Jack Dorsey: “It’s Really Complex To Make Something Simple.”

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/jack-dorsey-charlie-rose/

by pauldisneyiv • 15 years ago

2 1 15 years ago

phlux• 15 years ago

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.

Jack Dorsey: “It’s Really Complex To Make Something Simple.”

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