There are hundreds and hundreds of tiny industries that technology seems to have forgotten (I work in one of them). There is a forklift dealership that I pass on my way to lunch every few days, what type of computing infrastructure do you think they have? What type of information do you think they give to their customers?
I bet there is a lot of carbon-copy paper, and filing cabinets involved. If they're really advanced, I bet there's an old IBM baby mainframe sitting in a closet somewhere with some twinax terminals connected to it.
Here's a company that's throwing really really expensive "I need this" (a forklift isn't a luxury) equipment around. I'd bet you that they've got money to spend on tech, they just don't know how.
Howabout office automation? Do you know how many times I get pitched by "office solutions specialists" who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about? There is definitely some space for somebody who Knows What They're Doing™ to get my money.
Do you know how terrible inventory management systems are? Pardon the language, but fucking horrible.
I think a lot of tech people forget that there a whole world out there that barely even knows that silicon valley exists. There are thousands and thousands of small business that will pay large dollars for things, and for these people (who are usually stuck in the technological late-80s/early-90s), being "disruptive" is what most programmers think is normal.
You'll have to pick a niche, understand it, build something, and then sell it. I think it's unlikely that a forklift dealer would want to pay the cost of a one-off custom system. I once was talking with such a business, their technology was antique and they knew they needed to modernize but viewed my $80,000 quote for custom software as too expensive. I considered pitching them on the idea of building it and then licensing it to them, as long as I could keep the rights to license it to other similar businesses. At the time I decided not to pursue it at all, but that may be an approach to take with small businesses that can't afford to pay outright for custom software or systems.
Basically, all the small business applications can be app-ized and run from a cloud connected iPad.
Where I said:
HNers:
I think that Square is an exceptional business enabled by a novel piece of hardware, their headphone jack card reader.
It would seem - then, that the card reader and payment service could actually be seen as a platform play.
Platforms are technologies that are useful themselves - but enable far reaching, broader use cases in ways, that at times, can be unforeseen.
Square could enable a range of cottage industries by providing other applications built on their solution.
We have the ability for mobile payments, as it were, and thus we should see a need for dead-simple mobile business management apps; inventory, supply chain, vendor management, invoicing, product lists etc.
This leads me to believe that Square is a platform that through its deployment applications can be built upon it that will change the way commerce can happen on the individual level.
Further - it would seem that there is also a great opportunity for sales distribution here as well. A product distributor could reach out to and enable a mobile sales force providing all these applications to their sales force in the field on a single device - as the merchants sell product, it can be tracked in real time and supplies replenished.
This could work very well in connected, yet less-developed countries such as rural Philippines, China and other parts of Asia.
Couple this with prepaid charge cards -- and the ability to LOAD cards in the longer term, and there are some significant opportunities that can be built using square alone.
There are hundreds and hundreds of tiny industries that technology seems to have forgotten (I work in one of them). There is a forklift dealership that I pass on my way to lunch every few days, what type of computing infrastructure do you think they have? What type of information do you think they give to their customers?
I bet there is a lot of carbon-copy paper, and filing cabinets involved. If they're really advanced, I bet there's an old IBM baby mainframe sitting in a closet somewhere with some twinax terminals connected to it.
Here's a company that's throwing really really expensive "I need this" (a forklift isn't a luxury) equipment around. I'd bet you that they've got money to spend on tech, they just don't know how.
Howabout office automation? Do you know how many times I get pitched by "office solutions specialists" who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about? There is definitely some space for somebody who Knows What They're Doing™ to get my money.
Do you know how terrible inventory management systems are? Pardon the language, but fucking horrible.
I think a lot of tech people forget that there a whole world out there that barely even knows that silicon valley exists. There are thousands and thousands of small business that will pay large dollars for things, and for these people (who are usually stuck in the technological late-80s/early-90s), being "disruptive" is what most programmers think is normal.