Revenues at Square have grown more than tenfold since Alyssa Henry joined the payments company in 2014. Along the way, she’s received stock worth more than half a billion dollars.
If you’re buying something at a store, there’s a good chance you’ll be paying through Square. The company’s little white readers—some models no larger than a credit card—have become ubiquitous fixtures at restaurants, retail stores and even farm stands.
Millions of businesses, or “sellers” as the company calls them, use Square to process their transactions, generating $1.5 billion of the San Francisco-based company’s $2.7 billion in total gross profits last year. The Seller business is at the crux of why Square has ballooned from a $2.9 billion market capitalization at its 2015 IPO to a $110 billion in market capitalization today.
Masterminding the growth is Alyssa Henry, 51, a longtime Amazon executive who joined Square in 2014, the year before the business went public. Henry—who debuts this year on Forbes list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, with an estimated net worth of $555 million—started her career as a programmer for an insurance company before being hired by Microsoft, where she climbed the ladder over the course of a decade. After seven years at Amazon—the last four spent as a vice president for its cloud provider Amazon Web Services—she joined Square in May 2014 to lead its infrastructure team. She became head of Square’s Seller team six months later, inheriting a business that was still struggling to build out software around its white reader. Over the years, she’s gotten Square stock as compensation and now owns a 0.3% stake in the company.
Read the full profile on Forbes: forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/08/05/alyssa-henry-square-amazon-playbook-richest-self-made-women/?sh=50f75879282d
Subscribe to FORBES: youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Stay Connected
Forbes newsletters: newsletters.editorial.forbes.com
Forbes on Facebook: fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
#forbes #forbesmedia #forbesmagazine #forbesdigital #business #finance #entrepreneurship #technology #investing #personalfinance #square #squarepayments #jackdorsey #ceo #alyssa #henry #alyssahenry #squarealyssahenry #payments #mobilepayments #richwomen #billinoaire #whois #rich #money #wealth #networth
Watch Video
Share
August 23, 2021
Posts