How Square grew from a scrappy hardware start-up to payments powerhouse in a just over decade

▤ Summary

Tech entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey set out to find a straightforward way for artists and vendors to accept credit cards. Block now operates an FDIC-insured bank, consumer payments platform, stock and cryptocurrency trading and physical debit cards. Early investors in that $10 million round included Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Napsters Shawn Fanning. Later funding brought in the venture capital arms of Visa, Citi, Starbucks, Goldman Sachs, as well as Silicon Valley giants Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. An initial public offering came in 2015, with Square listing on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker SQ, with Dorsey at the helm.

▦ Linked Companies

Square

$500M to $1B