NRF: Cloud-based Mobile Point of Sale from ShopKeep POS
Retail Customer Experience
Upstart Business Journal
Three years ago, NY announced it’s first ever class of “Venture Fellows” – a program that brings entrepreneurs from around the world to learn from a who’s who of NYC Mentors.
This week, they announced the third class of Venture Fellows, and it’s an awesome group.
The program begins on February 25th with a series of events, including an opening reception, meetings with leading New York City companies, workshops, panel discussions, and cultural events. “In its two years of existence, NYC Venture Fellows has taken an innovative approach towards nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurial talent in our City,” said Seth Pinsky, the NYCEDC President. “By providing emerging entrepreneurs with the mentorship needed for their businesses to take critical steps forward.” The plan is to continue to seed NYC with the best and brightest entrepreneurs.
I’m proud that I was able to participate in the nomination process, and a number of the entrepreneurs chosen were folks I was able to nominate.
The 2013 class of NYC Venture Fellows class is awesome! Here’s the list – Amit Avner, Co-founder & CEO of Taykey; Edward Barrow, CEO & Founder of idio; Piraye Beim, Founder & CEO of Celmatix Inc; Constantin Bjerke, Founder & CEO of Crane.tv; Adam Braun, Founder & CEO of Pencils of Promise; Rameet Chawla, Founder & Lead Information Architect of Fueled; Carter Cleveland, Founder & CEO of Artsy; Reese Fernandez, President & Founding Partner of Rags2Riches; Jason Freedman, Founder & CEO of 42Floors; Jeremy Friedman, Founder & CEO of Schoology; Ari Goldberg, CEO of StyleCaster; Pep Gomez, CEO & Founder of Fever; Vipin Goyal, CEO & Co-founder of SideTour; Urs Haeusler, CEO of DealMarket; Sachin Kamdar, CEO of Parse.ly; Riggs Kubiak, Founder & CEO of Honest Buildings; Lily Liu, Founder & CEO of PublicStuff; Meghan Messenger, Co-founder & Chief of Staff of Next Jump; Jason Richelson, Founder & CEO of ShopKeep POS; Elias Roman, CEO of Songza; Benzi Ronen, Founder & CEO of Farmigo; Rachel Schechtman, Founder of STORY; Mei Shibata, Co-founder of ThinkEco; Zach Sims, Co-founder & CEO of Codecademy; Shane Snow, Co-founder of Contently; David Steinberger, CEO of comiXology; Alex Torrenegra, Co-founder of VoiceBunny; Alexis Tryon, Founder & CEO of Artsicle; Eben Upton, Executive Director of Raspberry Pi; and K Young, CEO of Mortar Data.
Congratulations to this year’s class of remarkable fellows!
The Innovate NYC Schools Challenge
If you’ve got a great idea for technological innovation in education – New York’s ED department is issuing a cool challenge. The nation’s first district-sponsored software challenge will be focused on closing the gap in middle school math outcomes and enhancing classroom interaction and management. The goal is to develop a new model for creating technology-driven solutions to some of the most pressing challenges identified by NYC educators.
Developers from around the world are invited to submit applications, solution-oriented games and programs to enhance the classroom experience through teaching, learning and engagement. These submissions will be reviewed by a panel of iZone educators and nationally recognized experts from a variety of areas, including user experience design, leading media publications, venture capital firms and the education sector. Winners of the challenge will receive over $100,000 in cash and prizes, and participants become eligible for consideration for a pilot program in iZone schools.
You can find out more about the challenge, and how to enter here. Like so many of these cool NY tech challenges, this is being powered by Challenge Post.
Events this week: (via Garry’s Guide)
Monday, Feb 04 6:00pm Free
The Impact of Digital on Movie Going: Jon Gibs SVP Research NBC Universal
AppNexus, 28 W 23rd St
AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein will host a fireside chat with Jon Gibs (SVP Research, NBC Universal).
Wednesday, Feb 06 8:00am
Business Insider Presents: Social Commerce Summit
Pier 60, 23rd Street and 11th Ave
Rockstar list of speakers including John Caplan (OpenSky), Ben Fischman (Rue La La), Chris Fralic (First Round Capital), Michelle Lam (True&Co), Doug Mack (One Kings Lane), Chris Bolte (WalmartLabs) and others.
Thursday, Feb 07 6:00pm Free
AppNexus: A Peek Into the World of Digital Art: Lauren Cornell New Museum
AppNexus, 28 W 23rd St
A fireside chat with the New Museum’s Karen Wong & Lauren Cornell
That’s it for this week. Send nice thoughts to your favorite groundhog – as spring is now just around the corner.
Tips, events, or N.Y. Tech news? Email me at Srosenbaum (at) nycedc (dot) com.
Q: What are the advantages of switching my POS system to the iPad?
