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Invent ing Square
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at an art fair, and he couldn’t sell a piece of glass because he couldn’t
accept a credit card. So, that was $2,000 lost, and he just got fed up
with that. He came out to San Francisco that next week and we spent the
week trying to figure out why no one has done this before.”
Progress on Square started out slow. Jack and Jim had a simple idea
of what it would be, and it was all based on Jim’s experience as a small
merchant. If Jim were able to accept credit card information while work-
ing at the art fair, he wouldn’t have lost the $2,000 sale. That was the
problem the two men worked to solve. “It was a way to accept credit
cards on your phone. That’s all we knew,” Jack said.
Jack’s idea for Square would help artists take credit cards when selling their art at art
festivals and craft fairs, but many other small business people would be able to benefit
from Jack’s next big idea as well.