Lightspeed POS software technology is converting the approaches of doing enterprise.

It started as a side project for a small startup by two ex-Googlers, and it has grown into a company with over 30 staff (60% of whom are ex-Googlers). Its development team has been led by two Googlers; its Sales team is led by one; and its Engineering team is led by one.

It has its origins in a small startup called Synchronize, which developed a system that automatically keeps track of transactions happening in different locations across different vendors' systems. It then pivoted to build a product around this idea (which they called LightSpeed Enterprise), which they also sold to multiple vendors at large scale.

The product was sold to multiple companies — often small ones — and was used in many different environments (Vendor A, Vendor B, Vendor C, etc.). Eventually the company decided to take the software and make it open source so that it could be used in any environment where the same functionality might be useful. This is how Lightspeed POS came about...

LightSpeed was built from scratch with no prior experience in POS or enterprise software development (we were chartered accountants), so we didn't have much of an idea what we were doing before we started. So while there are other companies making proprietary POS systems you can use today, nobody else has taken on this challenge.

And when you look at how some other companies have done things that seem like magic tricks or rocket science, you realize that their level of expertise doesn't necessarily match their level of ambition: if you bought into the "magic trick" part—the claim that if you bought this particular piece of software you could transform your business—you would be well on your way to losing money. If you bought into the "rocket science" part—the promise that if your business adopted this technology you could transform your business overnight—you would be well on your way to ruining your business.

But Lightspeed Software makes no such claims... We never promise anything that can't be achieved with less effort than what is required for us to do it ourselves. When we tell people about our plans for them they say "Oh... Wow! That sounds great! You must have an awesome sales force behind you!" And then they promptly forget all about our plans because they haven't yet even seen any proof of what