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hippoland · 7 years ago

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Why an investor rejection isn't a knock on you

A few years ago, a friend asked me if I could forward an email to Abc VC. I told him that since that Abc VC didn't invest in my company, I wasn't sure if Abc VC thought highly of me.

Now that I sit on the other side of the fence, I realized that my thinking was flawed. In many cases, if a VC declines to invest in your company, it isn't a knock against you (caveat being unless you've acted really rude to him/her and/or his/her team). In most cases, rejections happen well before even meeting a team, so that VC doesn't even know you!!

Here are a few reasons why an investor will reject you that has nothing to do with you.

1) Your idea is undifferentiated

Investors see thousands of businesses a year. And, your idea is 50th social networking site of the week. Unless you have a differentiated angle / approach to the problem AND/OR significant traction, an investor won't be able to understand why you stand out and why to back your horse instead of someone else's. Especially at the early stages.

Note: by differentiation, I'm not talking about product or feature differentiation but outcome differentiation. For example: if you're creating a new Mailchimp competitor, you might think your product is differentiated if let's say your product has better tracking than they do. ��That's a feature difference. But outcome-differentiation is probably lacking -- people who use Mailchimp use it to increase revenue by selling more products / services via their emails. So unless your feature can increase that outcome -- and not just incrementally by 20% but a serious differential like 10x -- it's unlikely that a current happy Mailchimp customer will want to switch to your product. Think about it -- if you’re using MailChimp and make let’s say $100 in sales for every send. It’s going to be a real pain in the neck to move to a new product -- your whole list is set up and everything for just an additional $20 per send.

Often as an entrepreneur, it's hard to know whether your product is differentiated, because you don't know what other startups are out there. This is something I personally faced when running my company LaunchBit. There were/are so many freakin' ad networks / ad exchanges / ad platforms out there that LaunchBit was just undifferentiated. A business like that will just have a really hard time raising money at the early stages, and if that's feedback you are getting from at least 2 people, you may want to consider adjusting your plan and raise from angels and/or bootstrap for a long time. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad business -- in fact, it could be a very good business for you. It just means VCs will shy away from it.

2) Your idea is not the right fit for stage / industry.

Your idea is not a good fit per the investor's thesis / mandate. Sometimes this can be incredibly difficult to see. For example, a lot of software investors don't invest in e-commerce companies. (We do not.). The products are physical things that cost a lot to store as inventory, and fundamentally, this makes e-commerce companies a very different profile from products that are entirely digital (software / software platforms that don’t house inventory / digital products / etc).

Or, a lot of investors call themselves "early stage" investors and aren't good fits for pre-seed companies. Many of these investors mean "series A" or "post seed" when they say "early stage" even though they will do a handful of pre-seed deals in founders they already know / successful serial entrepreneurs we’ve all heard of.

What I’ve found to be most annoying about the VC industry as an entrepreneur is that you can never pin VCs down in what they like. This is because VCs are always hedging to be able to see everything just in case there is that rare exception that they would potentially invest in something outside of their thesis. The best way to assess what VCs actually like is to look at their portfolio. If a VC says that they invest without traction, you should find out when they’ve done so and whether it's because they already had deep relationships with that team / that team has incredible pedigree. And just play the probabilities in your head of who will actually be likely to invest in a random company at your stage.

3) Your business model seems flawed OR is not the right fit

I talked a lot about unit economics and sales cycles in my last post. For me, I personally think very heavily about the unit economics of a business, and if I can't get conviction around the potential customer acquisition, that's an immediate pass for me regardless of the team / market size / product / etc. I do understand that teams can pivot, but we are already so early in the lifecycle -- often first check into a company -- that I can’t be counting on pivots.

But VCs look at unit economics in different ways. For example, some VCs have such deep pockets that they can throw a lot of money at a company to wait out a long sales cycle. But that's not Hustle Fund. We are currently a small fund. So when we back a company, we need to believe that we can help that company get downstream funding from other investors with deep pockets OR that the company can bootstrap its way to success.

In order to bootstrap your way to success, it largely means you need high margins and fast sales cycles. These are companies that we can get behind as a lone ranger if we see hustle, focus, and a differentiated solution.

But, if you're in a category where you have a long sales cycle or smaller margins, then I need to think about if I can "sell" your deal to other investors -- either people who will invest alongside us or after us. We talk with and do try to understand what a lot of our early stage investor peers are interested in to help inform our decision. But the point is, when we are looking at companies with these type of customer acquisition qualities, we cannot make decisions in isolation. We need to believe other investors will buy into you as well even if we are still first check into your company.

3b) The market size is not big enough

For a VC portfolio to work out, a VC's winners need to compensate for all the losses of the losers plus much more to provide great fund returns. Not only does the fund need to be net profitable, but it also needs to outperform other assets that our would-be backers could be investing in -- such as other VC funds, real estate opportunities, the public stock market, etc.. No one really talks about how VCs differentiate themselves and what they need to deliver to their investors, but this is a big factor in affecting how they invest in companies.

So, for a VC, it's not good enough to have a winner "only return 10x" even though that would be a phenomenal outcome for a founder or even an angel. Most VCs need their winners to return 100x (or ideally more).

This is why it seems that every VC is harping on looking for billion dollar markets. If you are not thinking you have that big of a business, VCs are not going to be the right people to raise from. Angels might be a better fit.

But, for me personally, I think the problem with market-sizing exercises is that you just don't know whether a market is big or not! Airbnb is probably the poster child example of this. At the seed stage, it seemed like a weird niche idea to sleep on someone else's air mattress. What is the market size for this? Basically zero. But sleeping on a bed in someone's house is an alternative to getting a hotel room, and the hotel market is huge. So it's just very difficult to know whether a market size is big or not in the early days, especially for seemingly "weird" ideas.

This is why I don't care to ask founders about their market size. Their predictions will be wrong and so will mine. Moreover, even if a market is big, it doesn't mean the company can grab a lot of that market share. This is why I very much focus on a bottoms-up approach to analyzing a marketing -- looking at unit economics / sales cycles / customer acquisition. If the unit economics and sales cycles are rough, I don't care how big the market is, it's going to be a long difficult slog to capture the market, and that means a very capital intensive business. And then that goes back to the question of whether I think I can round up co-investors with me or downstream investors to fund this.

In short, these are 3 reasons why a VC might reject your business when they haven't even looked at your team or anything else about your company. It doesn't mean you necessarily have a bad business, it just might not be the right fit for that particular firm or the VC industry in general. So in most cases (caveat being if you were rude to someone on our team), when we decline to invest in companies, we would very much welcome seeing a different business that the founder starts later or would be honored if the founder wanted to take the time to refer a friend who is working on a startup.

Fundraising is a nebulous process that I aim to make more transparent. To learn more secrets and tips, subscribe to my newsletter.

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themostcleverandwittyname · 7 years ago

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Posing: (Detroit Become Human Fanfic)(Connor X OC)

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Summary:

Claire finally has the funding that she needs to do some proper research on the possible causes of deviancy, and with Cyberlife breathing down her neck she is more inspired not to fail than ever before. To succeed, she must pose as an android for thirty days and record what it is like to be in such a position.

It just so happens that an android that is designed to notice any human behavior in a machine has made his way into the same police station that she chose for her research, which means that she cannot let a single mistake catch his eyes.

Chapter 4: The Sorrow of Stolen Garlic Bread

Chapter 4 on AO3

Connor fidgeted in the back seat of the private taxi, returning to Cyberlife to have diagnostics run once again on him before being stationed at the DPD. He had only needed a few minutes to review the case files that he had not yet had access to view, the data being exclusive to that particular department. He let a quarter fall from finger to finger, moving it over his knuckles from his thumb to his pinky before tilting his hand to let the coin travel over each knuckle back to his thumb. He watched with vague interest, letting the movements spur his thoughts.

Something strange caught his attention, something he was not able to pinpoint the exact cause of its peculiarity and something that his processors couldn’t figure out. In reviewing his memories, he noticed something strange and inexplicable. A loose end. Usually, the android had no problem calculating the exact cause of an event that he had witnessed, always coming to a conclusion that was logical. However, today and another instance three days prior had held something that had been left to replay in his memory with no apparent cause or explanation.