A: There has been a lot of discussion among brick-and-mortar merchants over the advantages of switching from the traditional in-store point-of-sale system to a cloud-based version that can be run from an iPad or other tablet or mobile device. For help weighing the benefits, we spoke with Jason Richelson, founder of New York-based ShopKeep POS, a cloud-based system. Naturally he’s a huge proponent of the approach. Here, he outlines his top three justifications for converting to the cloud and details the costs and logistics involved.
Give us your elevator pitch. What are the key benefits of cloud-based POS?
First there’s data access. The best cloud-based services have iPhone apps with live sales data at your fingertips, and all of them run web-based reporting that lets you manage your store’s POS from anywhere. Next are instant upgrades. Your cloud-based POS provider keeps you on top of new technologies and of security requirements you’ll need to implement over the next few years. Finally, I’d say easy integration. Loyalty programs, gift cards, payments and rewards all seamlessly integrate into cloud platforms. Not so for many Windows-based POS setups.
OK, but when does it become worth it to chuck my old system?
Most businesses have a change of heart when they experience a virus on their Windows-based POS system. The cost to reinstall Windows, their POS and drivers is just too much, so they look for options. Also, in two years time, it is anticipated that Visa, MasterCard and American Express will take responsibility for the cost of goods bought with stolen cards, but only for merchants that use the newest technology for card acceptance–so you’re going to want to upgrade soon, anyway. That technology is already included in today’s cloud-based POS, since technology upgrades are part of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
How does the cost of cloud-based POS compare to that of traditional systems?
Traditional POS systems typically charge you a software license fee per register and then a yearly maintenance fee of 18 to 20 percent for upgrades. And it’s rare for support and training to be included in this price. The problem with this model is that if you’re unhappy with your purchase after, say, a month, you’re out the full cost upfront.
SaaS is more of a partnership model in that you pay a monthly fee only and nothing upfront. If you don’t like what you got, you can cancel at any time. These monthly fees cover software, support, backups and future upgrades. There shouldn’t be any surprise charges in the future.
How hard is it to migrate to a cloud-based POS system?
Migrating from any POS to another can be difficult, but the best way to convert is to export your entire inventory and customer information to a spreadsheet and then send it to your provider. Any good cloud POS company will import those items into your new account for you as part of setting up your account, so you can be up and running quickly. And they shouldn’t charge you extra for it.
Originally published on www.crn.com.
Money In The Bank
Tech startups are once again pounding the pavement for backers with deep pockets and for some — particularly in the cloud, networking, storage, analytics and mobility segments — there have been some handsome paydays in recent weeks.
Every month here on CRN, we’ll track some tech company funding rounds from the past six weeks worthy of industry attention. Here’s a look at the latest notable infusions — and the companies that drove them.
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CipherCloud
Originally published on http://allthingsd.com.
New York-based ShopKeep POS has raised $10 million to continue the development of its application that allows merchants to manage inventory, track customers and conduct transactions from an iPad. The second round of funding was led by Canaan Partners, with Tribeca Venture Partners and TTV Capital also participating. The company is already serving 3,000 merchants and is working with several partners, including LevelUp, Dwolla and PayPal. It has raised $12.2 million to date.
ShopKeep POS, a New York-based startup that builds a point-of-sales app for the iPad, has raised $10 million in its second round of funding.
The comparison to Square is easy to make, given that both plug credit card readers into an iPad. But the differences start to show up as businesses require more capabilities, like keeping close track of employee activity, said ShopKeep POS CEO Jason Richelson.
ShopKeep POS does handle some credit card processing, and takes a percentage off each swipe like other companies. But it also lets merchants use existing merchant accounts with financial institutions like Bank of America.
The company now has around 3,000 merchants running ShopKeep POS. There are early signs of larger chains converting their legacy point-of-sales systems to ShopKeep POS, with the service being deployed in newer stores once open, he said.
The company will use its new funding to staff up with additional engineers.
We caught up with Richelson to find out more about the new round and how it’s going to be used. Here’s an edited transcript of the interview:
WSJ: Can you tell us a little bit about ShopKeep?
Jason Richelson: We’re the east coast Square. Well, only kind of joking, Square’s obviously in San Francisco and we actually have a sales force out here. But once you open a store and start scaling up, Square doesn’t have the functionality that a real store needs. A lot of stores might start that way, and a lot of guys graduate to ShopKeep. Square educated the market, that’s great, but we offer more for the more sophisticated businesses as they scale up.
WSJ: What do you mean graduate?
JR: I mean we have, forward pointing, image-line management, multiple tenders, that kind of stuff. We do kitchen purchases –you can place an order to the registers and it’ll print a receipt to the kitchen. We do employee tracking, full time-clock functionality, and some really detailed reporting. If you look at Brooklyn, you know the Greene Grape, I started that business and my first creation was a point-of-sales system that prompted me to start ShopKeep. Basically I know what retailers need to run their shops. Square is doing a good job but they’re coming from both sides, we’re only merchant focused. We’re 110% focused on that.
WSJ: How big is ShopKeep?
