Square's Co-Founder Explains How the Then-Startup Beat Amazon

很少有一个较小的品牌能够与像亚马逊这样的大公司竞争并获胜。bob全站app但这就是Square在亚马逊以一小部分价格推出几乎相同的读卡器时所做的。

在没有降低其最大竞争对手的价格的情况下，Square仍然继续完全破坏数字支付和金融行业并赚钱4.68 billion in revenue in Q2 2021。

为什么？它的联合创始人吉姆·麦凯维（Jim McKelvey）attributes Square's success to its "innovation stack."

In HubSpot's first episode ofThe Shake Up, Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel sat down with McKelvey to learn about how Square navigated its competition with Amazon and dive more into his book,The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.

How to Beat Competition Like Square Beat Amazon

在下面，您只会发现McKelvey的一些亮点以及播客，您可以在其中收听完整的对话。

什么是创新堆栈？

[20:13] Alexis Gay:在我们深入研究之前，您能告诉我们什么是创新堆栈？

[20:20]麦凯维：当我试图回答困扰我的问题时，我发现了这种创新堆栈，这就是Square在亚马逊的攻击中幸存下来的。…当我们是一家初创公司时，广场受到了亚马逊的攻击。

当时，无论是一家初创公司是否死亡，每家bob全站app遭到亚马逊袭击的公司。死亡率有100％，或者已经被亚马逊吸收了，我也要考虑。…死亡或更糟。

…We were looking at this very dire situation and we did some kind of crazy stuff and it worked and, and then after it worked, I thought, “Why did it?” And I couldn't answer that question.

…I'm a sort of nerdy engineer and I went on this research quest looking for other companies that had lived through similar situations. So I studied historical businesses. ... Technology was not the major force, but there was this thing that kept showing up in my research and it was a thing that I labeled an innovation stack. And it's just this very simple idea that invention is not one or two things. It's usually this messy conglomeration of 10, 20, 30, 40 things.

Amazon takes on Square

[23:02] McKelvey:[在董事会会议上]杰克[Dorsey]穿着全黑色的衣服，他宣布亚马逊复制了我们的产品，并将降低我们的价格，这是他们一直在做的事情。他告诉董事会发生了什么事 - 我们在董事会上有非常聪明的人，我们有很多经验丰富的人 - 我们被停止了。

…We started iterating through the questions of, "What could we do?" One of the most basic ones was Amazon was undercutting our price. We could lower our price and match Amazon. And then here's the thing. Those are priced to be as low as it could be and still serve our customers.

…我们实际上没有做任何事情。那是不同的，这是一件了不起的事情。我们想做一些事情，因为如果您受到攻击，您可以做的最困难的事情就是不要做出反应或不反应过度。

[24:56]麦凯维：这很可怕。当我们赢得我回答“为什么？”的问题时，这使它变得更加有趣。发生了什么事，因为我很高兴我们赢了，但是后来我想：“我们为什么赢了？”

广场击败亚马逊

[27:02] Gay:所以吉姆，让我们谈谈2015年万圣节。那天您收到了一些大新闻。bob官网官方网站你能告诉我们一点吗穿着服装？

[27:16] McKelvey:我穿着小丑。我的妻子穿着猫女打扮，我的儿子穿着蝙蝠侠。那天晚上我得到的最好的待遇是亚马逊宣布他们将终止竞争对手到Square。不仅如此，他们还会邮寄一位小白色广场读者。我设计的东西。

为什么建立创新堆栈不舒服

[34:43] McKelvey：这本书的最大见解是，创新过程从根本上有所不同，感觉不同，这就是感觉。我告诉读者或潜在的读者是：“看，您阅读创新堆栈的原因是，在生活中的某个时刻，您将与人类知识的边缘抗衡。”

…当你在建立一个英诺华的过程tion stack, it is so darn uncomfortable. So I want people to have recognition. So first of all, recognize the boundaries. That's hugely helpful. Secondly, understand when it's appropriate to copy and when you need to.

[36:28]麦凯维：如果您在已知和未知事件之间跨越该界限，它将变得不愉快。它不会杀死你。最终，这可能真的很棒，但是……您的重点是找出其他人没有发现的东西。

…在获得真正有效的创新堆栈之前，您必须想出几块？顺便说一句，不能保证您将达到这一限制，但是您这样做了。如果你这样做。世界变化。就像如果您构建[创新堆栈]，它的功能非常强大。

To hear the full interview, listen to the podcast embedded above, orclick here for a full list情节。