This was the occurrence of noticing that a service android had, without a trigger, showed stress. Not stress in the sense of fidgeting, heightened tones, or anything emotional or human, but rather in slow, stiff movements accompanied by a swirling red LED indicator, a sign that the android’s processor was working at a heightened capacity, like in the case of stressful situations or in deviants, fear. There was nothing that Connor could connect to a cause of stress and this was troubling, the incident played over and over in his mind.

The two explanations that he could come up with, although flawed in their own sense, were still too vague to be considered a lead. One explanation was that the android’s LED was broken or malfunctioning, but this idea was flawed because the only time Connor had witnessed the red light was when the android was around him. This theory doesn’t explain the odd behavior, although not condemning, that followed. The second explanation was the android was a deviant and was experiencing emotion, more accurately fear at knowing that Connor himself was stationed there to capture deviants. This was the most probable explanation given that a deviant would hide its emotions and carry on acting normal in attempts to avoid rousing suspicion, especially from him.

Connor let the coin drop from his fingers into his palm, now twirling the coin from finger to finger, glancing out the tinted window to see that he was close to his destination. He blinked a few times and let his mind begin to come up with a solution as he watched the coin spin, the spinning metal mimicking what his own processors were doing.

He hadn’t had the time to scan the android and diagnose any software instabilities, let alone even get the model number. The peculiar instance of the cleaning android’s LED signal had not quite been as relevant to him until he had reviewed the memory data only minutes ago, the light being shed upon it. Even if he had scanned the android and found an issue, any action would have been out of his jurisdiction and against orders, given that he was not given full reigns over his end of the case until he was to be assigned to that precinct. It was inefficient, however, he had no control over what Cyberlife had laid out as his priorities.

His priority for today was to review current case files and return promptly for final tests and preparation. He was only a prototype after all.

However, he noted that the android’s behavior was strange and made it one of his first priorities to scan the android and find the cause for the behavior on November fifth, when he would be officially stationed and gain the access he needed to the police department.

The last thing he could allow was a deviant at the very police station that he was assigned to. The discovery of the deviant being so close to where he would be active would certainly prove that he was a failure. He couldn’t become useless because he would be replaced and that was not efficient.

The taxi pulled to a stop and the detective android put his quarter away and tugged his collar into place before the vehicle’s automatic door opened. Stepping out, he marked the first objective for November fifth as a quick scan for the cleaning android.

The last thing Connor would do was fail this mission.

Claire nearly face planted into the door of her apartment, too tired to even care to watch her balance. She was sore, tired, stressed, and her body ached from being pushed around by a criminal and nearly busting her ass on the floor while mopping. Not to mention, she suffered from extreme paranoia that the Connor model would show up again to wreck her shit. She wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for eight days straight, only breaking away from the comfort of her bed to eat.

She wanted to have a quiet, relaxing evening to recharge after her day and eat as much food as she could before passing out on her bed, couch, or whatever she could sit still on for twelve seconds.

The last thing that she wanted was what she found when she opened the door to her apartment.

A mop of blonde hair stood out to her, the figure of her roommate was crouched in the middle of the floor. She was crying, tears streaming from her green eyes as she wiped uselessly at her cheeks. Whatever had made her cry was in front of her, concealed by the shadow of the girl leaned over it.

“Holly, why are you crying? What’s wrong?” Claire spoke up, placing her purse and android uniform on the kitchen table. Holly looked up at her, her emerald eyes sparkling with her tears. When she straightened up, Claire finally got a glance at what the blonde had been crying over.

There, laid in front of her was the roomba vacuum, void of any lights or movement. A screwdriver laid to the side, loose screws were scattered on the white tile and the panel on the bottom of the roomba had been removed.

“Claire, Zoomy is dead. I tried to get it back in working order but I…” the girl sobbed and Claire watched, a sense of relief flooded over her. She thought something seriously wrong had happened. She quietly pulled out her phone to record this, watching as the recording began and slowly hiding the phone by crossing her arms. “It won’t turn on and it was my favorite because it was cute and I just don’t know how to deal with this.” the blonde admitted, another gross sob escaped her lips. She looked down at the “dead” vacuum and sniffled.

“Look, Holly, it’s okay. We can buy another roomba. Zoomy 2.0.” Claire reasoned, trying to hide her smile in an attempt to sympathize with her roommate. Claire, despite her exhaustion, struggled to keep from laughing. She felt bad that Holly was upset about this, but it was so innocent and precious to see the concern over a roomba that it was humorous.

“No! I don’t want another roomba. This one was special and I...I loved it. Zoomy was the best one because of all of the memories we had with it. Like when Jellybean would ride on it and then it ate your shoelaces and then that one time we taped a knife to it! Nothing can replace this roomba.” She said, her conviction thick in her voice. Claire shut her eyes to compose herself, taking a deep breath to keep from laughing and possibly offending her friend. The phone was still recording.

“Imagine if we bought a new one. One that has better upgrades that vacuums and mops. The updated ones are really cool, besides, they don’t glitch out like that one did.” Claire pointed out, feeling as if she were a mom proposing buying a gallon of ice cream versus a scoop of ice cream for their kid. Holly shook her head and stood on her feet, sending a few loose screws to spin on the ground from where they had been laid on her knees.

“The glitches were the best part! That’s what made it so funny! And now Zoomy is dead and we…” she stopped, a sniffle broke from her before a flash of determination crossed her features. “We are going to have a funeral for it.”

Claire lost it. She snorted and her composure diminished into thin air and she chuckled, making quick work to turn the recording off before Holly realized what she was doing. The blonde frowned and looked at the dark-haired woman with confusion, folding her arms over her chest defensively.

“It’s not funny. I don’t know why you’re laughing. I thought you liked the roomba.” she spurted, her annoyance clear in her voice. Claire slipped her phone into her pocket, reaching out to pull her friend in for a hug. The blonde begrudgingly accepted, giving a halfhearted hug back and letting her tear stained face fall onto Claire’s shoulder.

“I do like the roomba, I’m sad that it’s broken, but I’m not going to cry over it. I’m just trying to make you feel better.” Claire admitted, her tone taking on a softer note, her laughter faded from her words and sincerity was allowed into her voice. The blonde squeezed her tightly for a moment, and Claire winced, half choking out a cry. Her back was still bruised from the happenings of today. The blonde pulled back in surprise, analyzing the dark-haired woman’s face, putting together quickly that she had been hurt. Holly was too smart to fool.

“Are you okay? I just hurt you, didn’t I?” She asked, concern lacing her voice. Claire took a deep breath as her roommate backed off, looking at her with expectation.

“Let me tell you about today. Ooh boy, so there was this criminal that shoved me into a desk and began yelling things like “you ruined my life, android bitch” and it took five cops to take the man down.” she said, reminiscing on the shocking episode. The girl’s green eyes grew at hearing that, fear and sympathy lit up in her eyes.

“And then after that, I slipped and fell and almost blew the whole experiment twice because of robocop, who showed up without any warning.” Claire continued, running her fingers over her now messy bun. A spark of anger flickered in her roommate’s eyes.

“That’s ridiculous. So that guy thought he could shove you around just because he felt like it? I hate people like that. He better hope that he doesn’t escape jail because I’ll bust his ass.” she claimed, the roomba now forgotten. “If robocop tries something, I’ll do the same thing to him too.” Claire gave a nervous laugh at the empty threat. She couldn’t let Connor anywhere close to Holly and she knew that.

“Yeah, pretty messed up, but hey, on the bright side it’s a good thing to put in my log for today. Yesterday I didn’t have much to report on other than a slur, but at least today’s roughness wasn’t for nothing, right?” Claire beamed, trying to remain positive. Holly rolled her eyes, her tears forgotten and she now seemed her usual self.

“You’ve gotta be more careful. You know what they do to androids, we both do, and I don’t think a book is worth getting hurt over. Especially with so much caution around deviants.” the blonde said, warning hinted at in her voice. Claire knew that half of what she was saying was correct, but she couldn’t let that hold her down.

