The Innovation Stack Quotes

“The vast majority of entrepreneurial ventures did not steal their customers from any established business, but rather brought new people into a market. Optimism, innovation, and inclusion are the buzzwords of those who expand markets. Disruption deserves to be disrupted.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“disruption has become the high-fructose corn syrup of business, an overused ingredient sprayed on pitches and injected into keynotes in the hope of disguising the familiar taste of conformity.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“Entrepreneurial companies are focused not on their competitors, but on their customers.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“How many times had I spoken when the other person was not ready to listen? How often had I been too late or too early with the right answer? I saw a cascade of failures over my lifetime resulting from knowing how to do something, but ignoring when to do it. I decided to become a student of when.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“The Market’s End The most interesting part of any market is its end. Why does the market stop at this point? There are lots of customers who would presumably purchase products if they could afford to, but they don’t. And there are presumably lots of companies that would love to sell products to these consumers if they could do so profitably. But at some point, the market just ends. This is also the point where entrepreneurship begins.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“Venture capital is for expansion, not exploration.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“If you stay within this metaphorical wall, you are a sane businessperson. If you leave the world of the known, you are either an entrepreneur or a corpse. All those people I shuttled to the airport were businesspeople. They were successful and respected; but they were singing the songs, not writing the music.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“If you view every problem through the lens of the Serenity Prayer, a small subset of problems comes sharply into focus—those unsolved problems we have the power and courage to solve: they are our perfect problems.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“We want to allow millions of small businesses to accept credit cards for the first time, so we have to make it easy to sign up. We need easy sign-up, so we have to design simple software and eliminate paper contracts. We have millions of people signing up, so we have to keep our customer service costs down. We need to keep customer service costs down, so we have to have simple pricing, and net settlements, and no hidden fees, and no paper contracts. We need to have a low price, so we have to save money on advertising, so we have to have an amazing product, and hardware so cool that people talk about it, and a product that they can explain without our help.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“But today all businesspeople are considered entrepreneurs, which is like calling all tourists explorers.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“Giannini once said, “There are only three kinds of politicians: those who can be persuaded, those who can be intimidated, and those who can be bought.”* If you were in Giannini’s way, he would befriend you, bully you, or buy you, but you were getting out of his way.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“A. P. Giannini was a confession he made to his lawyers: “It makes me sick and tired to hear what I can’t do. If I know I’m right and can justify myself, I go ahead, I take a chance.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“A. P. Giannini was a confession he made to his lawyers: “It makes me sick and tired to hear what I can’t do. If I know I’m right and can justify myself, I go ahead, I take a chance.”*”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“You must hunt your own dinner, but at least there is no buffet line.”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“The actions of an entrepreneurial firm can actually drive change, sometimes supplying that missing element. In other words, leaping can cause you to grow wings. In Square’s case, our big missing element was permission from the card networks. We actively pursued this change, aided by a system that was already fully functional, if not legal. Had we not already built the system, Mastercard and Visa probably never would have bothered to rewrite their rules. Even if they had, they might have written the new rules in a way that would still prevent Square from functioning as it did. Our system gave them something to aim for. Once Mastercard agreed to revise its regulations, the tone of our conversations was basically, “Square is cool, so how do we make it compliant?”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time

“IN”
― Jim McKelvey, The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time