ahsanup

Just make sure you're validating your idea as you go instead of just building it, and you'll find out for yourself if its worth continuing.

As depressing as it sounds, there's little point in continuing product development without solid validation. Its a problem I ran into at my previous startup - a good product, but just not needed by enough people.

Big potential in the added services Square will provide to SMEs. On top of reporting, I think they've already floated the idea of feedback through digital receipts.

I'd definitely imagine that improved customer feedback mechanisms would impact SMEs in a positive way.

The goal could still be to get as many Square POS systems onto the market so that a competitor (ie. Amazon) can't just waltz in and start expanding aggressively.

Awesome.

These two should be true for an incubator/accelerator or group of advisors/mentors/investors.

At the end of the day, the founders build the company, not anyone else. "Outsiders" (those who don't actually work in the company) should offer guidance and frameworks, but never a definitive solution to the problem you're having, that's for the founders to figure out and decide for themselves.

"Finding partners (both teammates and investors) who you can sail both the rough and calm waters with is absolutely essential to the survival of your business."

Can't agree with this statement enough (the teammates part, at least). From personal experience, I can say that the work environment becomes toxic when early team members start losing passion for the product, especially co-founders. People start questioning each other's commitment, work slows down, and bickering ensues.

As another piece of advice, it's really important to look for individuals who are great communicators. People who say it how it is, and share their feelings w/o hesitation. The last thing you want is a co-worker sharing some important piece of information (ex. they haven't been motivated for weeks) out of the blue.

For the masses, yes. But for those willing to take their future into their own hands, I think you'll see a shift away from traditional college education.

Really think that apprenticeship should make a comeback in America. I know I would have benefited from spending some time in industry after high school.

With improved access to high-quality online education, we may soon be asking "Are all colleges overrated?"

(Though I think the college experience plays an important part in a teenager's maturation process.)

And by 11% too.

Unless you're an insanely large company, in the long-run, you can probably save on OPEX by switching to cloud infrastructure. You get away from purchasing hardware for yourself, which inherently reduces OPEX.

Awesome to see Turkey showing up big on this map, had no clue that the sport was so popular there.

I think you'd have an exceptionally difficult time getting users to enjoy a scrollable tab bar. I've already had enough trouble getting the iOS menu to pull up from the bottom of the screen; can't imagine having to deal with the same for a tab bar in an app.