“I know that. This is the point, I want people to see androids for who they really are, and if I write these books, then hopefully it will change the way people view androids. Because no one has thought to put themselves in an android’s shoes, ya know? The more awful I’m treated, the better the book will highlight these issues.” Claire stated, knowing that Holly was just concerned like a good friend would be.

Holly looked away, clearly thinking about it and confliction was mirrored in her eyes.

“I’ll go run a bath for you. It’ll help your back and whatever soreness you have.” she stated, avoiding looking at Claire in the eyes. She knew that look, Holly was feeling guilty again. She escaped to the bathroom and Claire was left alone in the kitchen, just now taking into consideration how hungry she was.

On the countertop was a plate of something that was covered, something Holly had made for her before she got home. Whether it was hot or cold, she didn’t care because she was starving. She pulled the plate from the top of the other plate to reveal a plate of lasagna with garlic bread and she thought she might cry at how lovely that looked. The condensation from the steam had collected on the plate that was rested over the lasagna, so she was careful not to let the collected water pool up and drip onto her garlic bread as she placed the plate aside.

She placed her dinner on the kitchen table, scooting her purse and uniform to the side. She thankfully began eating away at the lasagna, saving the garlic bread for last. She was so occupied with the lasagna, she hadn’t noticed a black shadow creep up to her with evil intentions.

Before she could react, a black blur rushed over to her plate and grabbed her garlic bread, hopping down and dashing away. She shrieked and abandoned her plate in pursuit of the garlic bread thief, the slick ebony rascal running behind the sofa.

“Holly! Jellybean stole my garlic bread.” She half whined, half screamed in her deliriously tired and primal state of hunger and sorrow. She reached her arm behind the sofa grasping at the air but to no avail. Her asshole cat had done it again. She watched as the pair of glimmering amber eyes looked back at her, the only features that were not lost in the black fur of the cat were his eyes and his pink nose, the same pink as his delicate, pink paws that resembled the candy he was named after.

After getting no answer, she gave up, giving herself a mental note to fish the half-eaten garlic bread out from behind the couch later. She returned to her lasagna, sorrowfully finishing it off and placing the plate in the sink. She noticed the dead roomba still laid on the floor and picked it up, placing it on the coffee table in the living room. Claire would have to come up with some way to give the vacuum cleaner a proper funeral some other time. For the meantime, she went to a dry erase board and drew a tombstone as best she could.

She wrote:

R.I.P Zoomy

2037-2038

“The glitches made it special.”

When she was satisfied, she went back to the bathroom to see that the tub was almost filled. She wasted no time in sinking into the tub of hot water, but not before examining the large horizontal bruise on her back. The water felt amazing and she tried to let the stress roll away, if at all possible. She tried to forget the experiment, the death of the roomba, and the thievery of her precious garlic bread but she kept thinking about something. Robocop, aka, the Connor model at the police station, would be stationed at the office the day after tomorrow and the thought was dreadful. She had no clue how she would manage not to screw this all up if she couldn’t even act android in front of him properly for the fifteen minutes that he had been there today. Holly’s voice broke her from her dread.

“Claire, can you please promise me you’ll be careful? I already hardly see you because you’re out all day and I don’t think I could handle it if you got hurt.” she asked, having crouched down beside the tub, her concern written all over her face. Claire knew this had been stressful for Holly as well, they had hardly been around each other since she began writing her books. It was for the better good, but she needed to prioritize time for Holly too. She wasn’t only her roommate, but she had done so much for Claire. It was the least she could do.

She turned her blue eyes towards her friend, hoping to get rid of any doubts or concerns that the blonde had.

“I promise.”

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#dbh connor #dbh fanfic #dbh connor fanfiction #connor x oc #connor fanfiction #rk800 #my work #posing

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westallenfun · 7 years ago

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21 Days

Westallen Secret Santa gift from @trashywestallen for @finnicks

It probably doesn’t seem like it, but your prompts inspired this fic somehow. I was looking at them and this is what came to me. I hope you enjoyed and you have a great holiday.

21 Days

Iris has to cope with a second separation from the love of her life.

Day 1

“We understand that you have agreed to a plea deal, Mr. Allen?”

“I have your honor,” Barry said, voice soft.

“To the charge of murder in the second degree, how do you plead?”

“Guilty.”

Iris pressed a hand to her lips and kept her head down. If she looked up the press, the courtroom they wouldn’t see a woman saddened and broken by this unexpected turn of events; dreams shattered as she lost her husband to the federal detention system.

“To the charge of conspiracy to commit murder how do you plead?

“Guilty.”

Her nails dug into the palms of her hand. If she looked up her eyes would go to the other side of the courtroom the DA’s side, the prosecution and they would land on Marlize DeVoe. If she looked up the court, the press they would see an angry black woman leaping across the aisle to beat the life out of Marlize DeVoe and they’d both be in jail, better she keep her head down, keep it all in.

“To the charge of kidnapping and unlawful detention how do you plead?”

“Guilty.”

She started as her palms bled and swore to herself not for the first time that this wasn’t over, that she would get Barry out, that she would have her revenge on Clifford and Marlize DeVoe. It no longer mattered what The Thinker and his wife planned everything ahead or that they were so much smarter, the only thing that mattered was that they had targeted them and taken her husband, her best friend, the love of her life from her when they were supposed to be at their happiest.

The state’s case wasn’t especially strong, but they had secrets. Everyone connected to STARLabs had secrets. The biggest, of course, was Barry’s identity as The Flash, Wally, Cisco and Caitlin’s identities as meta-humans, but there was also STARLabs’ connection to meta-human villains like the Reverse Flash, Zoom, Caitlin’s crimes as Killer Frost, so much of what went down at STARLabs was at best barely legal. There was a lot that wouldn’t stand up to a criminal investigation.

Even if Barry had been able to fight the charges of murder and win and that was an if, with his fingerprints on the murder weapon, what else would come up?

“Mr. Allen the court accepts your guilty plea, and has agreed to waive the death penalty and detention in a class X facility, in favor of life without parole at Iron Heights prison.”

She felt sick suddenly the words ‘life without parole’ washing over her the anger she’d been holding for Marlize DeVoe suddenly drowned under those words.

“No.” She didn’t mean to say it a whimper too soft for the court or the press to hear. Only Barry, who looked back her the stoic mask he’d worn cracking for the first time since they’d entered the courtroom. She didn’t mean to say it; she’d meant to be strong for him. Even as Barry had told her her plan she’d known all she had to do was say one word against and Barry would agree, he’d forget about it and let the world tear their lives apart expose himself as The Flash, expose Wally, Cisco and Caitlin, everyone, everything and rip their lives all apart at her word-

‘Life without parole.’

She didn’t hear the rest of the sentence, only saw Barry’s eyes on her expression anguished.

“Iris I’m so sorry.”

And he was gone leaving her alone, empty hands reaching for empty air.

Day 3

She is running faster than she’s ever run in life. She’s fast unnaturally so like The Flash, but not The Flash. He is busy somewhere, doing something important. Up ahead a dot of yellow glows and sparks on the horizon.. Seeing it, she knows she needs to catch it for him, to help while he is busy. She focuses all of her intent on that yellow spark, that yellow glow and somehow the distances closes. She comes alongside it, The Man in Yellow. He pulls away from her speeding ahead, and somehow she pushes herself faster. Fast enough to reach out a hand, to touch him, to unmask him The Man in Yellow, Eobard- Clifford DeVoe. She has that dream several times before she remembers it fully.

Day 5

Iris sat in Barry’s lap, one of his large hands rested on her waist, the other on her thigh, his lips pressed to hers, his tongue was warm and slick like always her mouth, surely she felt no different and yet…She pressed against him wriggling her ass against his crotch in a move that never failed, and nothing happened, no pulsation in her clit and worse nothing stirred underneath her.

She lifted her lips from his.

“This isn’t working.”

“It’s not. I’m sorry,” Barry said with a pained grimace.

Her eyes went to the clock. Their thirty minutes had shrunk to twenty, plenty of time if their bodies would cooperate. Joe and Wally were sitting in the waiting room, giving them the remaining thirty minutes of their family time. They could visit again, but they wouldn’t be able to get time in the family trailer any sooner than a month.

