Maybe narrow your scope. Dorsey created two services that millions of people want. Could you create something that only thousands or even hundreds of people would want (and pay money for)?
Square has about 40,000 active customers. They "have a plan" to be profitable by 2015.
"Millions" of people don't want Square, a handful of underserved merchants do, and not being profitable means their customers aren't "paying" for the service yet.
If you hit it out of the park with a Twitter or Facebook or Google, you can get enough investors on board to make your next venture seem successful regardless of actual traction.
I'm not saying Square isn't awesome, you've just had too much kool-aid.
No Kool-Aid, I just believe that there's more than a million people in the world who want Square (yes, under served merchants), regardless of the current group of 40k. Give Square a few years and I think you'll agree.
It surprises me the "be profitable by 2015" plan. Square has a front row seat at money, I would've probably bet that they were profitable from day one.
Can you shed some light on to why they are still not profitable?
Square is basically trying to buy marketshare right now.
Everyone regardless of size pays the same base prices to Visa and Mastercard [1] and makes up profit in markups. A large processing network can charge lower markups because they process many more transactions, where smaller processors needs to make more on each. Smaller processing networks also make money on fees (chargeback fees for example), but Square does not.
The only way to profitability would be to try and shift transactions off the processing networks (like with Square Wallet), or to 1000x transaction volume.
Comments
Maybe narrow your scope. Dorsey created two services that millions of people want. Could you create something that only thousands or even hundreds of people would want (and pay money for)?
Square has about 40,000 active customers. They "have a plan" to be profitable by 2015.
"Millions" of people don't want Square, a handful of underserved merchants do, and not being profitable means their customers aren't "paying" for the service yet.
If you hit it out of the park with a Twitter or Facebook or Google, you can get enough investors on board to make your next venture seem successful regardless of actual traction.
I'm not saying Square isn't awesome, you've just had too much kool-aid.
No Kool-Aid, I just believe that there's more than a million people in the world who want Square (yes, under served merchants), regardless of the current group of 40k. Give Square a few years and I think you'll agree.
Nice info you got there.
It surprises me the "be profitable by 2015" plan. Square has a front row seat at money, I would've probably bet that they were profitable from day one.
Can you shed some light on to why they are still not profitable?
Square is basically trying to buy marketshare right now.
Everyone regardless of size pays the same base prices to Visa and Mastercard [1] and makes up profit in markups. A large processing network can charge lower markups because they process many more transactions, where smaller processors needs to make more on each. Smaller processing networks also make money on fees (chargeback fees for example), but Square does not.
The only way to profitability would be to try and shift transactions off the processing networks (like with Square Wallet), or to 1000x transaction volume.
1. http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/visa-usa-interchange-...
That certainly seems doable. Thanks for this tip.