INTERVIEW: Billionaire Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Block (formerly Square), put the rationale behind launch of his company’s latest products down to wanting to overcome problems that bother him personally and hopefully, in turn, the wider public.
Earlier this month at MWC Barcelona 2022 Block unveiled products targeting spam emails and unfiltered newsfeeds.
“What I can see is things that bother me,” McKelvey explained in an interview with Mobile World Live. “And I’m so normal there are a lot of people like me.”
McKelvey said he built an application for himself over a month ago that charges people who send him unwanted email 5 cents if they want him to read their emails. The service, which is called ‘Paymail’, allows a user to create a “safelist” from his or her contacts in order to let emails through from friends and family without charging them.
McKelvey was also frustrated with newsfeed platforms that send him unwanted or controversial news in an attempt to keep him from leaving.
“You think you’re getting news,” he said. “What you’re actually getting is what the platforms who are monetising your attention want you to read. I want to choose the news that’s being sent to me.”
Through Invisibly, which McKelvey founded in 2016, users can sort and control their own newsfeeds from media companies such as the Associated Press.
“This is, again, another product I wanted for myself,” he said. “I just wanted that control. Then I realised, well, if I build this, maybe there’s other people who want it…. I can’t see trends, I can’t see the future, I just know the things that really frustrate me.”
Block is primarily a digital payments and financial services company. The name was changed from Square (founded in 2009 with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey) to Block in December of last year.
Watch the full interview here, including McKelvey’s plans to distribute his wealth.
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