Patio11 says Hello Ladies | Hacker News Reader

Patio11 says Hello Ladies

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699 pointsakshat114 comments

Posted with slides on my blog.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/26/software-for-underserved...

I had been waiting for the video to come out -- they usually use them to promote the Business of Software conference. So, let me make my one plug: go to the Business of Software conference. It was one of the highlights of my professional career, and I got advice and inspiration that directly helped get AR launched the following month. This talk barely gets in the ballpark of quality of some of the presentations -- and the real reason to go isn't the presentations, but to meet people who doing great things in software. (More than once I found myself asking "Who the heck let me sit at this table?! This guy bootstrapped a business which sells nuclear power plant control software and now has N employees and Y million revenue. I make bingo cards for a living!")

Thanks for the praise by the way.

How much advice from the nuclear plant guy is relevant for bingo cards? Honest question, I can see "surprisingly more than you'd think" to "well, not much, really" being in the range of possible answers.

Sounds like a fun conference, but I'm cheap: $2000+ plus travel plus hotel, plus lost time is a lot of money. Conferences always seem like a much better deal if you get invited as a speaker. You get a super-power-bonus for your own networking, because people recognize you from you talk, you get a speaker badge, and so on, and plus, you don't have to pay so much (or anything if it goes well). I pretty much stopped going to conferences where I'm not speaking.

(In agreeing I'll add) I'm stingier with my time than $2000; the thing making me hesitate on the next one is that I wonder how much of Patrick's endorsement is based on him getting to sit at the cool kid's table in the evening and talk directly with the other speakers. Patrick, did you learn much from talking directly to attendees? Had you not been speaking, would you have learned as much from (say) Peldi?

The good thing about Business of Software is you get to sit at the table with the cool kids the whole time. The capacity for the event is 380 people in total. That is a small conference by any standards.

I think it finally clicked what people mean when they say "don't build your presentation around powerpoint"- your presentation style is great. Also, clever story about the teacher/classroom getting written up but not the software.

Do you remember the name of the nuclear power plant control software?

Hmm, I've worked on NPP control software for a guy, that bootstrapped the company. The software was absolutely nasty - copy/paste and what not. And the bootstrapper got the business of his first couple NPPs because of family connections ...

So I'd prefer to sit next to you, Patrick ;-)

the NPP, was it in Fukushima by any chance?

Non-blogspam link: http://businessofsoftware.blip.tv/file/4933754/

Alternatively a direct link to the 70MB M4V (H264 & AAC) source (so you can avoid Flash, even though Blip.tv has HTML5 I think): http://blip.tv/file/get/Businessofsoftware-PatrickMcKenzieMa...

It's a video called "Patrick McKenzie. Marketing to minorities".

Title of the talk was "Software for underserved markets", he talks about women. It's quite short (<10 minutes) and full with wit and energy. Great fun to watch.

This Patrick McKenzie sounds suspiciously like patio11, the submitter of this very link...

Patrick, I'm really glad to see you use the reference from the Atlantic article in your presentation. It was one of the most memorable "testimonials without even being a testimonial" I've ever read about the use software for a higher purpose:

Next, Mr. Taylor announces it’s time for Multiplication Bingo. As Mr. Taylor reads off a problem (“20 divided by 5”), the kids scour their boards, chips in hand, looking for 4’s. One girl is literally shaking with excitement. Another has her hands clasped in a prayer position. I find myself wanting to play. You know you’re in a good classroom if you have to stop yourself from raising your hand.

My reaction, which hasn't changed, from 11 months ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1267630

The full article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/01/what-makes...

I wrote that into the slide primarily because you had seemed so affected by it. Thanks for calling it out for me.

That is a great article, even aside from the anecdote about the bingo cards. Analysing what makes a good teacher is so important yet so difficult in reality because of the influence of teachers’ unions. There’s also is a huge reluctance to use any information that is discovered to improve our education systems.

Amazingly, it's also highly relevant to entrepreneurs. The article lists six characteristics of great teachers:

1. great teachers tended to set big goals for their students

2. perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness

3. avidly recruited students and their families into the process

4. maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning

5. planned exhaustively and purposefully by working backward from the desired outcome

6. worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender

Translating these to the world of entrepreneurs we can say:

1. set big goals for yourself

2. perpetually look or ways to improve your effectiveness

3. avidly recruit workers and partners into the process

4. maintain focus, ensuring that everything you do contributes to your goals

5. plan exhaustively and purposefully by working backward from the desired outcome

6. work relentlessly, do not surrender

The best line is when he says, "features.html should 404."

