Brick and Mortar’s Rising Bar of Table Stakes Is Dangerous

On an almost monthly cadence we see software companies in the brick and mortar space broadening their offerings. You could say the trend started with the rollup of Hotschedules by TPG, forcing every other back office provider to offer labor, inventory, reporting, and sometimes accounting.

There is nothing particularly wrong with a land-and-expand strategy, especially considering how expensive it is to acquire brick and mortar merchants due to their unsophsticated nature (ie needlessly long sales cycles driven by an inordinately difficult time making objective decisions based on data).