The Future Is Now: Bob Vergidis of pointofsale.cloud On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake Up The Tech Scene
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Being ahead of your time can be as bad as being late. Some of the companies I launched early on in my business career were well ahead of their time by many years. The result was that there was no demand for those products and services then which was very frustrating. I mistakenly thought that new ideas were naturally self-evident which I learned the hard way was not the case. In frustration, I sold or abandoned those projects only to see them become big trends years later.
As a part of our series about cutting edge technological breakthroughs, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob Vergidis.
Bob Vergidis’ passion for envisioning the future is matched by his ability to communicate it and bring it to life.
Vergidis has taught technology and lead change for a diverse list of clients including private companies, universities, the United States military, and Fortune 500 organizations around the globe. He launched one of the first knowledge-based incubators and founded an award-winning school for software development, e-media and design, as well as helped launch several companies and startups. Vergidis developed one of the first food mobile ordering solutions in 2000 and one of the first cloud-based point of sale systems.
Vergidis’ latest startup is pointofsale.cloud, founded in 2021 as a response to the post-COVID needs of the restaurant industry. pointofsale.cloud is a fully integrated suite of tools aimed at helping small and medium size restaurant chains grow by providing them with the technology they need to stand out and compete on the same level as their larger competitors. Today, Vergidis serves as the chief visionary officer of pointofsale.cloud and sits on the advisory board of the Interactive Customer Experience Association.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I naturally enjoy helping people and solving problems. From an early age, I could see the potential of what computers could do and how it could change people’s lives. The first piece of software I wrote was with my brother, who is an oncologist, while I was still in high school. It automated a decision model for matching therapies to cancer patients based on statistical risk analysis. This experience taught me how to collaborate with experts and translate their knowledge into a solution that could make people’s lives better. After that I was hooked.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Here is a fun one that specifically led to what I am doing today. Back in the early 2000s, when ecommerce was a new thing and hardly anyone used it for ordering food, I had an idea to create the world’s first online ordering platform for donuts. We really did a great job allowing orders to be placed from the primitive early web browsers and even cell phones. For anyone who was around during those days, the NOKIA 3310 (if you don’t know what that is, Google it!) was not exactly what you would call “smart” in any way, but we figured a way to turn it into an ecommerce platform.
We thought this solution was so cool that we urgently called our local NOKIA dealer, convinced her to donate phones to us, preloaded them with our “app”, and sent them to the board of directors of a very well-known donut franchise. We heard back from them almost instantly, except it was not the call we wanted. It was their legal department asking us to shut it down.
After explaining to them that we were willing to give them the solution for free, they told us that they had no Internet strategy at the time but they asked if we could help them solve an issue with their email server. Although this founding project seemed like it had hit a dead end, less than a year later someone found us looking for this exact thing for their restaurant chain. It taught me a big lesson about how, even when you passionately believe something, not everyone will buy into your vision right away. If you keep telling your story and working on your idea, you will eventually find those who will support you.
Can you tell us about the cutting edge technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?
Our focus currently is helping restaurants level up and meet the post-COVID moment. This year, we launched pointofsale.cloud, an easy-to-use, fully integrated cloud platform for multi-unit restaurants. pointofsale.cloud allows restaurants to take control of their technology needs while streamlining the way restauranteurs manage all aspects of their business including customer facing transactions and back-of-the-house operations. This is a big challenge as there are a lot of moving pieces and a very large technology stack.
The pandemic moved the restaurant industry at least 15 years into the future. We believe that to succeed today, every restaurant needs to own their customer base and their technology. This goes counter to the prevailing thought of using third parties as the technology providers for food ordering and empowering restaurants to easily run their own unified ecommerce business. Our solution handles the entire guest service experience for dine-in, delivery, and pick-up across a variety of channels including in-store point-of-sale, online, mobile, phone and call center. In addition, pointofsale.cloud offers contactless options, kitchen management, payment processing, restaurant operations, team member engagement, and a comprehensive list of back-of-the-house functionalities.
I am a big believer in fully integrated solutions, and that’s where the challenge comes in. Add to that, the restaurant industry is constantly in flux, balancing priorities and investing in the right technology at the right time is probably one of the hardest things to get right. What keeps us going is the belief that the right technology can create a level playing field for everyone, regardless of size.
How do you think this might change the world?
The restaurant business employs a lot of people and in many ways. It’s something we all spend time interacting with on a daily basis. From the minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed, what, when, and how we search for food and drink is a big part of our day. I believe we can make restaurants better at responding to what their guests need, better places to work, and better contributors for their community.
Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
I have a vivid image for this. It is a dystopian cafeteria of the future with robots delivering food made by robots. This thought crosses my mind frequently. Is our technology replacing the role of people? We do a lot of innovative things to automate kitchens and I’ve seen some people get mad at it and ask, “If the computer tells me what to do, then what is my job?” The biggest thing I tell my clients is that people are not going to restaurants looking for 3D printed food. It’s like if we watch a movie in a movie theater alone; it is not as much fun as when we watch a movie with others. Humans have a fundamental need for community. It is built into our DNA. We go to restaurants to see and be seen, to feel the energy from others. It’s the same reason we go to concerts, theaters, and bars. While the immediate reaction to technology and automation might be, “Oh I now need less people,” what we should be thinking instead is, “How do I redeploy the people I have and change our focus to what we should be doing instead?”
Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?
