Block insiders talk about how Jack Dorsey turned Square into a multidimensional financial services giant

On November 19, Block Inc. held its first Investor Day in three years. Jack Dorsey, the company’s cofounder, chief executive, and “Block Head,” took to the stage and summarily posed what many investors and others in the industry were likely thinking.

“Our business is complicated,” he said. “We want to make it much easier to understand going forward.”

Dorsey—notably clean-shaven—proceeded to summarize the past few years at Block. The company is indeed much more complex now than when it was founded in 2009 as Square, named for the point-of-sale system that was the company’s first product.

Four years ago, it changed its name to Block, a much more fitting moniker given its increasingly multidimensional portfolio, which now includes not only Square but also Cash App, Afterpay, Tidal, Bitkey,