BoS 2012 conference notes

2012-BoS-notes.txt

# General notes

* Wifi woes, as usual.
* Conference food sucks, as usual
* Gave away a dead tree book. why a dead tree and not an eBook?
* #Bos2012
* Lots of energy from everyone I talked to.

# Kathy Sierra's badass users talk

* Imagine that you know someone who wants to start a business
** 1) First question: Where's the funding
*** Users will pay for it? LOL
*** It's all about the marketing, FaceBook, Pinterest, blah, blah
* We want to build desirable brands
** We want to build sustainable desirable brands
** BUT people don't identify with brands. It's not about 
** Gamification is about operant conditioning
* Desirability redefined
** We don't want to build loyalty.
** When people like something, they put up with crap. More so, they reinterpret crap as NOT crap.
** /Recommendations/
** Most companies want to be perceived as awesome. Or their product as awesome or their service as awesome.
** What we *should* be building are things that allow our *users* to be awesome.
** Build *user awesome*.
* The key aspect of a desirable app is to study the *user*. What makes the user successful?
* If you try to compete on
** App awesome: the bar is really high
** User awesome: the bar, is, alas low
*** e.g. the Head First Java book. We wrote a book focused on helping the user be more awesome, not on putting together the best Java book.
* Badass is what awesome is about. You want badass users.
* People tell others about you not because they like you or your product but because they like *their friends*
* Badass
** Not about pretending to be badass, it's about getting them to *be* badass
** It's not about being awesome at your app, it's about enabling them to be badass at something while using your app
** e.g. badass at Final Cut Pro vs. badass at making videos
** what is the bigger cooler thing that your users are trying to do?
** write your perfect amazon review. Now examine it: is it in the first person?  is it about what it enabled you to do?
** What matters is what's has been accomplished *after* the clicking or typing is done.
** how do I get my user more comments on their blog, more likes on their facebook page.
** Reliably superior performance = badass
* Better is better than good.
* Really fucking good is way, way better than good.
** People have deeper experiences when they are really good at something
* 3 Myths
** Expertise come from knowledge
** Expertise come from experience
** 
* Become badass
** Mental models
** Edge practice
** Forward flow: keep going
* But remember, step 1 is to develop the story that your user exists in
* Cognitive resource are limited
** So, try Cognitive resource driven design
** Too many choices: resource depleting
** Putting it in the world rather than in the head: don't make them remember it, represent it
** Enclothed cognition: framing
** Increase testorone, decrease cortisol

* Meta: Woah: This is the first talk I remember going to that I felt should be *longer*. So, so dense.
** TODO: I need to watch this again in small chunks in order to do more research on each section
** Not clear that this is possible :/
** Talent Code
** Drive

# Jason Cohen: Why data, stats and numbers will make you do the wrong thing

* Wisdom of crowds doesn't work for everything
** for objective matters: guessing # of jelly beans in a jar, it works
** for creative things: you end up with a poor, design by committee quality
* A/B tests
** started by showing an example of an A/A conversion rate test that showed a statistical difference that were strictly random over 20k visits
** A/B tests don't give us good results when the thing we're testing for is rare
** see bit.ly/abhamster


* Meta
** TODO: I should follow his blog
** During the talk, he highlighted examples of fallacious arguments by 37Signals in Lean Startup


# Spolsky

* I went from designing software to designing cultures
* function and culture follows form/architectural features
* so, we decided we could do community / Q&A better and built stackoverflow to intentionally create a culture
* features
** the desired reaction from each home page
*** "I don't know what's going on" or "yes, these are my people"
*** it's fresh
** moderation
*** uses voting to get peer reviews
** reputation
** government
** meta
*** meta page for each site, for the system itself
** laws

* Meta
** A disappointing talk. I think it had good points if you were building a bulletin board but little relevancy otherwise.