What he says is basically:

1. Develop a niche, and this is probably easier if you target women.

2. Sell an emotional experience, not features.

3. Tell stories because software is boring.

4. Profit!!!

2. Sell an emotional experience, not features.

Eh, that works for your market.

3. Tell stories because software is boring.

Now we're getting somewhere, this is universally applicable.

I think the underserved market is pretty much non-geeks. I don't really think non-geeks like features as much as they like being able to do things.

I kind-of agree with dtby because I've been able to sell some of my web software because of my massively exhaustive list of features. For my customers, it left them thinking, man we have to have this, we had no idea there was a software solution for all these problems.

Bzzzt. You are having a common nerd/guy adverse reaction to the word "emotional", but as someone who has sold software and services to huge companies staffed with gun-totin' Ron Swansons for 15 years, let me assure you, everyone is receptive to emotions. They're just different emotions†.

Watch Patrick's talk. Particularly the Google slide.

† "Fear" is one my industry has used to great effect; "egotism" is another one.

And as someone who has sold software and services to huge companies with gun-totin' Ron Swansons for over 15 years, let me assure you that this is untrue.

So, yeah, it's a question of approach. Which was my entire point.

You've never seen the "better" product, with superior performance and more feature check-boxes, lose to the product with the more attractive user interface? Because I feel like that's the oldest blues song I've heard sung.

Of course. But I don't believe that every sale I have lost for what I believe to be non-rational reasons is inherently an emotional decision. Sometimes I just don't understand the motivations of my customers.

We're spiraling here. All I'm saying is, emotional appeals are very much in play in most markets, very much including old conservative white males in '50s-era financial products businesses (fear; get - me - home - in - time - to - see - the - kids; fraternity) and young thin white males at software shops (vanity).

Someone said, "sell emotional experiences and features". You said something to the effect of "eh, maybe that works in your market". Here's where I cut in: bzzt! It works in virtually all markets.

Even in buy-by-committee enterprise sales, there are emotional appeals that will give you an edge.

A fun exercise: look at the most successful, best marketed products in a variety of fields, and spot the emotional elements. Start with Github.

It's all good. I've lived an odd life, but essentially every dollar I have made has come from someone thinking he is getting more value for his dollar than I am charging him for my software/service/whatever. Considering the businesses in which I have often found myself, that has often meant that they felt they were smarter than me. I doubt any of them felt an emotion beyond greed. If that counts, then I'm well and truly wrong.

Then, again, you managed to drag a huge thread out of me based on my emotional reaction to your (frankly offensive) "Bzzt" so maybe you're right for "most" markets.

"Sell benefits, not features" is a marketing-101 principle; a good way to tell if you're selling a real benefit (and selling it effectively) is to isolate and hone the emotional component to it. You can do this even in hard-nosed products; there are emotional components to the "we're not full of shit and our products just do what you need them to do" pitch.

I'm not trying to argue with you now; just extending my point.

> but essentially every dollar I have made has come from someone thinking he is getting more value for his dollar than I am charging him for my software/service/whatever.

Isn't that the basis of all voluntary transactions?

Here are two examples:

1. The business man from the city that buys a small piece of land (40 - 60 acres) and cash rents it out. Now you might say that's greed. He's looking to make more money and is greedy pushing the family farm out and renting to the big corporate farmers. You're wrong though. He bought the small farm to brag about it at cocktail parties. That's why all these business types own small chunks of land in rural areas. That's an emotional reason to own it.

2.Imagine a company that allows you to out source your life. One might say, "If I can make $100 an hour free lancing, then I should out source all tasks that I can for less than $100 an hour" and you would argue this is logical. But the real reason someone would want to outsource the laundry, and all aspects of their life is purely emotional. They can then go brag about to all their friends how perfect of a life they have because they don't have to do any crappy work. That's why people making $35 an hour are paying $50 an hour to have the crap done they could do themselves.

If you damage the emotional part of the brain, you are unable to make decisions. You can reason all day long and compare and contrast, but you can never decide.

