Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Business in a Box

squareup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: Business in a Box

#61

Post by greghinch »

obituary_latte wrote: post #25

Dear everyone: Might you please make use of the noscript functionality provided to you? Many people like myself do not let arbitrary websites run javascript on their machines. Without the use of noscript tags, as is the case here, I am met with an entirely blank page. Had there been something there, something describing what I'm missing and how good it is, I very likely would have enabled js temporarily. But there wa…

Sorry, you're going to lose on this one. It's basic cost/benefit ratio from the business' perspective. The cost and time of developing and maintain an alternate noscript version is almost never going to be worth it for the % of their customer base the people not running Javascript represent. Same reason ARIA loses out in most startups.

Re: Business in a Box

#62

Post by kmfrk »

fijal wrote: post #52

I would honestly love to have a flag saying [US only, don't bother if you're not from there] on articles (like that one) EDIT: this is genuinely not a snarky comment, but this this company will likely go bankrupt before I could use it (for example paypal is not universally available, in SA you need to have an account with a specific bank)

And an additional one warning about Americans whining about how their Netflix/Hulu/Square/MLB/Pandora/HD TV networks/Amazon Prime perform subpar ...

Re: Business in a Box

#63

Post by notjustanymike »

mmanfrin wrote: post #49

Disclosure : I work for GoPago, a direct competitor in this market. I am approaching this with a lot of built-in bias. Square is pretty late to the game. Their software is pretty, but it has a much smaller featureset than every other tablet-based POS software out there (including our own competitors). Additionally, their prices do not include the cost of the iPad, which is another $500 on top of this 'business in a b…

I think you had a point on pricing until you explained GoPago's fees. Assuming a company uses the same system for 3 years, you're looking at $3,600 spent on a rental. Square and the separate iPad Retina purchase add up to a $1,100 one time fee. I can't debate you on features, but I would argue they're extremely competitive with pricing.

Re: Business in a Box

#64

Post by juan_juarez »

mmanfrin wrote: post #31
rohern wrote: post #9

This is fantastic. The POS space has needed massive disruption for decades. Kill the dinosaurs!

There are plenty of companies doing this already, Square is pretty slow to the table. Caveat: I work for one such company (GoPago).

The fact that there's so much activity in the space suggests that it's undergoing disruption. For years, POS systems have been... well... POSes. They're unfriendly, overpriced, lacking in features and just all around bad. The tech has been easily 10 years behind the curve.

We've got a new generation of POS systems coming into place using commodity hardware, the internet & business model that doesn't involve paying some shady fucker thousands of dollars for plugging in some hardware & typing in your menu.

Re: Business in a Box

#65

Post by obituary_latte »

greghinch wrote: post #61
obituary_latte wrote: post #25

Dear everyone: Might you please make use of the noscript functionality provided to you? Many people like myself do not let arbitrary websites run javascript on their machines. Without the use of noscript tags, as is the case here, I am met with an entirely blank page. Had there been something there, something describing what I'm missing and how good it is, I very likely would have enabled js temporarily. But there wa…

Sorry, you're going to lose on this one. It's basic cost/benefit ratio from the business' perspective. The cost and time of developing and maintain an alternate noscript version is almost never going to be worth it for the % of their customer base the people not running Javascript represent. Same reason ARIA loses out in most startups.

I'm not at all saying everyone should write a full-blown non-js version of the site. I'm saying it would be nice, and might garner more traffic if there were some content explaining the sites' mission.

Re: Business in a Box

#66

Post by kmfrk »

MatthewB wrote: post #46

One thing Square continues to do right is design. Making a POS system sexy is not an easy thing to do.

One might argue that it's the main thing they do. Which is not a bad thing at all.

Re: Business in a Box

#67

Post by dclowd9901 »

A friend of mine and myself had this idea a while back, while Square was still in its infancy. It would allow people to find out exactly where to find the merchandise that they wanted, its price at that location, the number of items they had in stock, a way to order it if they wanted to purchase it... It would bring non big-box stores into the world of organized supply chain.

In order to do this, we posited, we'd have to create a dirt-cheap POS that was also incredibly easy to setup, use, and track inventory.

The idea was hung up on the fact that we didn't have an "in" -- the clout to get these smaller stores to invest in us. As we simmered on it, Square turned hockey stick, created a mobile app, and we already saw that they were headed in this direction.

Kudos. Even if it wasn't my implementation of the idea, I'm glad to see a step happen in that direction.

Re: Business in a Box

#68

Post by obituary_latte »

freehunter wrote: post #53
obituary_latte wrote: post #25

Dear everyone: Might you please make use of the noscript functionality provided to you? Many people like myself do not let arbitrary websites run javascript on their machines. Without the use of noscript tags, as is the case here, I am met with an entirely blank page. Had there been something there, something describing what I'm missing and how good it is, I very likely would have enabled js temporarily. But there wa…

Dear noscript users: You chose to break the website. It was designed to be used the way it was written. Javascript is a basic part of the Internet. Their site won't work without HTML enabled either. Welcome to 1994, Everyone.

Ok. Lets hope those with accessibility issues (screen-readers, etc), people with constrained systems (old, corporate, etc), and whoever else might not be able or willing to use js can figure something out then.

Oh, they have! They won't visit your site. Cool!

Re: Business in a Box

#69

Post by thoughtpalette »

kmfrk wrote: post #62
fijal wrote: post #52

I would honestly love to have a flag saying [US only, don't bother if you're not from there] on articles (like that one) EDIT: this is genuinely not a snarky comment, but this this company will likely go bankrupt before I could use it (for example paypal is not universally available, in SA you need to have an account with a specific bank)

And an additional one warning about Americans whining about how their Netflix/Hulu/Square/MLB/Pandora/HD TV networks/Amazon Prime perform subpar ...

Pretty sure it's the rest of the countries that are complaining the U.S. typically has a better selection in those categories.

Re: Business in a Box

#70

Post by jh3 »

Simucal wrote: post #29
iamwil wrote: post #6

The design is great. Even though I don't have a brick and mortar store, it kinda makes me want to buy one, inexplicably. I wonder how many other things you can sell like this, an all-in-one box, that doesn't smell cheap, like a 10-in-1 games CD? The best thing I can think of right now is 'gardening in a box'. I wonder what 'startup in a box' looks like.

This isn't exactly the same as a one time "box" but monthly subscription services for "boxes" of different items have been taking off lately. I currently subscribe to Barkbox[0], a monthly subscription to receive dog treats, toys and accessories every month. A few months ago they had over 20,000 subscribers. They based their model off Birchbox[1], which provides a monthly subscription of hand picked beauty products.…

There are similar services for clothing. The first one that comes to mind is http://www.trunkclub.com/
Post reply on HN