Disruptive Voice podcast, episode 8: BSSE research paper series | Square Capital — Caroline Anastasi and Lyndsey Billings
Launched at the end 2009 to bring payment processing to small businesses previously unserved by the incumbents, Square has grown to offer ancillary services to their 2M small business customers, and as such, has aptly been described as the operating system for small businesses. Square Capital, a lending platform, is one example of such a service: it leverages Square’s proprietary data to offer quick cash loans to its customers as well as provide a mechanism for repayment.
Professor Derek van Bever is joined by second year HBS students Caroline Anastasi and Lyndsey Billings in this episode of the Disruptive Voice to talk about what theory would suggest about Square’s latest move, and how the theories of BSSE (Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise) gave them a new perspective on how Square grew to become one of the first unicorns to IPO, and what they are doing to sustain their early success.
Theories mentioned in this episode: jobs-to-be-done, new market disruption, interdependence and modularity, good money/bad money, RPPs (resources, processes, and priorities). An executive summary of this paper is available for download here.