I wouldn't be surprised if the emotional value that the guys you run into is how they can brag at cocktail parties or to their business associates how they screwed over some computer science graduate and that they used their Harvard MBA to do it.

Now now, tptacek, you know that thinking you're superior isn't an emotion if it's a fact ;)

Sounds basically like the Apple method (sans the explicit focus on Women)

>'The best line is when he says, "features.html should 404."'

Redirect 301 /features.html http://example.com/benefits

Surely ...?

2. Sell an emotional experience, not features.

Something I learned in the course of raising and homeschooling a couple of special needs kids:

Emotion is a form of memory. People who lack much in the way of affect are terrible at making snap decisions. They lack a "gut feeling" to go on. That "gut feeling" is a shorthand way for the brain/body to store info and make decisions quickly. I have one son that is very emotional and capable of making snap decisions. I have one son who has little affect and can't make snap decisions. So I think using "emotional appeal" is a form of shorthand to communicate value to the audience. I don't think I can explain it better than that, but I really think it doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets. Emotional appeal is not some sort of illogical, shallow, silly means to make a decision. It is an alternate means, but not necessarily any less information-dense than scads and scads of logical analysis. In fact, it is probably more information dense (a la "a picture's worth a thousand words" -- "a gut feeling is worth hours and hours of study and analysis") and that is likely why it contains power to sell so much more effectively.

Peace.

Edit: Utterly baffled by the downvote. No one needs to upvote me, but some thoughts as to what the issue is would be appreciated. Thanks.

I didn't downvote you, but I am going to thoughtfully disagree.

Emotional heuristics aren't cognitively worthless, and they're not even that bad, but they definitely have their own biases that you need to adjust for. Our emotional intuitions are largely shaped more by evolution than by our own values and preferences. If emotions were great cognitive tools, we wouldn't need to discover rationality.

Thanks, but I think I must have not made my point effectively. I'm well aware that we have biases and being burned can make one avoid something "illogically". But if you are trying to sell something, then emotional appeal contains shorthand, dense information. As an example, see edw519's post in this same thread and the remarks of his he linked to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2372514 In short, he says he wants someone "shaking with excitement" to use his product. "Shaking with excitement" conveys a great deal of info about the value of the product with very little effort. If you can sum up the value of your product so succinctly and powerfully, then there is a kind of density of info of the sort that influences decision-making (ie leads to sales).

Does that make more sense?

(Not to be sarcastic, but cute) I didn't downvote you, but I am going to thoughtfully disagree.

Our emotional intuitions are largely shaped more by evolution than by our own values and preferences.

Well, if that were the case, people would have the same emotions about the same things, but actually, different people have different reactions to different things. (That's because they value different things.)

If emotions were great cognitive tools, we wouldn't need to discover rationality

Emotions are responses to values (as patio11 said, rightly, in his talk). You need to use reason to figure out what you value. Once you do, your emotions follow therefrom. But "what you value" is actually very complex and context-dependent sometimes, which is why emotions are so useful to give you a snap summary of what could otherwise be a very complex situation to analyze thoroughly.

It's certainly the case that your emotions can be "wrong," but they just follow the thinking you've done previously, whether that thinking was deliberate or accidental.

If all of your emotions are perfectly consistent with your rationally chosen values, I seriously envy you.

I'm sure it's extremely rare (maybe not 100% possible) to have all your values be fully consistent with one another. (I'm certainly not there.)

Our mental data is stored out of our conscious awareness unless we're actually thinking about it, and emotions actually come out of that (i.e., out of the subconscious). So one can't even be aware of all the values held in their subconscious unless they take a long time and pay a lot of attention to their emotions. Hence, getting them all to be consistent is no easy feat. Unless one were to start out with sufficient knowledge to do it right in the first place, which we don't.

"Emotional appeal is not some sort of illogical, shallow, silly means to make a decision. It is an alternate means, but not necessarily any less information-dense than scads and scads of logical analysis."

I'd actually go even farther than that. I would say that many times, people make decisions based on emotion (and "gut feelings"), but justify the decisions to themselves and others with logical analysis.

In other words, most decisions are emotional and not logical, however much people disagree.

Easy way to see the truth of this in many situations - lots of times, people make up their minds, and there is literally nothing you can say or do that will change it. This would not be true if their decision was a rational one (something you think, but which is unfalsifiable, is a belief and not a rational decision).