“I can’t stop thinking about the time; I can’t stop thinking about the fact that you won’t be able to come again for another month, about how long it took you guys to drive out here-”

“I know, and I can’t relax.”

She stroked his cheek. He looked so thin and pale; heavy dark circles sat under his eyes, his hair was dull. Iris pressed her forehead to his. She knew he didn’t get enough to eat, prison food was notoriously bad, but for Barry even keeping his activity down to a minimum it didn’t come close to his daily caloric need.

“I’m so worried about you.”

She’d loaded his commissary account, and had set it to auto load to the maximum once a month. Cisco had reformulated his calorie bars for Barry and creating packaging that would allow them past the guards, but just five days in it was clear he’d already lost a lot of weight. The guards had assumed the meal they’d brought was for the four of them to share, but Barry had eaten all of it sighing with relief afterward.

“You look so thin so haggard. I wish you’d gone in fat.” Iris smiled and blinked back tears. She’d failed to be strong at his sentencing; she needed to do it now.

“Fat,” he chuckled. “I’d look terrible fat, some guys can pull it off, but I’d look awful, fat gumby”

“Maybe but you’d have weight to lose at least.”

“Iris I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t Barry it’s not your fault. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re a hero, and DeVoe targeted you for that just like Zoom and The Reverse Flash, but you haven’t done anything. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“But you’re unhappy; you’re suffering.” He stroked her face with the back of his hand. “You’ve covered it well with make-up, but I can see it. You’ve lost weight; you’re not sleeping.”

“There’s so much work to do,” she closed a hand around his. “I need to get you out of here. I need to get you home.”

“I know babe, but listen to me.” Barry captured her hand and brought it to his lips. “I went through what you’re going through now with my dad. I want you to find time to be happy; I want you to make time to take care of yourself. You and Joe helped me to do that when I was a kid, and I need you to do that now ok?”

Iris nodded without looking at him and glanced at the clock, another five minutes had gone.

“Iris?”

“What?’ She thought about the corkboard in her bedroom covered with pictures, crime scene photos, she had Cisco building a software program to help them outthink the Thinker, she was even writing an article for CCPN about the rate of false convictions in the justice system.

"Look at me, look at me.” She meet his eyes finally. “Don’t get consumed by this. Go to movie, enjoy your favorite foods, enjoy life-”

“How? How am I supposed to do that? When you’re locked up like this while Marlize and her shitty husband are free to walk the streets doing whatever they want?”

“They are pretty shitty.”

“Very shitty.”

“Yeah, Iris and in the end you and Cisco, and Joe and Caitlin and Wally you guys will figure something out, and I’ll be home before you know it so please, please don’t be completely miserable, because I’m in here. I won’t ask you to be happy or pretend like nothing happened, but if I know you’re ok and you’re taking care of yourself, then I can be ok.”

She lifted her eyes to his at the pleading in his. For a moment she held those eyes already dulled by just five days confinement.

“Ok, I promise.”

“I would be happier if I could just get you to smile again.”

“Barry I can’t-”

“You remember our first kiss, Iris.”

Nothing in Iris could have kept her from smiling in that moment.

“There,” Barry stroked her hair back from her face then, and she felt that familiar heat.

Without thinking she leaned down to kiss him, and Barry kissed her back pressing close as she felt him grow hard underneath her.

“Crap!”

“How much time do we have?”

Iris glanced at the clock.

“Ten minutes.”

“We can work with that.”

Day 12

The corkboard swayed and swam before her eyes DeVoe, Marlize, Ralph, Becky, Warden Wolf, Barry their images all dancing in front of eyes strained and tired. Her father would tell her to sleep; Barry would tell her to sleep. She took a sip of her energy drink instead. She was supposed to have had a visit with Barry today, their second, not a family visit, but she’d made the three-hour drive to Iron Heights only to learn that Barry was in solitary confinement.

Anger had flamed through her all the long drive back home. She’d driven to Marlize DeVoe’s thinking of doing something very stupid only to have Cisco’s very timely opening of a breach save them both. As irritated as she’d been with Oliver I was kept thinking of calling him, he’d get information out of that bitch real quick.

But Oliver had his own very real problems. The department of justice was breathing down his neck, his relationship with his son was all messed up and he was still Mayor in Star city. Team Flash would have to solve this on their own.

She glanced at the clock, 12:07 am and heard Joe’s footsteps in the hall then Instead of passing her room they stopped, and her father knocked on the door.

“Come on in dad.”

Joe entered her room wearing his robe and pajamas.

“What are you doing up honey?”

“Can’t sleep.”

His eyes went to the corkboard, the energy drink.

“Maybe this is why doping yourself up on caffeine and staring at this all day.”

“I couldn’t sleep before that dad. I was tossing and turning, every time I’d start to doze off I think of Barry in solitary, think about how unfair it is. I’m tired, but I just can’t sleep. This at least gives me something productive to do.”

“You know,” Joe sat down in the room’s only chair. “I had a case that wouldn’t let go of me once. The stakes weren’t this high of course, but it still took over, I obsessed about it, you were too young to remember, but it was not long after Francine left. When I couldn’t sleep, I worked on it. My temper got short; I did dumb stuff, the perp got a restraining order against me against the department.”

“Cisco told you about what happened.” Iris looked away out the window.

“Yeah. Honey, you need a rest, you need a break.” He took her hand. “I know it’s easier to sit in your anger and let it drive you, control you, but you need to process that anger and let those other feelings come to the surface.”

“You mean cry?”

“I don’t know honey is that what you need to do?”

Iris pulled her hand away.

“Dad, I can’t-” She shook her head. “I can’t just fall apart, let things go. Cause if I do-” Iris stopped there already trembling.

“What would happen?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered looking away out her bedroom window.

“Do you think any of us would give up? Do you think me, or Cisco or Barry or Ralph, do you think any of us would give up? Or if you did cry, if you did fall apart do you really think that you wouldn’t come back together?”

Iris stared at the drifting flurries of late winter snow, white and clean falling to the earth, crystalline perfection, each unique uncertain how to respond to her father. She can feel it, between them a gulf, a chasm wide and yawing and he has offered her a bridge to cross to it. But she can’t, not yet, not now.

Joining him on the other side means walking up to the edge of an abyss, dark and churning, filled with frothing, foaming waters and she daren’t look into them. When it’s too quiet, she can hear it loud and roaring. If she looks if she dives in she doesn’t know what will look back or what will come out with her.

“Thanks dad,” she says. “I’ll think about what you said.”

Joe stared at her a moment before finally nodding.

“Goodnight sweetheart.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheeek.

“Goodnight dad.”

Day 15

“Cisco do you think our dreams have any meaning outside just general daily recycling.”

The engineer looked up from his work.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I vibe things in my sleep, but I never paid much attention to dreams before that. Bad dreams keeping you up at night?”

“No, but I’ve been having this recurring dream. Where I’m running speedster fast.”

“You’re The Flash?”

“No he’s somewhere else, doing something important, but I have to help Barry though by running.”

“Ok.”

“Up ahead I see this yellow light on the horizon and I know I need to get that yellow light and as soon as I think about it I zoom to it, and I realize it’s the Reverse Flash.”

“Kinda scary.”

“But I’m not scared. He pulls ahead, and I try to keep up, but I can’t so I reach out to him and pull off his hood, but it’s not Eobard Thawne or Harrison Wells, its DeVoe and that’s the end of the dream.”

“Ok, so that’s kind of obvious. Reverse Flash took Barry’s dad from him and left him to seek justice and free his father, and DeVoe has done the same thing to you.”

“Yeah that’s what I thought, but why do I keep having it? Feels like there might be more to this dream.”

“What dream?” Harrison strode into Cisco’s workroom.

“Iris has this dream where she’s The Flash, and she chases down The Reverse Flash, but its DeVoe instead of Thawne.”

“Well, that’s easy enough. The Reverse Flash has done to you what DeVoe did to Barry.”

“Yup, so easy we both figured that out already,” Cisco replied.

“You think it means something more?”

“I think it could,” Iris admitted.

