fab1an

This is very useful. You can combine this with another good practice by writing down the first task that you're going to tackle in the morning once you've woken up - e. g. that painful email you've been postponing for the last couple of weeks. This carries the additional benefit of having a clear cut productive start in the day.

They're simply using the standard "Feel, Felt, Found" formula , which I believe was pioneered by Roger Dawson in "Secrets of Power Negotiating" - http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Power-Negotiating-Roger-Dawson...

If parental control is truly the main issue, face detection algorithms that also assess your age could be a solution [1], but then again, it seems like Samsung is owning the patent for this [2]. Oops!

Sources: 1. http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2012/04/how-old-do-you-look-fa...

2. http://www.google.com/patents/US8218080

Based on Isaacson's official biography, the 'reality distortion field' ascribed to Jobs by Apple employees was more of a euphemism for his capacity of successfully 'bend the truth' / outright lie for the sake of 'placeboing' the world towards his vision.

"To some people, calling it a reality distortion field was just a clever way to say that Jobs tended to lie. But it was in fact a more complex form of dissembling. He would assert something - be it a fact about world history or a recounting of who suggested an idea at a meeting - without even considering the truth. It came from willfully defying reality, not only to others but to himself." (p. 118)

While it's tempting to 'learn' described techniques, particularly for us entrepreneurial types, one shouldn't forget that their 'mastery' necessarily presupposes a flexible attitude towards ethics and to some extent, basic human decency. Jobs, of course, wasn't exactly a master of either.

It depends on whether you define diversity as being 'ethnically' diverse or culturally diverse. Obviously, Germany is ethnically less diverse than, say, California, just as much as any American city is ethnically less diverse than London. If we're talking about 'cultural' diversity the regional differences between southern, northern, eastern and western Germany can be extreme, yet maybe difficult to notice for someone who has not lived there for at least a bit.

In my personal experience (I grew up and spend most of my time in different parts of Germany and Europe, but have worked and lived in Boulder, CO) there is a very distinct and unifying American identity that you do not find like that in Germany. A lot of Germans in the south will define themselves first and foremost by their regional identity, the same is true for people from Hamburg - and the differences are striking, as most Germans from who are from one region but have lived in another will confirm.

That said, comparing whole nations in this manner is entertaining, yet rarely a really fruitful enterprise. People in Wisconsin probably share more similarities with people in Meckelenburg-Vorpommern than they do with New Yorkers, the latter being more similar to people in Berlin etc etc.

I wouldn't flat out ask people to mentor you, just as you wouldn't ask someone explicitly to become 'close friends' right away - great relationships take time to be developed.

Instead, how about simply asking a more experienced entrepreneur or investor for their advise on your startup. Depending on where you live, you could approach them at local startup events (where are you based?) - offer to buy them lunch or coffee in exchange for their advise. Who knows, ideally one of those might become your startup's first investor - as the not-too-old adage goes, ask for advise to get funding, ask for funding to get advise.

Most people will be flattered if you just genuinely ask them for their opinion and help - the rest has to be developed over time.

I agree with the article but would add that a lot of times sales people are hired under the "business development" umbrella simply to not call them "sales" people - most businesses don't want to be contacted by a sales person (except when you do know that you absolutely must acquire a certain widget). At the same time, this isn't true for most startups: most startups by definition (given they do something new) don't sell existing must-have products but current nice-to-haves with a potential to become future must-haves if their transformative vision pans out.

Having hired two North Americans in Berlin (one from the US, one from Canada) I can say that the process is surprisingly streamlined and straightforward. Canada and Germany have a Youth Mobility Agreement that allows young Canadians to get their work permit within a week in Canada - for US-citizens you need to outline the reasons for hiring them over Germans and EU-citizens in writing. It suffices to state that you're looking for a native English speaker that would potentially be able to run an office in the US at some point. Done. The whole process took us less than 4 weeks and doesn't involve an attorney or any other significant legal fees. Applicants need to be able to present a bachelor's degree as a minimum though, so you wouldn't be able to hire the next Steve Jobs. Also, Berlin offers significant bang for the buck - the cost of living is (still) comparatively low and the city itself is simply amazing.