IIRC, there is a book called "Blink" and I believe it is based on research which basically determined that, statistically, the initial "gut reaction"/first impression is actually the most reliable. That initial reaction apparently sums up quite a lot of info quickly which tons of analysis often fails to top. In my experience, a combination of "gut feeling" and analysis is a superior decision-making model but not easy to achieve. You basically have to be willing to do a form of self-therapy and question what your negative emotional reactions are based on and whether those biases really apply in this situation or not. Most folks are not comfortable with that. And I think individuals probably get burned repeatedly in a similar manner because of something inherent to themselves (like if you have bad eyesight, some things just won't work well for you no matter how hard you try -- it becomes a more efficient decision-making model to "just not like it" than to logically analyze that it probably won't work well because of your eyesight issues).

But if you are not the consumer, if you are the seller, then designing your sales effort to key in to that quicker, more efficient decision-making process (aka "emotional appeal") is going to be a more effective sales tool. If the emotional appeal you make is not a lie, if it is based on genuine, meaningful information (like testimonials), then there is nothing inherently wrong with it. It is just a means to go with the most efficient way to transmit data about the value the product has.

For me, understanding this aspect of human decision making is empowering (so I shared it in hopes of helping it make logical sense to folks who seem to generally think logic is superior to emotion). For example, it helped me and my sons deal effectively with my dad who has Alzheimer's. If someone doesn't have good conscious memory, then they base a lot of their decisions on how they feel about you. Yelling at them and such, like other family members did, makes them not trust you because they have a bad feeling about you, even though they can't say what you did that made them dislike you. My dad trusted me while I lived there, even though he wandered around the house with my mail and ask me to my face "Have you seen <my first name>? I have her mail." He couldn't put my name and face together but he would eat what I cooked and things like that, something which astonished the rest of the family because he has always been a paranoid SOB and won't eat food cooked by just anybody. He liked me and trusted me -- his emotional memory system was still functional even though other types of memory were failing -- and I also worked with his routines, rather than against them, which are another type of memory.

That was a great speech. After ruminating a bit, I'm still left with the sad thought that I have no clue how to put this information to use. I just went through my last 100 orders and 29 were women, so there's room for improvement. I just Googled a few variations of "how women buy on the internet", which resulted in a bunch of sites for little blue pills and Russian brides, I didn't find any useful studies. It would be a good reading topic if anyone knows a source.

Why don't you ask your female customers? Ask them how they found you? why they bought? what features of the product they like the best? ...

> Features...

Patio11 would probably suggest putting a question about benefits and experiences during usage in there too.

I actually have asked customers - both men and women, but the main issue is that only a small percentage ever contact me for pre-sales or support inquires (which is nice in its own way), It never hurts to read academic or professional studies with a broader scope, though.

Bribe them. Give them a promotional code that gives them $5 of one of your other products, and let them give a $5 discount to one of their friends. You'll be able to purchase information about your target market.

Read "Why She Buys" by Bridget Brennan. It is probably one of the most enlightening marketing/consumer psych. books I have ever read. I seriously cannot recommend it highly enough. Also, it's not just about the female consumer--there's discussion about the male consumer psychology to put things into context.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-She-Buys-Strategy-Consumers/dp/030...

Great book. If you like that (or really, even if you don't), I'd also recommend "Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior" by Geoffrey Miller.

It goes into the more general evolutionary psychology behind why anyone buys anything. I particularly enjoyed his early anecdote about what early humans would think if you tried to explain to them our concepts of 'money' and 'shopping'.

http://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/...

*Caveat: I haven't read many other books about consumer behavior, so I can't say how good this is relatively speaking.

I'm not to familiar with evolutionary psychology, but this looks interesting (and it's on the Kindle for less the $10). Added it to my reading list--thanks!

Sure! I spent one semester back in college on a kick of reading about evpsych. Really, anything by Miller is great. Or Matt Ridley. Or Cosmides and Tooby. Or...

...Yeah. It's way too easy to get caught up in a cycle of more and more books.

Wow, really nicely done. Sure, some nerves and timing issues but really impressive outside that, particularly as an non-natural public speaker.

Of course, the true measure of public speaking is how many people act on the message. :) Would be interested to know what feedback patio11 has received on that front.

Are the slides available somewhere? Couldn't find them on his site.

particularly as an non-natural public speaker.