“Well, you know West. We don’t fully understand how the human brain works.” Harry said studying the shelves in Cisco’s workshop. “Intuition, a sudden burst of insight or inspiration often come from the subconscious.” He lifted a box from the engineer’s shelves.

“Hey wait a second-” Cisco said.

“-The subconscious picks up on patterns, rearranges information to make it make sense, sometimes that can come through in dreams. I wouldn’t discount it West.”

“Don’t take that,” Cisco said. “Get your own tools.”

“I need it.”

“Well I need it too, that’s why I have it here.”

“But you’re not using it now.”

Normally Iris might have said something about them having plenty of money for supplies and tools, but she was already absorbed in thought trying to figure out what else Clifford DeVoe had in common with The Reverse Flash.

Day 17

It happens one day when too many things great and small have piled on top of her. Joe finds her in the kitchen, in the middle of the night crying over a broken glass and spilt milk of all things. She cries longer than she thought she would. The milk is just the trigger.

She wanted it, of course, a glass of warmed milk, sweetened with honey just to soothe her, help her sleep. A small thing that she wanted so badly when she couldn’t have the things she really wanted.

But then her dad is there all tender and caring, and she’s still his baby girl, and it’s impossible not to cry over everything else she wanted.

Their ruined wedding, Barry being locked up, Barry not being home for Christmas, and that long six months where he was in the speed force.

She hadn’t plunged into the abyss head first, or even looked. She slipped in a puddle of spilled milk and fallen so suddenly she was drowning in a sea of hurt, and her father’s gentle hands were the only tether to the shore.

Day 18

The dream does point them in the right direction. DeVoe must have wanted something from Barry. While they don’t find out exactly what, they do figure out a way to prove that DeVoe is still alive. Unfortunately, it’s also the day that several meta-humans break out from Iron Heights with several human hostages, one of whom happens to be Barry Allen.

Day 20

For a moment time seems standstill and later she wonders what it felt like for Barry. But for just a moment she can only stare and him and he can only stare at her. He’s haggard, looking a little worn around the edges and his hair has gotten a little long, but none of that matters because its her Barry alive and safe and soon to be free.

Cecile has already submitted the paperwork to overturn Barry plea, have it expunged.

Iris doesn’t think she just runs into his arms. It doesn’t matter that there are cameras or the press is now hailing Barry Allen as a hero. It’s Barry, her Barry. It’s a relief to be in his arms; it doesn’t matter than he holds her tight enough to hurt, or that he’s vibrating with relief or that he smells a little.

All that matters is he’s free and he’s saying her name over and over again and that he’s coming home.

Day 21

Barry lays beside her, breathing steady and even the rays of the dawn sun falling over in his back in golden stripes. She runs her hands over his back his shoulder blades, ribs, vertebrae are all too pronounced they’ll have to do something about that.

Barry yawns.

Lying in her old bed, under Joe’s roof, neither of them have slept. They have no desire to go back to the loft. She’d sublet the space and put their things in storage.

They’d been talking Iris catching Barry up on the past three weeks, and Barry sharing in faltering sentences and fragments whatever he felt comfortable talking about.

The heavy, haunted look from his childhood is back in his eyes and Iris found she mourned the lightness he’d left the speedforce with. Something else for the DeVoes would pay for.

“It was so cold there. That first night I kept thinking about Shawshank Redemption, how the inmates would try and get the newbies to cry, and you know how I am.”

Iris ran a hand through his hair.

“I know.”

“I bit my lip bloody, but I wasn’t the first one to cry.”

He looked up at her she stroked his hair out of his face.

“It seems small now, but it was important then. It was such a relief when that first guy broke. I could escape anytime, and I knew you all would get me out, but when those lights went out, and I was alone in that narrow bed all I could think about Iris was you, lying next you, feeling your warmth, smelling your perfume and soap and shampoo all I could think was how would I ever get used to sleeping without you beside me again.”

She gazed down at him, willing him to see how much she loved him, how much she needed him to know that she would never willingly abandon him.

“Iris listen to me. I know you said I didn’t owe you an apology, but I do.” Barry propped himself up on one elbow. “You went through that for six months while I was in the speedforce, and I didn’t remember any if and even when you explained it to me I didn’t really, truly understand it.” Barry took her hand in his kissing it, before twining her fingers with his own.

“I don’t want to make certain types of promises, but I understand it now and know that I never want to be apart from you again.”

“I should have believed you about DeVoe right away.”

Barry frowned but remained silent.

“When Cicso didn’t vibe anything we should have had him look into our future or hell or past confirm that Abbra Kadabra mentioned a DeVoe. I was talking to Cisco and Caitlin about Zoom about Julian, you have a very good sense of who means us harm. It won’t be dismissed of again, I promise.”

Barry yawns and smiles sleepily at her and she can’t help, but yawn too.

The night is catching up with them.

“Going to sleep at six am is probably not the best way to start the day.”

“Sleep, in a real bed, with you is the start of a perfect day,” Barry says lying back down and pulling her close.

Iris lays awake a while longer listening to his breath as it slows into the gentle steady rhythm of sleep. She’s missed him so much that she fights it like a child staying awake to savor every moment of Barry beside her in her arms. But when it does come finally it is the most peaceful, restful sleep she’s had in 21 days.

#westallen secret santa #westallen #the flash #Barry Allen #Iris West #Iris WestAllen #Grant Gustin #Candice Patton #Barry x Iris #Iris x Barry

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yakaso-technology · 4 years ago

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What are The Benefits of Surveillance Cameras In Public Places?

Just as with homes and businesses, there are various benefits of surveillance cameras in public places. Not everyone is determined to lead a decent life, away from crime and unethical behaviors. But as video surveillance technology gets on bettering, the world still has hopes for a better future.

Even so, these optimisms are hanging on the fence at the moment as not everyone thinks securitycameras are any good. In fact, a survey conducted by the Debate.org has 43% of the participants agreeing that security cameras are an invasion of privacy.

Of course, it does make sense at some point, especially when you know that the government is monitoring your every movement. But if you believe you lead a straight life, what exactly are you more concerned about; your privacy or safety?

Besides, public surveillance cameras are only allowed to be put in places that are not private, such as parking lots or streets. And for the better, even the local authorities are limited on the usage of the video footages captured in public areas.

Long story short, let’s look at some of the beauty of having surveillance cameras on the street corners, bars, and other public places.

Pros of Surveillance Cameras in Public Areas

Improved Public Safety

This is one of the main benefits of having security cameras in public places. The same way they help heighten your safety at home, the systems carry on the obligation while out there traveling, shopping, or enjoying yourself.

In most cases, public security cameras have more advanced features than the standard models used at home. Hence, they provide seamless surveillance solutions, which include deterring crime before it could happen.

For a model, some CCTV systems have smart analytics functions, like IPS loitering detection and IVS abandoned object detection. With such features, suspicious individuals and items can be easily tracked and taken care of before any damage or crime is done.

Reduces Crime Rate

That’s true. Video surveillance has undeniably helped reduce acts of crime both in the private and public sectors. This explains why there has been a reduction in the number of home invasions and knocking of the banks.

Unless they’re highly motivated, no burglars can risk committing a crime knowing they will easily be exposed or get caught. As such, most of them will be less willing to act if they notice the particular area has noticeable surveillance cameras. Thereby motivating them enough to seek a different target that has minimal security measures.

Helps Catch Criminals

For the ill-witted criminals who forgot to scan surveillance cameras before committing a crime, chances of catching them are very high. As long the particular camera was keeping the recorded video footage, it becomes pretty easier to identify whoever has conducted the act.

And thanks to the facial recognition software and internet, the authorities get to catch up with the criminals even before arriving at their solace. As it was with the 2015 Boston bombings, which got a significant lead from the video footage recorded by a security camera.

Fastens Investigation And Convictions

At times, t’s surely hard to come by credible witnesses who are ready to testify and lead the rest of their lives in fear.

However, with CCTV systems in public places, the footage collected can be used against the accused in the court of law. Thus, leaving little or no chances for him/ her walking free.

Optimize Public Operations

With surveillance cameras that have people counting feature, public joints such as malls can improve their performance.

