I'm in the US at the moment, traveling around this wonderful and varied place, we've been in the home of country music, watched bears in the smokey mountains, took a 600ish mile drive to some of the most beautiful beaches, and we've got more to see.
I do love this place, it's variety, it's optimisim, its drive for more. (The USA)
But I digress!
One thing that's leaked into the consciousness is QR Codes, not matter where you go, if you want to order food, request a song from the band or check out local attractions, the first thing you are presented with is a QR Code, it's hard to find someone who doesn't know what they are, are more importantly, what to do with them.
But it wasn't always like that, back in 2011 I was one of the founders of a business that had the [at the time] revolutionary idea of accepting payments via this small black and white square called a QR Code.
We actually had the prototype up and working, we used Worldpay and Paypal under the hood to process the transaction (We'd planned on moving this in our control once we'd proven the concept) and we had some really big retailers (who used catalogues😉) onboard with the idea.
They were planning on using the tech to allow anyone to order whatever product they could see on paper in a few easy clicks from their phone, we also had interest from fashion magazines and we had even started putting together a way for people to pay for their parking using this QR Code. (Remember 2011, it was coins only!).
What started as an small idea and proof of concept turned into a big idea, one that we needed funding for, the payments world at this time was a bit of a black box, Stripe had only just launched and taking payments in general required a lot of complexity. (Anyone that wrote payment integrations back then knows what an impact Stripe had on this space).
I remember traveling down to London to pitch for funding (I think £250k at this point). Conceptually the investors were bought in, they seemed to like the idea, but they couldn't wrap their head around the QR Code, most of the pitch was spent explaining what it was and how it can be used. We actually secured the funding, but only if we could secure a second investor for the same amount as they believed we'd need much more capital to make this work.
Ironically, I think they were wrong, we could have delivered the project with the initial funding but I still think we would have had a challenge getting the QR code into the public conciousness, it wasnt until covid (And that was 10 years later) that the QR Code became part of our everyday life, and it looks like it's here to stay.
It's funny looking back, in the end we took that business in a different direction and we focused on our consulting business (Which turned out pretty good) but as I reflect on that idea, it's a reminder that timing is everything.
I do love this place, it's variety, it's optimisim, its drive for more. (The USA)
But I digress!
One thing that's leaked into the consciousness is QR Codes, not matter where you go, if you want to order food, request a song from the band or check out local attractions, the first thing you are presented with is a QR Code, it's hard to find someone who doesn't know what they are, are more importantly, what to do with them.
But it wasn't always like that, back in 2011 I was one of the founders of a business that had the [at the time] revolutionary idea of accepting payments via this small black and white square called a QR Code.
We actually had the prototype up and working, we used Worldpay and Paypal under the hood to process the transaction (We'd planned on moving this in our control once we'd proven the concept) and we had some really big retailers (who used catalogues😉) onboard with the idea.
They were planning on using the tech to allow anyone to order whatever product they could see on paper in a few easy clicks from their phone, we also had interest from fashion magazines and we had even started putting together a way for people to pay for their parking using this QR Code. (Remember 2011, it was coins only!).
What started as an small idea and proof of concept turned into a big idea, one that we needed funding for, the payments world at this time was a bit of a black box, Stripe had only just launched and taking payments in general required a lot of complexity. (Anyone that wrote payment integrations back then knows what an impact Stripe had on this space).
I remember traveling down to London to pitch for funding (I think £250k at this point). Conceptually the investors were bought in, they seemed to like the idea, but they couldn't wrap their head around the QR Code, most of the pitch was spent explaining what it was and how it can be used. We actually secured the funding, but only if we could secure a second investor for the same amount as they believed we'd need much more capital to make this work.
Ironically, I think they were wrong, we could have delivered the project with the initial funding but I still think we would have had a challenge getting the QR code into the public conciousness, it wasnt until covid (And that was 10 years later) that the QR Code became part of our everyday life, and it looks like it's here to stay.
It's funny looking back, in the end we took that business in a different direction and we focused on our consulting business (Which turned out pretty good) but as I reflect on that idea, it's a reminder that timing is everything.