My favorite comment after the speech: "Honestly, when you got up on stage, I thought 'Oh cripes, an engineer with no social skills.' Little did I know it was all part of the act!"

Hah, the joke is on you, sucker :)

(Joking aside: this is the best speech I've given in my life by a factor of "lots" judging by audience reaction, but I did competitive public speaking for most of a decade. It isn't totally anomalous that I'd be decent at it.)

[Please approach in a light tone]

I found you engaging and fresh in your approach (but I don't see that many presentations so what do I know) but to be uber-critical you spoke a bit too quickly at times. Usually this is an indication of nervousness but you appear to suggest (above) you have so much experience that this wouldn't be a problem.

Incidentally I suck at public speaking and tend to make nervous quips and self-deprecate (which tends to make one look worse) like you did with your "10 second [...] shoulda practised [...]" interlude. Did I mention that I'm a bit too heavy on the negative critique usually too ...

Couple of points/queries:

Is the colour of the guys you're selling software to relevant? You specify that they're white guys but I wasn't sure if this is a specific comment on demographics of people who buy software or if it was something else?

Second, knowing when a battle was doesn't make you intelligent though it might make you knowledgeable or nerdy. That aside Google don't appear to sell themselves on the issue of their customers presenting themselves as knowledgeable. Surely the benefit they sell most is simply "not wasting time looking for stuff" (Bing do the same, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLV_MTvshGg).

Usually this is an indication of nervousness but you appear to suggest (above) you have so much experience that this wouldn't be a problem.

My ex-husband is extremely introverted. He learned to speak in public but it never, ever stopped being a sweaty-palms, knees-shaking type experience for him. (And he was double majoring in computer sci/history when we divorced.) For some people, experience doesn't really resolve this issue.

Don't forget the format. He had slides auto-advancing every 30 seconds.

I saw that after I posted and thought his timing was pretty amazing given that.

"Software is just the monetisation engine for the emotion business."

That makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

It is difficult to understate how good Patrick was.

BoS has some of the best speakers in the business. Some you will have heard of - Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, Geoffrey Moore - some you won't have heard from even if you have heard of them - Peldi at Balsamiq for example. http://businessofsoftware.org/prevyear.aspx

Patrick only had 7 minutes 30 seconds but he rocked the house. He will be back this year we hope.

I assume

  s/understate/overstate/

Ha! Indeed. I had originally written, 'couldn't overstate'. Then I wrote something else. Then a small child appeared and distracted me. Then I just posted nonsense. I blame the minors.

What I meant was Patrick was totally awesome and the video doesn't do his talk proper justice.

Brilliant talk - but for some reason I always envisioned patio11 as being quite considerably older...!

This was great, but he seemed a little nervous, although his text was perfect.

If you've seen his older videos and interviews you can see how far he's come along. Few more presentations and he'll be a pro.

Sometimes you can't help it.

Even if you're super prepared and you know your material is good, if you don't give presentations on a regular basis your reptilian brain just sits there screaming THEY ARE GOING TO KILL YOU to your autonomic nervous system. It happens to me almost every time I give a presentation (about twice a year), even though I really enjoy giving presentations and I am completely not nervous at all consciously.

I'm far from being a presentation pro, but I've talked myself out of getting nervous - just by reasoning it through like going on a flight.

When you're in an audience, do you want to kill a speaker? I know that when I'm in an audience, I (a) don't care at all; (b) switch off if the speaker is bad; (c) actually want to hear the information being giving them (and don't mind if the speaker is bad - and probably rooting for them if they are).

It was once pointed out to me by a public speaking coach that "the audience wants you to succeed." It's so easy to let nerves kick in and become terrified that if you make even the slightest mistake you will be booed off stage. It can feel like an adversarial relationship between you and the audience.

The reality is that in almost all cases people in the audience are there voluntarily because they want to hear what you have to say. They want you to succeed so that they can have an enjoyable experience listening to you.

I have also realized that this is true at times when I am in the audience for a speaker who is really nervous. In some small way it feels like I am part of the speech. I think most people have been in this situation and sort of cringed when a mistake happens, because you don't want to see the person on stage hurting, you want to see them do great.

So I had this talk down cold when I arrived in Boston and then learned I had misunderstood the rules for talks. I thought I had 7.5 minutes to go through 15 slides with a clicker. 48 hours prior to doing this talk I learned I had 30 seconds per slide and then the slide would autoadvance.