# Dharmesh Scaling people and tech

* HubSpot
** 2011 revenue: $28m
** 2012 revenue: 80% growth
** 375 employees
* Advice about what to do
** Do stuff you love and use
** Decrapify!
** Solve problems (instead of selling attention)
* HubSpot
** Started focused on sales and marketing and set aside product (it was OK, but not great)
** 3.5 years
** then decided to focus on product
** this was too long, we should've switched focus earlier
** ROI has gone from 1.5 to 4.7
** Sharing equity question
*** first company: no equity other than founders
*** second company: most had
*** third (HubSpot): everyone has equity
*** People like owning a piece of the pie, no matter how small the piece
*** To maximize the chance of having a huge hit is to include equity ownership

* Meta
** anti-inspirational talk
** lackluster summary of Porter's Competitive Strategy

# Peter Bauer - Mimecast

* principles
** 1. build something with friends
** 2. deal with your fears of success
** 3. never allow an investor change the chemistry or assert their agenda above that of the company
** 4. clear intent & logistics

* Endurance. Working with friends helps.

* Book: Great by Choice

* re: investors
** they often reserve the right to change the leadership and tell you what to do
** angels may be a good alternative well
*** this helped prove ourselves as people who could build and scale a business, leading to better terms

* clear intent
** when intent is clear, people can get things done
** creates a multiplier effect
** targets define and declare intent. it was clear to others that they needed to help sales meet their goals. marketing, engineering, finance all were focused on those figures.
*** Warning, this can work too well, with sales dragging everyone along in their direction, making poor engineering results.
**** and this looked successful
**** we had to talk to the other groups to clarify their own goals so that they too were clear
**** Accounting measures can also have this effect. CFO and head of sales end up taking over.
* Job
** Used to work with small groups.
** Now it's about making sure the people I work with can do that for the rest of the company, not do it myself.

* meta
** Great talk, especially when compared with Dharmesh's talk which had similar content, but this had tangible stuff to do, not vague goals

# Noah Kagan - Lovegasms

* AppSumo
** Cool shit that helps people do good work
* Goals of the talk
** How to recognize great experience
** How to create great experiences
* Do your customers remember what you ate there?
** This is like your business. Do your customers remember what they got from you?
* Pretend like your business will be around in 10 years not one that will die in 6 months
* remember, your customers are people, not numbers
** listen to them!
* imagine your customers read your about page
** did you build a relationship with them?  do you know why they're there?
** how deep with them are you?
** do you call them?
* AppSumo Framework:
** Is this X something we're proud of?
** is it simple?
** are we having fun?
** is it profitable?
* Run a business you want to be a customer of
** it's not enough to be profitable
* Creating Lovegasms
** Have values. Hell yes, hell no kind of values.
** Value. Create amazing value.
** Authenticity. Most businesses start good and go to boring.
** Surprise your customers. Don't be boring.
** Be consistent. Reliable.
** Be personal. Know your customers. e.g. a restaurant that know your name.
* marketing only works if your product doesn't suck
* Parting thought
** How does it feel to be a customer?
* On what is your job
** I used to call people part of the family and help people find ways to succeed
** help others be more successful
** talk to others about what we do
* do you develop leaders?
** i think there are 3 kinds of people: dead-weight, strong people, people who have already done it
* meta
** I didn't like the interaction: it was fake, e.g. asking questions that didn't seem to have a point. Oh, look at me!
** too self-deprecating and too self-congratulatory all at once.
** a good talk in net

# Peldi on Balsamiq

Overview:
* The plan was to be a micro ISV, enough to feed me and my family
* It has been a little over 4 years. $6m in revenue, $3m in profit, 10 people
* Learning is a roller coaster ride. up and down, but on an upward trend
* Aspects of building a business
** Vision: At first we think, it's all about the idea. Then we realize, meh, not really.
** Product: Then you think it's all about the product.
** Marketing: Then you realize, shit, I gotta sell this thing.
** Support: you do all these things, and you figure out how to do them well. Now you find yourself doing support all the time.
** Company: You hire people to help with all this and you realize they need the structure to help them.
** Ecosystem: You're not an island you need help from all manner of vendors to support all this.
** Then you learn that all of these are *equally important*. You can't focus on one over the others.

