Thoughts on Dallas Small Business, Payments, Technology, Project Management, and Electric Vehicles

Really impressed by an article in this month's Entrepreneur magazine. The article focused on an innovation from two entrepreneurs called NowAccount . When I work with Dallas small businesses, a common problem is the cycle from billing to cash. NowAccount has figured out some innovation ways to solve the problem. Quickly, the problem is that many small businesses sell an item or provide a service, then generate an invoice to a major business, and then need payment back so that they can pay the providers (workers, manufacturers, distributors, etc.). Quick example, I worked with a company that provided services to a government entity in Dallas. Company provided services and incurred costs all month long. Then we generate an invoice to the government entity. They took a minimum of 15 days to pay which meant we had costs that were now 45 days old. Our newest cost was 15 days old. That meant we had to front all of that expense and wait for the cash. NowAccount is directionally similar t...

Saw news today, from CNN, that "Two of the world’s largest credit card networks, Visa and Mastercard, as well as the banks that issue cards with them, have agreed to settle a decadeslong antitrust case brought upon by merchants.  The settlement is set to lower swipe fees merchants pay when customers make purchases using their Visa or Mastercard by $30 billion over five years, according to a press release announcing the settlement Tuesday morning." $30B sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but for reference will only lower interchange (the word for swipe fees) but 0.04% over a three (3) year period of time. Given that the lawsuit started in 2005 from the National Retail Federation, it does not sound like much of a win to me. The litigation cost over an 19 year lawsuit would have been substantial.  I think the bigger long-term disrupter will be the Capital One / Discover pending merger where Capital One conceivably could drive customers away from Visa / Mastercard to the Disc...