This totally fubared my joke timing, so I had spent the entire night prior to this speech practicing, going so far as to do so over lunch in my hotel room, to the amusement of the cleaning lady who also needed the room. I didn't stop being terrified out of my freaking mind until "swan dive", which was the moment that I knew I had the crowd.

Message still delivered. No worries!

Autoadvance is inhumane. Speakers should not be expected to have their timing down so well that every slide transitions smoothly. The presenter will inevitably be a couple of seconds off on every slide.

I am impressed how well you pulled it off. It is hard enough to write, memorize and deliver a 7.5 minute speech. Then to add a sadistic constraint like autoadvancing slides, that raises the bar. But you nailed it. Hats off.

Auto advance is going a bit too far. It's a recipe for mediocrity. Nobody can time transitions that regularly, and missing beats are ugly and painful.

I'd rather see a rule: Advance the slide within X seconds or it will auto advance. Then limit the number of words, or something, instead of the number of slides.

Another way is to impose a hard stop at the 7.5 minute mark. If after a yellow light and a red light the presenter is still yammering, cut off their mic.

It's not that hard, really. If you memorize your presentation you can reliably get within a few seconds. Most of the transitions don't require pinpoint timing accuracy, anyway.

It's really common to overlook the amount of time that will be eaten up by applause/laughter, though. Don't forget to give yourself some breathing room for that sort of thing, particularly if your speaking format penalizes you in some fashion for going over time.

> Autoadvance is inhumane. Speakers should not be expected to have their timing down so well that every slide transitions smoothly.

It's presumably part of the presentation style that started with Pecha Kucha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha) which then inspired Ignite talks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignite_(event)).

It's definitely a different approach but it can encourage people to present in a way that flows more rather than a presentation that is broken up on a per-slide basis.

I noticed there was one particular slide that appeared only a fraction of a second after to gestured for it to appear (It looked like a human operator was watching you and advanced the slide when you indicated). That's some incredible timing!

Very impressive, Patrick! Love the energy and humor.

Just wondering, how many times you practice it? (I'm guessing at least 5 times)

"All of the Lightning Talks were delivered by non-professional speakers. They followed a murderously difficult format: you get 15 slides which get auto-advanced every thirty seconds, and that’s it. You might think that means you can get away with slapping together something in an hour: oh no. In discussions with my fellow lightning talkers, we agreed that there has been something of a “lightning talk arms race”: the two talks I was most impressed by took over 24 hours to prepare, and mine took at least twelve solid hours over two months, with probably half of that being rehearsal until I could literally count out thirty seconds with a prepared spiel delivered in a voice other than my own."

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/10/15/lessons-learned-at-busin...

Ever learned a musical piece that's more than just a few chords? The process, at least for me, is similar. You practice practice practice until you've got it perfectly memorized.

I couldn't give you a specific number, but whenever I've given a ~5 minute talk, I'm sure I ran through it at least a couple dozen times. Even if you have every single word written down and perfect, there are all kinds of details (timing, tone, etc) to be worked out -- and in reality, I do a lot of minor editing as I practice. That effort is the difference between a dull talk with a lot of um-ing and uh-ing, and an engaging one that the audience might remember.

If you are going to pick something up and post it on your Posterous, ignore the copyright notices, then post it on Hacker News, it would be really lovely if you could include one small link back to the event page you took it from.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

Thanks.

Interesting and very timely, I think a significant portion of the audience for http://LiberWriter.com will turn out to be women.

So... what kind of easy to create image can I put up to show how things work in a more 'human' way? I like the spareness of the design and I'm not paying for a designer until I start making steady money so "go pay a design guy a lot of money" is not a good answer.

A picture of Amanda Hocking with a quote (with her permission of course).

Edit: or a clip like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Timely, too, since they are maximizing exposure for registration for this year's conference. Clever!

Get a $70 template from WooThemes (or any of numerous cheaper options) to make it look professional, then find a stock image of e.g. a woman sipping coffee at Starbucks and do one of those hand-drawn arrow things saying "She'll be a published author by the end of the latte."

Alternatively, a youngish mother playing with her child. Again, hand-drawn callout: "My mom is a published author."