In more detail:
* Embrace your ecosystem, including:
** relationships
*** Lawyers, accountants, payroll: protect you from yourself. You have to think of them as extensions of your team. Interview them.
*** Contractors: to allow you to expand capacity or do something you don't have inhouse skills with.
*** Vendors
*** Partners
*** Channels
*** Competitors
** Things we have to do
*** Site
*** Blog
*** CMS
*** user generated content
*** forums
*** teaching
*** fun things, internal wiki
*** twitter
*** facebook
*** linkedin
*** google+
*** events
*** evangelists
*** guest blog entries
*** support the cottage industry of folks who've built stuff on top of our stuff
* Company
** you need to garden the growth of your company. it doesn't happen by itself.
** define your values
** define your focus (e.g. for Balsamiq they are usability and customer service)
** company policies/guidelines wiki
*** as few as possible: it's easy to add to these and hard to take away from them. so be careful of letting this grow.
*** avoid making something a policy the first time something makes a mistake
*** these are explicitly never done
*** explain why each policy exists and how it ties to the values
*** keep everyone on the same page
*** some of the balsamiq guidelines
**** pace > deadlines:
*****  it's not about carrots.
***** clarify everything that needs to be done
***** empower them
***** give them slack
**** vacation policy: take some!
**** salary policy: remove the money from the equation.
***** we pay better than other similar jobs in the same geographic region. 
***** 10% of profit from previous quarter
****** 25% split evenly
****** 75% split according to seniority (levels out at 5 years) (not position, salary or whatever). 
****** For some this component is as much as salary.
*** Sales support bible
*** how to set up a new dev machine
*** how we dev (branching, tdd)
*** how we communicate (hipchat + skype + google hangouts and specifies what each is for)
*** how we do support: ideally, the answer is a link to an existing (or new) page on the website
** monthly all hands
** time saving tips re: this company stuff
*** asian domain registration: scam bullshit
*** awards: bullshit. tell them to go away
*** pci compliance: it is a nightmare. the process is clearly intended to terrify you so you hire a pci consultant. if something doesn't apply to you, say yes anyway that way when it is applicable you know what you should do.
*** dealing with VCs
**** since we write software we're in the same industry as facebook. but their goals are not ours.
**** pattern: 
***** them: we keep hearing great things. let's talk this week.
***** us: no thanks
***** them: can we still talk?
***** us: i guess
***** them: we're awesome. here's our pitch. tell us about your company. tell us about growth.
***** us: here's our info. and why we're not interested in crazy growth. and that's why we don't think we're VC material.
***** them: you're right.
*** when to hire
**** i used to say: only hire when you're dying, swamped. i had fluctuations in revenue, so that makes sense
**** now i say, given that revenue is more predictable: start looking ahead so you have time to hire someone who's a good fit.
**** *never* rush a hiring decision
***** give them some contract work
***** resist the infatuation
***** listen to your concerns

* if you love what you do, innovate across all the factors. don't focus solely on your product or marketing.

* meta
** honest, fun, personal
** great reminder of the importance of the not-fun, ecosystem and company stuff
** tangible, specific advice
** TODO has a page on books that inform us

# Trafton on building a world class culture

* started with stories about poor customer service (former ibm ceo, akers, pulls all his deposits from a bank) and about a great one (ice cream at a hotel being held until after he finished eating the entree)
* what's your company's personality?
** usually it's a split personality. sometimes they're nice, sometimes they're not. that's because different people react differently and not enough attention is paid while hiring
* to have a great culture you have to be a great place to work
** remember that a great place to work is like quality: means different things to different people.
* great cultures
** attract better employees
** who stay with you longer
** stick with you through hard times
** who work for less money

steps to a great culture
* decide what you care about
** this is the one time when you get to decide
** advice:
*** come up with a list
**** think about the best aspects of you. what are those strengths? (core values)
**** thing about people you respected in previous jobs. what was it about them? (aspirational). remember not to have too many of these as then you won't be a good fit
*** make it concrete
**** what are things that get you fired?
* hire people who care about the same things
** as you're hiring people, compare them to the list of values and make sure they match *all* of them
** advice on how to interview
*** ask them to describe the culture at their current job and how they fit in
*** ask them how they hire
*** ask them what behaviors they're not willing to tolerate
*** what does [x] mean too? (e.g. excellence)
* pay attention to the things you care about
** you get the behaviors you tolerate
** ring the good-news bell when you do things you care about: close a deal, deliver for our client, hired someone
** tell hero stories - stories about someone doing something great that matches with your values
** extreme motivation - e.g. the story of the CEO shaving his head for meeting a stretch sales goal for a new product
* how important is culture?
** i fired myself this year
** i work at a new startup
** doubled revenue, 5x profit

* meta
** i loved the honesty. e.g. we're a consulting company: we just don't work with interesting technology.
** also useful were the specific examples