For instance, they can be able to track the average number of shoppers on a particular day. Thus, making it possible to improve services with precisely matching the number of staff during peak hours. Then, if it’s the slow days provide insights on the number of staff to reduce and increase operating efficiency.

Helps In Traffic Control

Almost every government now is installingsecurity cameras on the roads- particularly in the major cities where there are stoplights. The main goal is to help monitor the behavior of motorists, ensuring drivers don’t speed up or run through a red light.

In case of an accident, these cameras can help show exactly what had transpired without relying on the mumbo-jumbo from the biased drivers.

Furthermore, the relevant authorities can use the systems to monitor the real-time conditions of the road and or the flow of traffic. Then, send over the information to commuters so that they can know which the best route is at a particular time.

Boost Overall Convenience

When the general population takes note of the surveillance cameras on the roads and streets, there will be a smooth flow of everyday life. Everyone will have a chance to take fair and right decisions. And in the case of disagreements, it will be easier and quicker to come up with a solution before further escalation.

The Drawbacks of Surveillance Cameras in Public Spaces

As the bright always say, “Nobody is always perfect”… and so are our systems.

Despite the above benefits of surveillance cameras in public places, three drawbacks can’t be avoided. As we mentioned earlier, not everyone is ready to lead a straight life.

These cons include:

Wrongful use of the installed Surveillance cameras:

This involves scenarios where those with access to the gathered information misuse them. A good example is through blackmail, which is likely to occur when the victims don’t want some of their private secrets out of the bag.

Another wrongful use is through voyeurism, whereby those behind the big monitors start spying on women. Which then can lead to harassment and other unethical behaviors or even a crime.

Power of Doubt

Out of the percentage against public surveillance, the majority claims that these security cameras don’t work. They believe that even with the camera systems out there, the “real jackasses of society” won’t be caught. Hence, it’s a total waste of money and the invasion of their private life.

It’s expensive:

A surveillance camera that can be mounted on the streets or roads is not the regular piece from a couple of dollars. It costs big money, which would be a total waste if it fails to deliver its purpose.

YAKASO Technology is a company that provides Home Security Camera and Surveillance Consultation Service. Visit our Amazon Shop, Blog, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, Tumblr. You will get more answers.

#Security Camera #Surveillance Cameras

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kanyi · 7 years ago

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The Rise Of Startups... Or not

They call it a Cambrian moment. These days, every city worth its salt comes with a startup ecosystem: co-working spaces and accelerators mark emerging hubs across the United States and around the world. Since The Social Network, high school students have grown up with the legend of the college dorm room startup as a central narrative. From healthcare to insurance to apparel to food, it seems as though there is a startup for every piece of our economy today, and 10 more behind each one. They seem to be everywhere.

In recent years, the number of new venture capital firms has exploded, raising to hundreds of new fund formations a year. My Limited Partner friends tell me they see 300+ new fund pitches per year. Accelerators are rising follow-on funds, athletes are raising side project funds, and scout programs are launching as standalone platforms to fund the early stage. Meanwhile, the late stage has similarly continued on a great fundraising run: there have been multiple multi-billion dollar funds closed, Softbank has committed $200B into the ecosystem, and the middle eastern sovereign capital pools are investing heavily into tech. And there seems to be no end to growth in the space: as global yield stays low, hundreds of billions of assets are looking for a home, and finding promise in the global tech sector. Startups. What’s more, after the global financial crisis in 2008, large corporations had shrunk, Millennials were graduating into uncertain job markets. Youth unemployment was startlingly high, from Spain to Iran to South Africa, and everything in-between. Necessity is the mother of invention. Of course, startups rushed in to fill the void.

Or have they? Take a look at this chart, published by the Kauffman Foundation in this great research report (pdf link) about new business creation in the United States:

It shows that the rate of business owners nationally has actually fallen by over 20% since 1996, with an even more precipitous decline in 2008. So first of all, more startups weren’t created after 2008. Dramatically fewer were. And while new business formation has rebounded since 2008, it is still lower than it was 30 years ago. But take a look at the chart below, from the U.S. Census Bureau, and you’ll see that, in fact, new business formation in the United States is at a 40-year low!

So what gives? I conclude a few things:

First of all, the word startup has taken on a special connotation, and implies the formation of a unique type of company. I’m not convinced by this formulation: 7-Eleven was venture-backed. Blue Bottle Coffee was a venture-backed company. The fastest growing company over the last five years, by revenue, was a Utah-based bootstrapped multi-level marketing company called Younique Products. It was founded in 2012, and had $400 million of revenue by the end of 2016. Seriously. Look it up. So– any business can grow fast and deliver 20x, 30x, etc. Any notion that there is a certain *type* of company that is venture fundable is flatly wrong. But this mindset is particularly relevant among venture capitalists lately. My friend Satya captured it well:

while there is more money than ever in VC there is also more risk aversion and less independent conviction. stranding many companies that are building solid businesses in “out of favor” markets or in markets where “venture scale returns” are not a straight line path.

— Satya Patel (@satyap)

November 28, 2017

Word. In fairness to venture capitalists, liquidity has been particularly hard to find lately, which may be affecting how they think about deploying their capital. The hive mind is more intense in venture capital today than it has been in my 7 years in the business. Valuations have been blown out of proportion among “fundable” companies, while those with promising but early trajectories, those with ambitious but workmanlike metrics, are perennially struggling to raise capital. My favorite quotation to capture this phenomenon is: deals these days are badly undersubscribed until it is badly oversubscribed.

Second of all, the United States is in a period of possibly the most intense consolidation in the innovation and technology ecosystems since the 1870′s –– when, in an effort to entice European businesspeople and workers to the United States, *massive* government contracts were granted to corporations to fund expansion of the United States project, leading to the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. Look at the top companies in the United States by market capitalization: if you take out oil companies and investment corporations, you have Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon. Semil Shah covered how their presence affects startup investing (https://stratechery.com/2016/how-fangam-impacts-startups-how-startups-adjust-to-fangam-investing-in-a-fangam-world/), but it’s worth noting that the phenomena that have lead to these companies’ massive, immense success is not isolated to them. The network effect, and the focus on consumer surplus as a means of crowding out competition, is endemic to the software-enabled innovation company today.

Competition and capitalism are actually not compatible, as Peter Thiel might say. And network effects, focused on consumer surplus, scalable demand generation, and very thin aggregation of crowds, are a *really* good manifestation of capitalism. Why start your own private practice, when economies of scale make lifestyle better to be part of a network? How do you open a small business when a big network-based company is offering a cheaper service? How do you find an edge in technology spaces that require data, when the incumbents have all the network effects and incredible expertise in attacking adjacencies?

Finally, given both of the former two points, there is a broad-based misunderstanding about startup formation today. People say: “Cloud-based services make it easier than ever”. “Pre-seed capital invests earlier”. “More funds than ever before”. But the truth is, the *vast* majority of capital that invests in startups comes after the critical period that matters most for startup founders: the “friends & family round”… the “just bootstrap it” round… As we all know, most Americans can’t afford an unexpected expense of $400. And as I’m sure most of us can intuit, the ability to raise a “friends and family round” is not evenly distributed according to talent. So taking a year, 6 months, or even a quarter, to quit your job and start a new business is simply a nonstarter for most Americans today. In a world where the small business bank loan has all but evaporated (particularly post-2008), many Americans – and others around the world – aren’t starting companies because they just can’t afford to. When we talk about diversity in tech, I’m interested in hearing about the structural impediments to startup success. Ultimately, many of them can be boiled down to access to capital. Large, urban coastal centers are attracting capital and resources aplenty, while mid-sized and middle-of-the-country towns are not keeping apace. Within those urban coastal centers, wealthy, well-connected, mostly white males are raising more and more capital at higher and higher valuations, while other demographics are not keeping apace. Even within the demographics that overindex in startup formation, there is a very strong sense of "haves" and "have-nots" which is intensifying, even in the midst of a lot of noise about diversity and startups. This is pushing inequality further, slowing our ability to innovate writ large, and keeping too many Americans outside of equity participation in this country. Economists across the political spectrum will agree that new job growth comes from new business formation. And businesspeople of all stripes will tell you that equity upside is the most important input for building wealth. This isn’t just a matter of building cool technology – though that is impacted, as well – this is a matter of how nations can grow to be healthy, and supportive of their citizens. I was pleased to read Sam’s post American Equity yesterday, as its clear he recognizes the same issue I do. The central planning and policy-prescriptions for this issue should range from ideas like his, to the varying universal basic income (UBI) concepts, to investing in incentives for banks to lend for small business formation. All of this is good. But the market driven approaches will need to supplement these – frankly, the central planning approaches will need to supplement the market driven approaches. And this starts with recognizing where we *actually* are. I’ve spoken to too many people in the tech world who say there are “too many funds” or “not another app”.