The style of presentation strikes me as awkward - why wouldn't they let the main presenter just use the phone and control the slides himself? It adds a lot of unnecessary "next slide please" interruptions.

I would strongly suggest you drop the "websites not using us yet" line from your landing page. Showing their logos isn't a trick to increase conversions, but borderline dodgy -- and people will notice.

You might be aware of this already, but when posting to Reddit, make sure to use the appropriate subreddit - in your case http://www.reddit.com/r/bioinformatics, which has 2,790 subscribers. Posting to Reddit generically won't get you anywhere. If your product has a certain application angle that could be interesting/funny/relevant to larger subreddits you could try to create an infographic hosted on imgur - as cool as Reddit's community is, their attention spans are rather short and most people won't read / upvote a lengthy article (safe specific subreddits, I bet things over at r/bioinformatics are different.) Good luck with your startup.

EDIT: semantics.

The first things you do in the morning seem to 'set the tone' for the rest of the day. E. g., have you ever noticed how the first song you listen to often sticks with you for hours? So instead of firing up HN or Reddit right after you woke up, start your day with something that requires your output - this doesn't have to be an essay, but could be as quick as:

- writing that uncomfortable email that's been lingering on your todo list - begin to write your next blog post - not a coder myself, but I would assume that this all applies to writing code / fixing/finding bugs, too.

On a related note, the last thing you do before you sleep can also have a very positive effect on your next day's productivity. I find that going to through / defining the top 3 goals for the day after helps me structure my work and be more motivated to pick up directly on those todos right after I get up.

I don't think this is a silly idea. It's obviously a nice "PR" stunt and interesting enough to have made it to the HN front page, which should make sure that OP gets enough showering offers. I certainly would offer mine if I lived in the valley.

Interestingly, the Germans were the first to implement social insurances because they were trying to keep workers from emigrating to the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Bismarck.27s_...

Way too few startups use price anchoring strategies when presenting their prices - the iPad intro is definitely not the first, but possibly the most well-executed anchoring I've ever seen. If your product is disruptive in the sense that it potentially can replace a more expensive existing solution, you should simply point out the math - the higher the original number, the better, as even the higher price points you've been thinking up for your product will seem small. Interestingly, anchoring can also work outside of mere price comparisons. That is, sometimes it's enough to just present high numbers to effectively prime customers towards higher price points. The most famous example is Kahnemann's classical experiment on using subjects' (obviously random) social security numbers for anchoring:

"...an audience is first asked to write the last two digits of their social security number and consider whether they would pay this number of dollars for items whose value they did not know, such as wine, chocolate and computer equipment. They were then asked to bid for these items, with the result that the audience members with higher two-digit numbers would submit bids that were between 60 percent and 120 percent higher than those with the lower social security numbers, which had become their anchor." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

check out our institute's feelspace group, they've created a belt that induces a sense of direction: http://feelspace.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/ some more context in my comment above: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602954

Some context: there is an entire neuroscientific field of study devoted to substituting one sensory modality with another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution

The field was pioneered by Paul Bach-y-Rita (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bach-y-Rita) who most notably invented a setup that allowed blind people to "see" via a camera connected to a vibrating grid attached to their their backs, effectively substituting visual with haptic input.

In a nutshell, there is nothing intrinsically "visual" about neurons in the visual cortex, nor are neurons in the, e.g., auditory cortex exclusively tuned towards sound - the brain is plastic enough to "make sense" of a new type of input signal, which typically takes a couple of weeks.