# Pienaar - Creating a global business from South Africa

* Met co-founders 16 months in!
* No one cares where you are from
** closest has been: what's your phone number?
* Q: how do you hire? keep everyone on the same page?
** A: we hire people we know, from the community (even users)
** A: used to use basecamp. now it's email
** A: P2 (a la yammer)
** A: Skype
** A: We have team leaders per product
** A: once a week full hands to sync up
* Q: hiring from a distance is scary enough. forming a business with people you've never met?!
** A: we gelled from day one. I think that was because we didn't think long run. we kept free lancing while we were building this. this reduced the risk. it was just a collaboration on a fun project.
* Q: how do you balance life with having a business
** A: i've failed badly at balancing it. work has been the thing I do.
** A: one thing that's helped: I removed email from my iPhone.
* Q: what are the mechanics of paying people globally?
** A: we incorporated in the US too. this was very easy < 2 weeks. it then took 9 months to get a bank account.
** A: we pay people as independent contractors through wire transfers. we don't do benefits.
* Q: how do you collaborate
** A: for product related stuff has been to have a single person who prioritizes across all products
** A: tools: trello + skype, summary emails from the product leaders
* Q: what's a mistake you made?
** A: I tried to start 2 other businesses at the same time. I will never do that again while running a business. I will do it, but after I am not doing the current thing any more.

* meta
** lots of generalizations from specific experience
** "I wish I had a brick and mortar business so I could work 9 to 5 and not think about it at home". lol!

# Wasserman on founder's dilemmas

* Most startups fail!
* Bill, a colleague was looking at what VCs did to improve companies.  while he was doing this, he looked at failures too.
** 35% failed because product vs. market fit issues.
** 65% failed because of people problems.  Tensions between founders or, founders and co-founders, and founders and employees.
* This is what this talk (and more so, book) is about.
* When we're not systemic or evidence driven, we follow gut, passion, anecdotes, rules of thumb we hear
* Dilemmas
** Foundational
*** Do you go at it solo?
*** Or do it as a team?
**** Relationships: Co-found with 
***** Friends?  Or spouse?  Or family? 50%
****** Be careful as you scale up: can you fire your partner when they can no longer do what's needed from them?
***** vs. Professional relationships
**** Roles and decision making
***** Neverland/Consensus, co-CEOs
***** Zeus/Clear hierarchy
**** Rewards
***** Especially equity split
****** Highest tension comes from these discussions

There's a strong desire to split equity early.  73% do it at the beginning.  Mostly, it's an equal split.
* This can cause major issues because early on it's not clear who's doing what, what contribution is worth what, which is more valuable, who's committed, at what level.
* Can you instead agree on a dynamic agreement that lays out multiple scenarios (especially the failure scenarios)?
** Strategy
** business model
** skill
** roles
** commitment
** personal uncertainties

Funding
* Bootstrap?
* or take money
** from whom?

As a founder *you* need to understand, where will you hit scaling issues?  When will you no longer be the right person to run the business?  And will you do it early enough, not after you've failed?  (i.e. it'll look like you're doing a great job when the funders tell you that they need to replace you)

Why do VCs sideline the founder?
* Because as founder, we're stuck.  With our people, our ideas.  And that's not what the business needs.  It needs change.

The data indicates that the longer that the founder stays in place, the less likely the business will survive.

Paradox of Entrepreneurial Success: to stay in place, don't fail, but don't succeed wildly or the business will outgrow you.

Studies show that staying King will cost you on average 52% of the value, personally.  (your much smaller share of the pie will be 2x the size of the whole cake you would have had)

* meta
** TODO: read the book

# Dorf on customer development

* Scars from 7 bootstrap startups

Reality: 
* Most startups fail to scale.  Especially a lack of customers at a reasonable customer acquisition cost.
* 20k hours over 5 years.  and 1 in 5 chance of success.
* Why do you start by writing code?!  You should start by figuring out what you need.
* Lessons
** Business plan hurt you.  They're all wrong but people are tempted to follow it, assuming they know the product.
** Customer discovery -> customer validation -> pivot -> do it again
** MVP: fewest possible features to test your hypothesis
*** they have to play with it, because you get real feedback (in contrast with telling them about it, asking them about what they like, asking them if they would use it)
*** e.g. diapers.com.  built an MVP.  but did not build any fulfillment infrastructure.  they just shopped at Walgreens, Costco, Babies-R-Us and Walmart and shipped it out.  They were testing the hypothesis that people wanted to buy diaper diversity, with the convenience of on-line sales and next day delivery.  $0 capital investment -> $1 billion in 2 years.
*** Seqoia to Google: take 2 years, don't worry about making money, instead focus on making Google the dominant search engine.  This was about customer validation.