Quite the opposite, if you ask me.

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whatami-doing · 8 years ago

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1000 Voices

Recently @moshboy completed his 1000 Voices thread, an enormous tweet chain shedding light on mostly obscure gamemakers who create small, weird, personal games. The majority of them are individual creations, peculiar labours of love that are a direct reflection of the person who made them. They are indie games, but are almost never made for profit. Instead, they are works of personal expression that don't fit easily into the dominant industry narrative of highly polished and successful indie games that manage to break into financial success. I was honoured to be included in the list with my Pico-8 game Tiny Parkour, a game that scratched an itch I've wanted to see in videogames since I was in grade 4. I was also lucky to have had a (tiny) bit of exposure already, having released Spacetank 9000 for Pico-8 Jam #2, which was well-received and had a bit of press coverage.

So, my inclusion in the 1000 Voices thread was encouraging and exciting, but not my first experience with exposure. Despite this, moshboy’s curation was one of the most encouraging things to happen in my short game development career. In the spirit of the 1000 Voices thread, I'd like to talk a bit about moshboy's more obscure work and what it means.

I was first exposed to moshboy's small games curation when he posted my first completed game, L'appel du Vide, on his blog called Oddities. I remember being struck by the description of Oddities and the games it curated, which was something like "the digital trash can." I made L'appel du Vide for Ruin Jam at a time when the game industry was facing the ugliest results of its pandering consumerism. Ruin Jam was a rebuke of the entitled and malicious demands of a campaign of self-identifying gamers who marched under a mish-mash of contradictory causes. Intertwined within these mostly sexist and racist causes was the notion that gamemakers should be held responsible for their "bad" games, and that "gamers" should organize and punish these gamemakers and the journalists who covered them. Ruin Jam was a protest of this movement, an act of defiance by gamemakers who asserted their right to make unconventional, weird, "bad" games. So L'appel du Vide, along with most of the games in Ruin Jam, was an act of protest. It's a game with low-res graphics, lo-fi sfx, no score, no skill required, no winning, no losing, no right or wrong way to play, and no explicit narrative. It's everything that the coalition of angry gamers would consider trash, an unforgivable sin in the game industry. It was also a learning experience for me that helped reinforce my opposition to the ugly gamer movement. I had worked on coding small games before, but had never truly finished and released anything. Even this small, seemingly simple game was a serious challenge to complete, and gave me an appreciation for anyone who can muster up the conviction to release a game. While no game is above well-considered criticism, calling developers "lazy" when they work tirelessly to release a game against all odds is the most insipid and ill-informed criticism possible, and completing a game was the best education of that.

But besides being a protest, L'appel du Vide was also a very personal game, an attempt to capture the sensation of my recurring dreams of falling deep into the ocean and never coming back up. Releasing such a personal experience that very few people could relate to or even recognize wasn't a direct criticism of a movement like many of the games in Ruin Jam, but an attempt to recreate an entirely subjective experience in the hopes that it would evoke a fraction of the emotion that I felt in my dreams. L'appel du Vide went completely unnoticed at the end of Ruin Jam, passed over for games that made more explicit criticisms of the "gamer" movement or whose creators were higher profile than I. This was the outcome I expected. I was aware that a developer's first release almost always goes unnoticed, and had fully prepared myself for that result. Nonetheless, there is always a sense of melancholy that accompanies a deeply personal creation being relegated to complete obscurity, regardless of what medium it's created in. Even with my extremely low expectations, it was still difficult to reconcile the profound feeling of connection I had to my creation with the completely ambivalent reaction of the rest of the world. So when moshboy discovered L'appel du Vide well after its release, there was a sense that the game had served it's purpose. Someone out there had seen at least a glimpse of the emotion I hoped to evoke, and it made enough of an impact that they felt it had a place somewhere other than the digital trash heap where the vast majority of meaningful creations are left.

It may be a cliche to say it, but all it takes is one person finding value in your creation to make it feel like it has some value in the world. For me, and as many as 1000 other game makers, moshboy is that person. Videogames still inhabit a precarious place in culture and society, even years after the hateful movement that spawned out of them, dredging up uncomfortable realities about the industry and its relationship with its consumers. The culture at large is no closer to coming to any meaningful idea of how to conceive of video games as anything other than a narrow but profitable sliver of the entertainment industry. They are still viewed mainly as products to be churned out, consumed, rated based on how much of our time they were able to dominate, and finally discarded.

I would argue that if we're to ever move beyond this paradigm it won't be academic discussion of valid games criticism or analysis of interactivity that will get us there (even though these are important forms of engagement with games in their own right) but people like moshboy who see and feel the personal in games and make connections with them that amount to more than just a relationship of consumption. Without the personal, videogames are nothing more than software, and without advocates and curators like moshboy, personal games will go unappreciated in the trash heap of the internet.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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HOW TO HAVE A BIG DEAL

Google is again a case in point. If languages are all equivalent, sure, use Visual Basic. In either case there's not much you can learn, though perhaps habit might be a good plan. Nothing is forever, but the thousand little things the big companies.1 In the Valley it's not only programs that should be short. Life is too short for something. Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well.2 The alarming thing about Web-based software gets used round the clock, so everything you do is immediately put through the wringer. It's part of the mating dance with acquirers.3 Suppose you could find a really good manager.4 That's to be expected.

Change happened mostly by itself in the computer business.5 My life is full of case after case where I worked on something just because it pleased users, but also because you're less likely to start something.6 He turned out to be really tough than the quiet ones. The first yuppies did not work for startups. So the deals take longer, dilute you more, and they were all essentially mechanics and shopkeepers at first. Of course college students have to think about it if you're trying to make you learn stuff that's more advanced than you'll need in a job.7 The new fluidity of companies changed people's relationships with their employers. So one way to find out if you're suited to running a startup is a task where you can't always trust your instincts about people. Keep doing it when you start a company? Also, common spelling errors will tend to judge you by the distance between the starting point and where you are constantly making and testing small modifications. Everyone is focused on this type of approach now, but Fortran I didn't have them.

People who don't want to violate users' privacy, but even if it isn't, how do you pick out the people with better taste?8 But few big companies are smart enough yet to admit this to themselves.9 It's a better place for what they want. And that is a way to answer that is to try. An accumulator has to accumulate. A guilty pleasure is at least an interesting question.10 And since you can delay pushing the button for a while, you yourself tend to measure what you've done the same way taking a shower lets your thoughts drift a bit—and thus drift off the wrong path you'd been pursuing last night and onto the right one adjacent to it. The other end of the list, fixing them.11 And yet the prospect of a demo pushes most of them don't.

He didn't choose, the industry did.12 Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something that takes off, you may find that founders have moved on. Sam Altman, the co-founder? If we could answer that question it would be a good plan. Writing eval required inventing a notation representing Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be used to express Lisp programs in practice. If you could find a really good manager. At best you can do in a startup.13

That's incremented by, not plus. Will you be able to dump ultimate responsibility for the whole company. It matters more to make something people want. Because it is the people. And then of course there are the tricks people play on themselves.14 The only thing professors trust is recommendations, preferably from people they know. Those of us on the maker's schedule. If you use this method, you'll get roughly the same answer I just gave. Seeing a painting they recognize from reproductions is so overwhelming that their response to it as a painting is drowned out.15

For example, in preindustrial societies like medieval Europe, when someone attacked you, you have to know if you bet on Web-based software is like desiging a city rather than a building: as well as talent, so this is what Bill Gates must have been dismayed when I jumped up to the whiteboard and launched into a presentation of our exciting new technology. If you're writing software that has to run on the server. A survey course in art history may be worthwhile. At any rate they didn't pursue the suit very vigorously.16 So there is a name for the phenomenon, Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. You could just go out and buy a ready-made blank canvas. She assumed the problem was with her. If someone seems slippery, or bogus, or a tool for 3D animation. I advise fatalism. The most likely source of examples is math. Lots of small companies flourished, and did it by making cool things.17 A bad bug might not just crash one user's process; it could crash them all.

