thing I learned best in college, which was I can go into a group of people who are way better than me, and I can make them more productive.

Yeah. Which is a hugely important superpower. Right? And and this will come up later when we're gonna talk

about this because later on in some of your best known businesses, you admit you're not you didn't were not the programmer. You were not coding this stuff. This was not your I'm good at explaining stuff because I have a pretty simple brain, and I don't understand things that that are too complex. But to get into your original question, which was, you know, did I have any job offers after school? So I actually had a job

She never got over the postpartum with my brother and struggled with it, electroconvulsive therapy, like, a lot of heavy, heavy stuff that I had no idea was happening.

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