Punch line
* figure what they want, how they will use it, when they will use it.
* stop selling, start listening.  don't argue with them and don't tell them how they're wrong about your product.
* MVP. test your hypothesis
* isolate the startup
* Pivot!  Not when 3 customers tell you this sucks.  But when you hear it from most.
** when you pivot repeat customer discovery (listen) and customer validation steps (MVP).
** be careful of premature evacuation.  don't give up unless you have enough data from your core market segment.
** who cares what the plan says if we know we need to pivot.

* MVPs are about speeding up the cycle time
* The faster you can do it, the less cash you need

* meta
** TODO: read the book!

# Dan Pink on motivation

* Talking about the new book, To sell is human
** because i am just wrapping it up
** because you understand mvp
** because Neal Davidson (an attendee) got me to write it: "I have a sales force, and I've noticed that the sales team is gaming the compensation system.  so I made it more complex.  and then they upped their game.  now, i am done: no more commissions"

Drive hypothesis:
* Behavioral rewards
** effective for simple routine tasks
** but don't work for heuristic or creative tasks

What people then kept asking me: what about sales people?

So I heard of people getting rid of commissions
* It makes people collaborative
* Makes people more helpful
* I didn't know anything about sales, so I decided to write a book

Here's what I found
* Death of a salesman meme: disintermediation. The idea is that the sales people are no longer needed.
** nope.  we have 15 million people in the US who work in sales. that's more than federal governments, state government or manufacturing
* and as far as I am concerned, the other 8 out of 9 people are doing non-sales selling.  convincing people to give up time, money, attention, effort in exchange for other stuff
** I worked on a survey (7000 people) to figure out what percentage of your work is about persuading others: on average 41%
* i.e. we're all selling!
* and we don't like it.  why?
** what do people think of when they hear sales: pushy, yuck
** always be closing -> steam rolling approach
*** who wants to be that?
** the view is that sales is about deception
* this comes from the fact that sales is about information asymmetry.
** the seller knows more about the product than the buyer
* this world of information asymmetry is ending
** information is more available
** and i can now tell the world when i am screwed over
* this creates a new dynamic.  it's turning into a world of caveat venditor (seller beware).
* qualities needed in this new world
** Attunement
*** Get someone else's perspective
*** figure out where they are coming from
*** understand their structure: what's their hierarchy
** Buoyancy
*** As a salesman "you confront an ocean of rejection"
*** Buoyancy is the ability to deal with that
** Clarity
*** Problem finding and identifying

Attunement
* the more power one thinks they have the less attuned to other people
* Improving your capacity for perspective taking:
** Reduce your power
*** e.g. "I put myself in the small chair"
** Use your head as much as your heart
*** Not the same as empathy which is emotional
** Mimic strategically

* Extroverts make the best sales people?
** There's actually no correlation (0.07) that they are more successful 
** they actually tend to be bad: never listen
** Ambiverts (in the middle between extroverted vs. introverted) actually have the best correlation

Sales actions
* Pitch
** Question pitch: there is evidence phrasing things as a question (rather than assertive) is more effective
*** A question gets people to think and summon their own answer.  and people like to agree.  and they come up with their *own* reason which are more powerful.
*** It can backfire in weak cases.
** Rhyming pitch
*** When messages rhyme, they're more memorable and seem more credible. (enhanced processing fluency - repetition also does this)
** Once upon a time
* Improvise
* Serve

* Suggested compensation for sales people
** Healthy fixed
** + Variable based on company performance

# Talks relative ranking

## Wow

* Kathy Sierra
* Dan Pink
* Noam Wasserman

## I really enjoyed

* Peldi
* Bob Dorf
* Peter Bauer
* Mikey Trafton

## Good talks

* Jason Cohen
* Noah

## I would've been happy to skip these

* Dharmesh
* Spolsky
* Pienaar