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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

Two years ago (October 2011) I submitted this idea to the first Shopify Fund (http://www.shopify.com/fund):

"The second idea is to create a POS system that integrates fully into Shopify. Thus one can use Shopify to manage sales for all the store's inventory both those that one sells through the web and also those that one sells from the physical store. The POS front end for Shopify will allow for Shopify to expand into those with both an online presence and those who also have a storefront. This is perfect for small businesses. I believe it could be very disruptive to the POS market because it would be very easy to adopt for customers."

Back when I applied to the Shopify Fund there were little requirements it just asked for ideas: http://web.archive.org/web/20111018133854/http://www.shopify...

I never heard back from them.

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When you get feedback from customers I doubt the line to join the dots of an online presence moving into a physical presence isn't that long.

I bet their customers have been asking for a way to synchronise their shop floor stock with their online stock, and Shopify would naturally want to be the provider of the whole experience.

There's probably many reasons why your idea never got picked up originally. They may have been already working on or thinking about it; it may be similar to another idea submitted; they may not have expected it to be a viable option at the time.

The fact they didn't even respond sucks as that's not a good community spirit. Just be pleased that you've managed to predict what the future was. The trick is how to do something useful with those predictions.

I'm not entirely sure what your alluding to. My guess is that your claiming they took your idea and ran with it, which irks me.

All I will say is that its a bit unreasonable to assume that Shopify didn't have this in the game plan since going public. With Square slowly moving into Shopify's territory this is a fairly expected movement for Shopify.

I said what I said, I didn't accuse them of stealing the idea in my post. But there is a murkiness with these types of contests though where one asks for ideas from a community with the promise of rewards for the best ideas. Obviously in hindsight, my idea was a really good one (which was the point of the contest no?) but I didn't get funding, not even a response.

Perhaps you didn't hear back because they were building (or had plans to build) a POS system that they weren't ready to talk about.

Perhaps you were silly enough to give them that idea then? Ideas are just that, ideas. They shouldn't have a price tag on them.

Of note, there are other POS providers that use the Shopify API to provide integration and have been for awhile.

It's a pretty obvious idea. And this is why companies avoid doing these sorts of ideation exercises.

Hahaha you think Shopify robbed you of your completely unique game changing idea?

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