The main tipping point was the COVID-19 pandemic. This showed us that “good enough” is no longer good enough. Every restaurant now needs nearly perfect cutting-edge technology because all of us are now expert technology users. The restaurant industry has moved at least 15 years forward. All of us interact with a handful of brands every day and regardless of size, we expect all our technology interactions to be as good as the best we come across. For small and medium businesses, that is a big ask. The second thing we saw from the pandemic is that technology is now as critical to a restaurant as their brick-and-mortar location. It’s something they need to strategically “own”. We help restaurants launch their own private virtual clouds that can take care of all their technology needs from ordering, kitchen management, team member management, and supply chain integration. We do this in a way that allows their guests to have a consistent experience with their brand on-premise and off-premise.
What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?
We think we have a compelling story that is proven in the field. We have worked with many brands of various sizes and our clients have done well. We helped our clients make it through the pandemic and many of them are now stronger than before which is allowing them to now look at expansion and new growth. That tells us that we are making an impact. Next, we need to share this message far and wide, and we need to connect with others that feel that same way.
What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?
I believe for us it is all about building trust. We are investing in our PR and Marketing strategy to bring attention to what we are doing. The core of our current marketing strategy is to educate the industry on how to think differently. We are doing that by holding mini TED-like talks that focus on sharing some very specific, actionable ideas that restaurants can use right away to level up and meet this new moment.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I read someplace about how people are like trees. We appear as individuals above ground, but underneath, we are all connected. I could not be doing what I am doing now without the generosity, support, and encouragement of many people. For pointofsale.cloud, the inspiration was Seth Godin. I am not sure he needs an introduction. He is a legendary marketing genius who passionately shares his best strategies with others. I had the pleasure of attending one of his courses and one of the things he said really stuck with me. He said when you look at something, ask “who is it for” and “what is it for”.
Even when I run outside in the morning those two simple questions run through my mind and help me look deeper at my surroundings. It has allowed my business to focus its energy and its message.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I have always freely shared what I have learned with others, and I have used my experience and time to help others reach for their goals. I am super proud that mine and my team’s ideas and technology helped our clients fight through the pandemic and kept many of their employees from losing their jobs.
Philosophically, I believe the World is a circle; we get out of it what we put in it.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Being ahead of your time can be as bad as being late. Some of the companies I launched early on in my business career were well ahead of their time by many years. The result was that there was no demand for those products and services then which was very frustrating. I mistakenly thought that new ideas were naturally self-evident which I learned the hard way was not the case. In frustration, I sold or abandoned those projects only to see them become big trends years later.
- Overnight successes are years in the making. We all read the business press about massive successes that appear to happen overnight. It can be disheartening especially when starting out as things never go according to plan with an emerging business. For proof, look at Apple’s stock chart. The reality is it takes many years for a company to hit on the right product at the right time, at which point it is the overnight success that was years in the making!
- Always search for “simple” before you search for “better”. A lot of times when we have a new idea, we try to think through all the possible features and all the different use cases which can lead to a very complex solution that clients will have a really hard time understanding, let alone adopting. Instead of trying to launch something with a full feature set right at the start, it is better to identify a handful of high value key features and make them available in the simplest way possible. It will get you to the market faster and it will lead to quicker customer feedback and product improvement.
- Design is as important as function. My favorite example for this is IKEA. You can say a lot about their furniture: they are cheap, kind-of-flimsy, and you must put them together on your own. However, they are designed beautifully. I see a lot of companies that spend a lot of money on product development, but they are not spending the little bit of extra times it takes to design products or packaging to stand out. The irony is that when a client looks at new products, the first thing they see is what it looks like or what box it came in. Design makes a huge difference, and everyone should be using it.
- Learn about Lean. You can easily get in the weeds with this topic, but the main idea is to focus on what has value for your customer and focus your energy on that. It can really help when you have competing priorities and helps avoid the mistake of trying to optimize internal processes that might be important to the organization but might have no value to the customer. When starting a new business, it is sometimes hard to figure out if what you are doing is because it is valuable to you or because it is valuable to the customer. Learning how to apply lean principles to your business will create less waste in time and money. Your investors will thank you!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would love to start the movement of “Enough”. I believe that with our current technology, we have enough for every person in the world to live a happy, dignified life. We can build enough small, efficient homes to house everyone. We can produce enough food to feed everyone. We can make enough knowledge available around the world to teach anything to anyone who is willing to learn. It doesn’t mean that every person will live the same life as everyone else, but there is no reason for anyone to live in poverty or homelessness anymore. It involves thinking in a different way, but I think we now have enough to make that happen.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote is: “Be the change you want to see in world” by Mahatma Ghandi. If you want to create change then you have to be it. I see this a lot with the new, digital native generation of kids on TikTok and YouTube. They are creating content that interests them and they are finding others that connect with it. It is a powerful lesson for kids that no matter what your abilities or disabilities, if you are true to yourself, you will find others that will join your movement. In my life, I have always marched to the beat of my own drum and that has made all the difference.
Some very well-known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Americans spend nearly $700 billion in restaurants every year. Post-COVID, these sales are coming in from a variety of sales channels and different ordering methods. We help restaurants grow sales and profitability by providing them with all the technology they need to compete on the same level as much larger brands. Unlike our competitors, we take time to understand what makes each of our customers unique and help them create a consistent guest experience across all their point-of-sale channels including on-premise, on-line, mobile, phone and call center. In addition, our solution allows restaurants to run their own delivery service which provides them with substantial savings and allows them to own their customer relationships.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Connect with me on Linked In at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobvergidis and visit our site at https://pointofsale.cloud
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
The Future Is Now: Bob Vergidis of pointofsale On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shak was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
