How Square was Almost Named Squirrel
The other night I went to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to see Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, speak and accept Inforum's 21st Century Visionary Award.
Jack sat down with Kara Swisher to talk all things Twitter and Square. The whole interview was informative and inspiring. However, the highlight was the discussion about the origins of Square. To me, one of the most fascinating parts of a founder's story is the first ideation and naming. There is so much that goes into this and it is vitally important.
Jack relayed that Square was originally named Squirrel. The idea behind it being that the verb form of squirrel, or 'to squirrel', means to store or hide away money -- a fit for their mobile payments service. And their first card reader, instead of the white square, was originally designed to be a wooden acorn. (Another potential name considered was Seashell, since seashells were the first form of human currency.)
The news of the original name Squirrel was known already, however it was revealed for the first time in this interview that the impetus for change actually came about from a lunch at Apple. Apparently Jack was set to have lunch with Apple SVP Scott Forstall when, minutes before the meeting, he saw a point of sale system in the Apple cafe from a company called Squirrel Systems. So he had to change the name and approach. He looked up squirrel in the dictionary and went down the line until he found square and the verb form of square, or 'to square up', which was obviously a great fit. It is hard to imagine Square having the same success that it has without a reader that is so white, minimal and squared off.
Interestingly, apparently this was the same method used to name Twitter. The original name idea for Twitter was 'Twitch' (they were going for the audible sounds your phone makes when you receive texts) and founder Ev Williams pulled out a dictionary, started at twitch, and worked his way down to find Twitter.
It was neat to be in a place where news was breaking and to see it happening in real-time. I relayed the news on Twitter, as did some others under the hashtag #inforumsf. Check it out to see some other interesting tidbits and quotes from the evening.
It's always great to get a glimpse at a founder's first inspiration for an idea. It is clear to me that Jack is one of the greatest entreprenuers of our generation so I feel privileged to have gotten the glimpse straight from him.
Update: Part 2: How Square was Almost Named Squirrel - (with Video)
