2,346 karma · joined February 19, 2007
I mention the merger here in a series of Viewpoints for the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6701815.stm
Also, the outcome of Auctomatic: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7315598.stm
In any case, visionary applies just as much.
I'm not unique in this observation, other founders say the same thing.
By reality distortion, PG has an amazing ability to sell you on a vision. It's often times because he has spend a lot of time thinking about a problem or a solution, and there's no real way to argue back in real-time.
the pre-programming part isn't a problem, it's mixing skus to make an order.
when we started in June, we'd get like an order or two a day, and it wasn't too bad. the daily trip to the post office was almost a welcome break.
now, we get as many orders in a day as we used to get a month back then, and it's hard to scale. we've made a lot of the processes as efficient as possible, but the whole thing is still a pain in the ass.
Fulfillment as a service seems like it'd be a good business. No stressing about packaging, customer service etc etc
The closest thing that comes close to solving it is Amazon's fulfillment services (http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon....), but it doesn't quite work and is US only.
A hard problem to solve indeed (and one we've discussed).
I think Square are ultimately technology agnostic, but they don't want the "nfc = payments" meme to spread, not quite sure why. But yes, after travelling through Asia and seeing nfc payments in action, I totally agree.
The Hong Kong anecdote is true. I was surprised that places wouldn't accept credit card but would happily accept my transit card for payments. It's a big opportunity in other emerging markets.
Nice. Explains Google commoditizing mobile operating systems (complement) to increase demand for their product (search).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6355289.stm
Funny - I mention a chance encounter helping us a lot (meeting FB's head of data at a party), and then the vibe being optimistic and ambitious (and we were working out of the then Twitter office in South Park). We did also bump into Ron Conway one morning on the way back from kickboxing.
"Visa will also push dynamic authentication to overcome any security worries and encourage adoption. With dynamic authentication it would be hard for a criminal to use a card at a point-of-sale system even if payment data is compromised. Visa will support personal identification numbers (PINs) and signatures--so called static authentication--but expects both to give way to dynamic authentication."
NFC is a subset of RFID which works over closer ranges (hence the term "near-field"). The other difference is it can be passive (i.e. the reader induces a current in the tag/sticker to read it, that's why the tag doesn't need any power).
13.56 MHZ readers should work. We're ordering cheaper reader-writers (~$50) and will put them on the store soon. In terms of sourcing, we get them in bulk. We basically tested all the suppliers for quality, speed, and are working with the best ones. Who knows though, buying a factory may be in our future.
Have a read of our About NFC page: http://www.tagstand.com/pages/about-nfc and our FAQ http://www.tagstand.com/pages/faq
and if you have any other questions, let us know!