Great interview with Square COO Keith Rabois, on his thoughts of e-commerce, recruiting, the cost of a free cup of coffee:
Traditionally, the businesses we serve were basically counting cups, and they would literally stack their cups up in their coffee shop that they would know the number of coffees that were being sold or cappuccinos that were being sold by the end of the day. That’s exactly why they won’t give you water if you’ve ever tried — it screws up the inventory management system.
and of course, his thoughts on mobile apps and their placement on the home screen of user’s devices:
If you are installed on a home screen, it’s not accidental. So being installed on a home screen encourages more use, whereas on the web you don’t necessarily have that home screen. Then secondly, what’s on my home screen here is self expressive. I know people are going to see my phone so I have Yelp here intentionally, and I have Twitter here intentionally, and Quora is here intentionally. So it’s not just a shortcut.