Some 2,000 miles away from Square's massive new headquarters in San Francisco, Jim McKelvey is standing in work boots and a thick dock coat trying to revive a city.
McKelvey founded the mobile payments company in 2009 with Jack Dorsey, who had previously helped launch Twitter. As the story goes, McKelvey, a serial entrepreneur, was operating a glass-blowing business and lost out on a sale because he was unable to process a credit card payment. Out of that experience came the idea for Square, a company that provides more elegant point-of-sale solutions.
Square has since gone to attract millions of users and be valued at more than $3 billion, but McKelvey didn't stick around for all that. In the summer of 2010, a little more than a year after Square was founded, McKelvey decided to step back from his day-to-day role at the company.
"When my son was born, I decided I wasn't really in to working 12 hours a day. That slowed me down a little bit," he told Mashable in a recent interview. "Getting Square off the ground took a huge effort, but right now we have better people in every area than we used to."
McKelvey still serves on Square's board and is working on "a couple little initiatives," about which he says very little, but the roles he handled as an employee have been filled by others. "I've been totally replaced by people who are superior. I was doing like 15 different things," he says. "It's very gratifying to watch your job done better."
See also: 10 Startups to Watch in 2014
He decided to return to St. Louis, the city where he and Dorsey are from. Over the years, he has used some of his notoriety and know-how to launch a series of programs to boost job opportunities in the city, including Six Thirty, a financial technology accelerator, and Launch Code, which helps developers get the experience needed to find work.
"The biggest challenge [in St. Louis] is the same we face nationwide, which is a talent shortage. It's certainly noticeable here," he says "We have more opportunities for coders, engineers and designers than there are coders, engineers and designers."
As with Square and the glass-blowing business that inspired it, McKelvey says his main contribution is getting these programs off the ground and letting others run them.
"I don't run any of my companies. I always partner with somebody who wants to operate," he says. "I'm the guy to get it started and then I get out of the way." He then notes: "The [glass-blowing] studio has actually thrived in my absence, almost embarrassingly."
We talked with McKelvey about his memory of how Square got started, his bizarre first meeting with Jack Dorsey and how he believes Dorsey is like Hello Kitty. Below are some lightly edited excerpts from that conversation.
Mashable: Unlike with Twitter, the founding story for Square seems pretty cut and dry: You lost a sale at your glass-blowing business because you were unable to accept a credit card payment. So you and Jack set out to make it easier for merchants to accept cards. Is that how you remember it?
McKelvey: Jack and I got back together. This was after he got pushed out of Twitter. I was trying to build an electric car — this was before Tesla had too much traction. I was working on that as a side project. Jack was basically looking for something to do and he asked me if I would want to start a company with him. He asked what I would want to do and I said, 'I don't know.' I asked him and he said, 'I don't know.' We kicked around some ideas. I called Jack up and said we need to fix the payments world. Jack was into it.
Was there a moment when you realized Square had succeeded on a greater level than other projects you'd worked on over the years?
McKelvey:When I started seeing it in the wild. When I would go to different cities and saw people using it and they had no idea I invented it, and they would explain my technology back to me. I had some people try to talk me into joining Square and I had to repress a laugh. That's when it really hit me.
For awhile, Jack was written about as being a tech visionary like Steve Jobs. More recently, a tell-all book about Twitter has cast him as being more underhanded and deliberate in crafting a Jobs-like persona. Do either those portrayals square — no pun intended — with the Jack you know?
McKelvey: Here's the thing: I've known Jack for 20 years. I hired him when he was 15. We worked together for almost two decades off and on. My perspective of Jack has changed very little over time. He's a bright, hard-working guy. He's naturally shy and thoughtful. He's been thrown into a limelight that's very intense. It's like Hello Kitty: Hello Kitty has no mouth, people don't realize that. If you look at Hello Kitty, people project whatever emotion they want onto this mouthless thing. Jack doesn't try to project anything; people project onto him and I ignore that. He's just Jack. I still feel comfortable giving him crap. Maybe I'm the only one who does.
What exactly do you give him "crap" about?
McKelvey:Everyone needs someone to tell them not to wear so much Prada. Of course, I give him crap about that. He threw out the first pitch at the [St. Louis] Cardinals game wearing Prada shoes.
And how did Jack respond to you calling him out on that?
McKelvey: He didn't say anything to that. He just looked at me funny.
As long as we're on the subject, do you remember the first time you met Jack?
McKelvey: He came into my office. We were supposed to meet and I was in the middle of a huge deadline. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I'm jack." And I said, "I'm Jim." I turned back to my computer and I forgot about him. He stood motionless for an hour in the same position. He pulled an all-nighter on his first day at the office... From standing motionless meeting me to getting in trouble with his parents because I sent him home the next day.
Just this week, we saw yet another payments company, Stripe, raise tens of millions of dollars and top a $1 billion valuation. How do you think about the growing competition in this space?
McKelvey: There is a ton of need for innovation in payments. Square is doing a great job. I don't see it as some sort of zero sum game. Square is not going to be the only innovator and I don't think we should be.
Do you see yourself starting another company in tech, finance or another space anytime soon?
McKelvey: I'm super interested in solving the talent gap right now. That's my focus. I'm dabbling in some areas [like] life science, which I think has a lot of promise for betterment. I'll start a company if I have to start a company to solve a problem. I don't start companies except really to solve problems. It turned out Square was an appropriate vehicle to solve a problem with the payment system.