1. The Business

Credit card processing is one of the most frustrating parts of starting a company. To simply accept a credit card, hardware can cost anywhere from 800 dollars to 13 thousand, but the data sent is trivially small. Square, or "squirrel" at the time, gave merchants an alternative that used the phone they already had, and a low cost card reader. 

1 year in, we've changed the payment market.  We see Square in the wild all the time.  We have a product which people can touch and use to make money. Solving a problem for millions with a clever hack and commodity hardware.

2. The Tech

Square's card reader uses the actual motion of the card swipe to generate a sound, which is decoded through a microphone, and processed in real time using the phones internet connection.

1 year in, we have:

• A cheap reader that works on a wide variety of hardware
• A web infrastructure to log transactions securely and persistently
• An interface that makes credit card payments simple

We've seen a lot of hard puzzles come and go, but the amount of data and opportunities we have with it are just starting to show. Also, more than a couple geeks give our hardware the highest compliment possible "it reminds them of Woz's work".

3. The Chance to Work With Jack

Jack, our CEO, is absurdly good at what he does. He is an incredibly steady leader, relentlessly revising things to create simple products, and pushing the people around him to do the same. It isn't a fluke that both Twitter and Square are incredibly simple technologies in every aspect. I knew the opportunity to work with Jack was rare when it came up.

1 year in, Jack has not only lead the product out of the banking world, but he's also created a flat culture of product oriented engineers. In addition to that, we've managed to increase our execution speed as the team has grown and given people control over more aspects of the product.