The Man Who Joined the 3-Comma Club Without Having a Facebook or Instagram Account
The fourth richest person in Missouri
This billionaire asks his fans not to look him up on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
He says, “I’ve got better things to do. And frankly, so do you.”
He is an accomplished artist, engineer, and entrepreneur. His name is Jim McKelvey, and his net worth exceeds $4.2 billion, making him the fourth richest person in Missouri.
Who is Jim McKelvey Jr.?
Jim McKelvey Jr. is a serial American billionaire who co-founded the mobile payments company Square.
Square is a financial technology company helping millions of small businesses to accept online payments. McKelvey Jr. was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, James McKelvey Sr., was the Washington University Engineering Dean for 27 years.
He worked at IBM from 1987 to 1989.
McKelvey Jr. earned dual bachelor’s degrees in computer science and economics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1987. While in college, McKelvey wrote two books on Pascal computer programming.
After graduation, McKelvey Jr. worked as a contractor for IBM in St. Louis and Los Angeles. McKelvey Jr. loved to work with glass, so he became a glassblowing instructor while working at IBM.
McKelvey Jr lost his mother, so he focused on building one company.
McKelvey Jr. created Disc Concepts, a business that fabricated and marketed compact disc storage cabinets. Then, in 1989, he lost his mother, reflected on his life, and realized that he was doing too many things simultaneously.
“I quit IBM, closed the CD company, and stopped blowing glass to focus on Mira.”
He founded Mira in 1989.
In 1989, Jim McKelvey founded Mira with $50,000 from his personal savings and income from sales of his glass creations.
Mira focused on document imaging, but McKelvey realized he couldn’t compete with Adobe Acrobat, so he shifted the company focus to publishing enhanced trade show directories on CD-ROMs and later to USBs.
In the 1990s, he shifted the focus again to conference content publishing with the help of Jack Dorsey.
McKelvey founded Third Degree Glass Factory in 2002.
Jim McKelvey and Doug Auer created Third Degree Glass Factory as the only publicly accessible glass art studio & education center in St. Louis. They converted a neglected 1930s car dealership into a glass facility with over 8,000 sq. ft. of usable space.
He solved his problem by creating Square in 2009.
While running Third Degree Glass Factory, he had a customer who bought $2,000 worth of hand-blown glass.
Unfortunately, McKelvey couldn’t close the deal because the customer didn’t have cash, and McKelvey didn’t accept credit cards. He was frustrated, so he partnered with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and created Square.
Square, Inc. is a merchant-services and mobile-payment platform that allows every business to accept payment, manage inventory and customer profiles, generate sales reports, etc.
Square Inc. changed its name to Block, Inc. in December 2021. According to Forbes, he owns 5% of the company, and he has earned at least $270 million from selling Square shares.
He launched multiple companies between 2013 and 2017.
- In 2013, he created LaunchCode. It is a nonprofit organization that aims to build a skilled workforce by providing driven people opportunities to learn and help find better jobs.
- In 2016, he founded Invisibly. A company that empowers people to control their online data. Invisibly also powers micropayments for publishing and journalism.
- In 2017, he co-founded FINTOP. The firm invests in the next generation of financial technology that focuses on changing how our financial institutions and customers move, track, and interact with money.
McKelvey was selected as an Independent Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in 2017, and in 2022, he has been appointed board chair by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
McKelvey's philanthropy and political donations
McKelvey donated $15 million to the Washington University School of Engineering.
In 2019, he Backed Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker’s Presidential Campaigns.
If you had McKelvey’s money, what causes would you support?
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