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The Innovation Stack

From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Innovation Stack
Full titleThe Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time
AuthorJim McKelvey
Published2020
Pages272
RecommendedOnce
BuyAmazon
Why it’s on the listSquare co-founder Jim McKelvey on why his company survived a direct attack by Amazon: building card payments for tiny merchants forced it to solve a dozen interlocking problems at once — pricing, hardware, underwriting, fraud, onboarding — that a competitor cannot copy piecemeal. The clearest first-person account of a moat nobody designed on purpose.

Where I heard about it

Connections

  • Square — the company the book is about.
  • Moats — the concept the book reframes: defensibility as an accumulated stack rather than a single advantage.
  • Payments — the industry whose constraints produced the stack.
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.