But not Jack Dorsey. When he was going around the country pitching his mobile payment platform, Square, the VCs were paying him. He explained during a recent talk at Stanford,

In a month we built a very early prototype of what is now known as Square, which is a credit card reader that plugs into the audio jack of your iPhone or your Android or you iPad... I could actually swipe a card and generate an electronic receipt via email and then send it out to a person. And I loved this because I would go around to all these angel investors and VCs and charge them $5 or $50 to show them my new idea. I made $600 from that by the way. It was awesome.

Peep the whole talk here.

[h/t Dan Primack]

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

Square, the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, turns any Android, iPhone or iPad into a credit card machine. 

The company began offering its services to the general public today, after tens months of private testing with just 50,000 users. 

According to Leena Rao over at TechCrunch, the barrier for entry on Square is much lower than traditional credit card vendors.

"While merchants have to qualify for the app, Square's qualification rules are more relaxed than those of standard credit card processors, there are no initiation fees, monthly minimums, and when merchants apply for a reader, Square doesn't just focus on a credit check, but also takes into account the influence a company holds on Yelp, Twitter or Facebook."

The company is hiring at its NYC office and is expected to raise more funds in the next few months to fuel its expansion.

bpopper [at] observer.com

@benpopper