Cool. A little birdie tells me that Adii Rockstar, founder of Woothemes will be coming from South Africa to talk at Business of Software this year.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

Perhaps you should be selling the dream of becoming a published writer rather than just being "the easiest way to write for the Kindle."

This is a man who understands why people buy stuff. Awesome to see him talk.

This was brilliant. To me the best part was about bringing the emotional connection to customers right from the home page. Sell them the success they're subconsciously seeking.

Such a simple talk, such simple advice, but I learned so much. So much is obvious upon reflection, but great advice usually is. Awesome job.

Thanks for explicitly calling out that it isn't that people sell poorly to women, but that we sell poorly to everyone. It is a very useful turn to take when thinking about market segmentation. Great talk!

If you are thinking of going to Business of Software this year, the first Early Bird discount finishes midnight PST on Sunday night. Over 150 places of 380 total gone already.

http://businessofsoftware.org/

This is great. Goes along with Zed Shaw's philosophy on the selling and purchasing of enterprise software - steaks and strippers. Features are boring, steaks and strippers aren't.

http://vimeo.com/2723800 (17:53)

This was an awesome presentation, quick, funny, to the point.

However, it brought up some interesting questions for me. How many people can truly create software for the sole purpose of selling it? Unless he really likes Bingo cards, he worked on this software not out of love but love for money.

This isn't a bash, I'm insanely curious actually. The more I think about it, the more I know that I cannot create software for women because I have absolutely no interests that would coincide with an underserved market. Maybe I'm just not creative enough? And honestly, for me to create an awesome product, I'd have to be invested in it somehow.

I don't hate money, but if I wanted it, there would be more straightforward ways of getting it than BCC.

I certainly don't love bingo. I do really care about teaching and helping teachers. I also love running a business, both the actual mechanics of doing it and what it does for my life.

You almost certainly have interests which coincide with an underserved market, since you're a human and not a walking cliche of asocial geeky engineer who likes D&D and Firefly.

Patio11, good speech and funny, too. Awesome job, man!

Great talk! Funny, engaging, involved the audience, full of great content.

I certainly learned something, already rethinking a few parts of our messaging.

I wondered at first how Patrick could squeeze success from something like Bingo card creation.

I don't anymore.

I think of it as a two-dimensional market segmentation perspective: gender on one dimension, race on another. In a lot of segments, almost everybody is fighting it out in the "white guy" quadrant or at least the "guy" half. Take the Q&A space, for example: Quora is 80-90% guys, and so is StackOverflow. So there's room for competitors targeting the "niches" that actually make up most of the population. And there are similar dynamics in most market segments ...

I have been highly anticipating this, and it's better than I thought it would be. A bit awkward at times, but that's what makes it so endearing.

We can see how genuine he is.

Good job Patrick!

Excellent presentation. Brilliant. I'm always told that sell process is actually selling one of these four things: fear, greed, vanity, or insecurity.

But that is easier said than done. I have no clue how to achieve that (I'm still in "sell features" mindset). I would like to hear is there are any good examples of software product or server which does that well.

Kind of along the lines of this is Spolsky's advice that he would give out at the Dev Days conference tour he does/did with Carsonified: How is your software going to get someone laid?

While a little far-fetched, it does help keep everything in perspective although it serves the young guy demographic a bit more.

Did that "get someone laid" bit originate with JWZ? http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

Thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed the presentation and have a newfound respect for patio11. Not that I didn't enjoy listening to him on the Techzing Podcast.

At the end of the video Patrick mentions his website has some example businesses for women. Anyone have the link to that page?

His blog: http://www.kalzumeus.com/start-here-if-youre-new/

It’s the last slide and you should click the fullscreen button to be able to read the text: http://www.slideshare.net/patio11/software-for-underserved-m...

Here you go:

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/selling-t...

Fantastic presentation!

Business of Software is the best for sharing these videos. Thanks Joel/BoS!

Random, but is the intro from the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast?

It's from the Old Spice commercials.

I hate hero shots, do we have to have hero shots?

Sorry for the karma bait title :)

From the title, I was half-expecting a link to patio11's profile on some dating site.

Great video, thanks for posting.

The title is very appropriate. The talk is awesome too.

I think that here on HN any title with the word "Patio11" in it can be considered karma bait ;)

Very interesting prespective

Expect a surge in period tracker web apps.

Doesn't work on iPhone?

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