My co-founder Peter König at EyeQuant.com - a neuroscience professor at the University of Osnabrueck - is working on similar projects with his feelspace group, where they created a compass-belt that vibrates whereever north is, taking sensory substitution a step further by effectively creating a new sensory modality of direction (Wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html)

As an excellent philosophical take on this I would recommend Alva Noe's "Action in Perception": http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262140888/

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We're currently hiring BizDev interns in Berlin. You will learn a lot about conversion optimisation, b2b sales and the neuroscience of vision. This is a paid position and the salary will enable you to enjoy a lot of what Berlin has to offer (unless you're into 50$ breakfasts at the Hilton Hotel, but then you probably wouldn't want to move to Berlin anyway :)

Interested? Please get in touch with me via fabian at eyequant dot com

It is true that the UK would be the last country in Europe to "benefit" from SOPA/PIPA, given its current legislation and its general preference to rather not alienate the US. On the other hand, there might be some significant opportunities for countries like Sweden or even Germany, particularly if the German Pirate Party (that originated in Sweden) should make it into the Bundestag/Parliament in 2013, which is entirely possible. I do not know nearly enough about the deep technical and worldwide ramifications of SOPA/PIPA, but I can see how a bold legislative re-branding of said countries might make them a very attractive place to build consumer-facing web companies. Consider how Berlin has become a mecca for artists: it's not because it's cheap (it is, but there are plenty of cheaper big cities in the world), but because it's by far the most liberal large city in the west right now. ('Socially Liberal', that is.) If SOPA/PIPA or future versions of those should actually pass, places such as Berlin could "brand" themselves as the world's last safe havens for b2c web startups (excluding eCommerce, which would probably benefit of SOPA). Ironically, this might just be the best argument to convince American die-hard SOPA-advocates that their plans are nuts: imagine a future where "socialist" countries like Sweden host the next Googles and Reddits.

this is a bit difficult to answer without a more specific question, but feel free to ping me any time at fabian at eyequant dot com - we can grab coffee and take it from there!

This is top notch advise. Noone wants to be sold to. Selling our SaaS products, I found that the best way to close is to ask prospects to educate you about their problems(related to your product, of course). You don't need to lie, tell them you are trying to learn more on a specific use case for your product - and that they are doing you a huge favor by helping you with that! People usually like to help. If you're asking the right questions, they might actually close the deal for you.

it helps to have a condensed "convince your boss"-pdf ready for just that!

Ask yourself: do you tend to like the bigmouths better than someone who's genuinely trying to have a conversation with you? Does lots of talking really help to establish warmth? It doesn't. The best sales people are awesome listeners - and ask the right questions. If you feel uncomfortable to do the talking, ask your prospective customers about the problems they're facing (related to your solution). Unsurprisingly, most people are quite happy to talk about their problems. Note that this is how most friendships start, too.

On the web, esp. with SaaS and other self service business models, marketing and sales are much more intertwined than they originally used to be. If your price point does not allow for a salesforce, your website essentially becomes your #1 sales rep. And while not 100% comparable, a lot of the best practices of classical selling apply very well on creating a high-converting sales funnel online.

I'm inclined to agree, but there's maybe more to that: another reason why many technical people struggle with sales/marketing is that they simply assume that sales is all about tricking people into buying stuff they don't need / stuff that doesn't work. So once they find themselves in a salesy situation or role, they might feel like overcorrecting in the negative direction, just to not be salesy.

Good stuff. I'd add that point 2 (Establish competence) and 3 (confirm pain) should ideally be connected in an educational fashion: start your meeting with data about your potential client's market (and pain), not your product or your company. E. g.: if you're selling collaboration software, provide some (reliable + interesting) statistics on how much time and money is wasted in unproductive meetings etc.

Also, and that's a general rule: ask, don't tell. Get them talking about their problem. If you really have a good solution for it, the most natural progression of such a conversation will lead to your product and why they want to buy it automagically.

I've had "sales" calls where I simply asked prospective clients whether they had a minute to tell me a little more about the problems they're currently facing (which are of course connected to our solution). Instead of pitching them on your product, the client's problem monologue often naturally flows to a point where they bring up the idea of using your solution to solve their problem.

Great job. You should add a 'submit to Reddit' button, too!

send me an email (in profile)! :)

RIM prefers to merely adress their shareholders on this issue, while the smart move would have been to include some lingo addressing their customers and the valid concerns raised in the 'open letter'. This won't work in the long run.

'Status Anxiety' is a very well done documentary on the question of why money doesn't really buy you happiness: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/status-anxiety/ Highly recommended!