JR: We have over 3,000 retail stores across the country using ShopKeep, and we have 37 employees. Our customers are probably minimum $200,000 to $300,000 in sales. They are doing 50, 100, 500 swipes a day and they’re real retailers.
WSJ: Does ShopKeep do credit card processing too?
JR: We’re fully integrated — you swipe a credit card through ShopKeep. You can use your credit card merchant account with ShopKeep too. Some of these retailers have an amazing deal with credit card processing with Bank of America or Chase, and they want to keep doing that, so we can route the transactions to their merchant account. When you sign up, you get asked if you want to use us as a processor, and the average volume determines the swipe fee. It’s gonna be really clear what you’re paying. If your average ticket is high it’s gonna be around 2%, if it’s low it’ll be 3-5%. If you want to use PayPal with ShopKeep you can get that same rate. When they come to us, if they get a merchant account with us, there’s no cancellation fee and it’s simple pricing.
WSJ: How are you attracting bigger retailers?
JR: It’s very hard to convince any retailer that already has a computer-based point of sales system. We’re doing a great job signing up all the new stores out there. What’s happening is these stores with multiple locations, when they open the next location they’re switching to ShopKeep. It’s still new, but it’s getting there, and we’re gonna do some things next year to help transition some of those larger retailers onto ShopKeep. Our focus is on enterprise, but it’s the small single-location retailer and new multi-location store service now.
WSJ: So that’s what the funding is for?
JR: The funding is for engineering. We just hired a director of talent acquisition to find and bring in new engineers. ShopKeep is an iOS-based application with a Rails back-end, we do a lot of JavaScript and we do payments. Those are all the things that really excite engineers. When you think of an engineer joining Etsy, an Etsy is just an online app. With ShopKeep you can touch iOS, you can touch rails, you can get into hardware interfaces, it’s an exciting place to work.
WSJ: What’s your personal background?
JR: Before the Greene Grape, I worked at a trading firm on a market trading desk for three years. Before that I was at an Internet startup called Internet Cash, it was a stored value shopping cart for shopping on the Internet. An alternative payment method. Then the Greene Grape. I have a lot of experience in retail, and I was at PriceWaterhouse before the Internet crash. I have a background that doesn’t work well for a lot of people so that’s why I started ShopKeep and Greene Grape.
BetaKit covered the launch of New York City-based ShopKeep’s iPhone application earlier in September, which gave merchants real-time access to their sales data from the company’s iPad point-of-sale (POS) system. Today the company announced the addition of a new time clock feature to enable merchants to save time by streamlining traditional payroll systems in hopes of better managing their employees. Since launching its iPad POS system in August 2011, the company now works with close to 4,000 Canadian and U.S. brick-and-mortar retailers to help them manage transactions and sales data via mobile devices.
“ShopKeep’s goal is to be more than a POS system, we want to help small retailers run their entire business, not just ring up sales. This was definitely something customers were asking for. We had all the tools in place, it was very easy to snap this on, and all of a sudden we’re saving them probably hours a month in time tracking,” ShopKeep CEO Jason Richelson said in an interview. “Because keeping track of hours for hourly employees is a huge amount of work, we’ve just made it so simple for them with the iPad they already have in their store.”
The new time clock solution lets merchants enter their employee information into ShopKeep’s POS system, with the ability to export the information for payroll purposes. Another pain point it helps merchants avoid is that it allows for easy adjustment whenever an employee may forget to punch in or out of their shift, in addition to being able to correlate sales data to measure employee performance.
“A big problem that I had in my grocery store was adjusting the time clock punches, because so many times people forget to clock out or they forget to clock in, and that was always such a pain in every other system to adjust that so that I could get my export file. We’ve made it so easy with a JavaScript widget to adjust very quickly or add a punch or adjust a punch, and then export into a file format that can be imported into your payroll system, that’s really where the time-saving comes in for managers.” Richelson added.
The new feature is available on the latest ShopKeep POS iPad app. The company also announced last month that it would be integrating mobile payment providers LevelUp and Dwolla, which recently announced its MassPay service, as part of its overarching strategy to consolidate apps and devices into its POS solution. The new features and mobile payment integration the company announced last month will help it to gain traction among its target market of small merchants, and stay ahead of competitors like Square Register, Square’s mobile POS system, and other mobile POS systems including restaurant-focused Breadcrumb, which was acquired by Groupon in May 2012, and Revel, another iPad POS system which is more focused on larger grocery chains and verticals within the industry.
The company’s engineering team will continue to focus on adding features for the company’s customers, with a new upcoming application announcement for the restaurant industry coming next week. With a focus on being a consolidated and all-in-one ecosystem that lets merchants do everything from processing sales, to tracking inventory, and now managing their employees, the company will look to be the iPad POS system of choice for small brick and mortar stores. With a lot of competition from big players like Square, the company will need to scale as quickly as it can in order to be one of the major players in the mobile POS space.