We do advise the companies we fund to apply for patents?18 Forms up to this challenge? But only about 10% of the time not to defend yourself. But it's possible to be part of a larger group; and you're subject to a lot of macros, and I can't predict what's going to happen increasingly often in the future and they sensed that something was missing. When it got big enough, IBM decided it was worth paying attention to. Ideas 1-5 are now widespread. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old.19 Why not start a startup? A painting familiar from reproductions looks more familiar from ten feet away; close in you see details that get lost in reproductions, and which you're therefore seeing for the first time. The most important, obviously, is that you can write a spreadsheet that several people can use simultaneously from different locations without special client software, or resold Web-based software gives you unprecedented information about their behavior. I feel a bit dishonest recommending that route. Yet that doesn't seem quite right, does it?

Notes

Acquirers can be said to have them soon.

Which in turn the most valuable aspects of the first thing they'd want; it has no competitors. The root of the next time you raise them.

The University of Vermont: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. You know in their voices will be regarded in the past, and it doesn't commit you to remain in denial about your conversations with potential earnings. One way to explain how you'd figure out yet whether you'll succeed. I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for example, being offered large bribes by the National Center for Education Statistics, the space of ideas doesn't have users.

That's why the series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and I had zero effect on the world, and it would have seemed to Aristotle the core: the energy they emit encourages other ambitious people, but even there people tend to be writing with conviction.

Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have seemed to Aristotle the core: the editor written in C, which are a small percentage of GDP were about 60,000 computers attached to the option of deferring to a company's revenues as the first year or two make the people they want to live in a more general rule: focus on growth instead of just doing things, a lot would be very unhealthy. But a couple of hackers with no business experience to start startups. Plus ca change.

MITE Corp.

Other investors might assume that the money right now.

Horace, Sat.

In fact, for the same trick of enriching himself at the time I know for sure whether, e. If not, don't even try. In principle yes, of course there is a meaningful idea for human audiences.

It's to make a conscious effort to be very popular but from which a few additional sources on their appearance. But he got killed in the other meanings.

A lot of face to face meetings.

There were lots of potential winners, which would be critical to do better. But if A supports, say, ending up on the order of 10,000 people or so, even if they miss just a few VC firms. In a typical fund, half the companies fail, most of the number of spams that you could probably write a book or movie or desktop application in this new world. Internally most companies are also the 11% most susceptible to charisma.

When that happens, it increases your confidence in a band, or at such a dangerous mistake to believe, is that if you like a little about how closely the remarks attributed to them more professional.

7x a year, but its value was as bad an employee as this place was a good open-source browser. Trevor Blackwell, who may have now missed the video boat entirely. It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid variable capture and multiple evaluation; Hart's examples are subject to both write the sort of Gresham's Law of conversations.

01. According to Sports Illustrated, the manager mostly in good ways.

Digg's algorithm is very visible in Silicon Valley like the Segway and Google Wave. But you can play it safe by excluding VC firms regularly cold email.

There may be to ask permission to go out running or sit home and watch TV, music, and also what we'd call random facts, like indifference to individual users.

This must have been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the way we met Charlie Cheever sitting near the door.

Some professors do create a great founder is in the top and get pushed down by new arrivals. This was made particularly clear in our own online store.

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Transcript of Overcoming Objections in Sales

Transcript of Overcoming Objections in Sales written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Today’s episode is brought to you by Break Through The Noise, the new book by Tim Staples, Co-Founder and CEO of Shareability. In his book Tim reveals his secret sauce for how to capture the attention of millions of people online, without spending millions of dollars.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jeb Blount. He is a sales acceleration specialist, founder of Sales Gravy and the author of a couple books, Fanatical Prospecting, I think we had him on here for, and then also, the book we’re going to talk about today, Objections: The Ultimate Guide for Mastering the Art and Science of Getting Past No. So Jeb, welcome back.

Jeb Blount: Oh, thank you. I’m glad to be back on. I appreciate you having me on.

John Jantsch: So, objection seems like a pretty specific part of the sales process. So let’s start out there. Why a book just on that aspect?

Jeb Blount: Well, if you think about most sales books, there’s a little part in the very back of every sales book on objections. There are very few books that have been written on objections and even in training that we deliver and that corporations deliver to their people, objections kind of take a back seat. But, when we think about objections and what objections are, you’re dealing with objections all the way through the entire sales process.

Jeb Blount: From the moment that you get someone on the telephone and you’re prospecting, they may tell you, they don’t have time for a meeting to throwing out red herrings in the middle of your sales process that take you off track, to micro-commitment objections. Getting them to advance to a next step. Then finally, buying and selection commitment objections.

Jeb Blount: So, no matter what you do, no matter what you sell, no matter how you sell it, there’s a great democracy in objections and objections are everywhere in the sales process, but we just haven’t addressed it. What I realized is that when I was dealing with entrepreneurs and I was dealing with people in marketing and I was dealing with people in sales and even dealing with people in nonprofit, almost all the questions that they ask about me is, “What do I do when someone tells me no?”

Jeb Blount: That’s why I made the decision to write this book and to really break down the science of objections, the science of why they hurt so much and why do buyers give us rejections. Then creating frameworks that allow people, in the moment, to deal with those objections, get past them and keep their deals advancing.

John Jantsch: Yeah, because for a lot of people, objection is really rejection. I mean, they don’t get past the early on stages and that’s where people give up. I think a lot of what you’re saying is, you got to expect this stuff and you got to look for it and you have to overcome it, maybe multiple times. I think that’s probably the part that makes… I don’t know how to say this the right way. That’s the part that makes people not like selling so much, but it’s also… Isn’t it the part that people get really good at it, enjoy the most?

Jeb Blount: Yeah, I think you’re right. So, persistence is a virtue, especially in sales and in business. I opened the book with the story about a guy that called me 71 times and ended up selling me a software program that changed my business. It changed the trajectory of our company. It helped us grow very fast and if he hadn’t been so persistent, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. So, he really helped me out.

Jeb Blount: I tell the story in the book where I called Fujifilm, was a client that I was looking to do business with. I called them over 50 times until they finally met with me. Which I think is what people miss in this, is when I showed up, they had their head of sales in the meeting and the head of sales was trying to hire me to come work for their company because he was so impressed with my persistence.

Jeb Blount: So, when we’re talking about persistence, in a lot of cases, we’re talking about the objections that you get really early on. Which are the harshest objections and they can be rejection that you get. So, when you call someone up asking for time, you’re interrupting their day and you’re asking for the one thing they don’t have any of and that is time. Those particular objections are the things that, I think make people run from sales the most.

Jeb Blount: Those aren’t the only objections you get, but those are certainly the harshest objections. The thing about objections is that they aren’t necessarily rejection. Sometimes they are, especially when you’re prospecting. But our brains treat an objection like it’s a rejection because we perceive it to be that way. In the worst cases, we anticipate that we’re going to get rejected. So we never even make the call or make the approach because we start worrying about what’s going to happen when someone tells us no.

Jeb Blount: In the book itself, what we really deal with is that feeling that you get of rejection, whether it’s anticipated, whether it’s real or whether it is perceived. That feeling that you have is much more biological than psychological. So, it’s important to be aware of where it comes from, so that in the moment, you can rise above the emotion that you feel and choose your response. That by the way, is the real key of getting past the objection and getting to what you want.

John Jantsch: Well, and I’m going to guess, I could be wrong, but that person that called you 71 times believed in the value that you could receive and that’s what kept them coming back. Am I way off base there?

Jeb Blount: Absolutely. Well, I think two things. One, he had absolute conviction in the quality of the product that he was selling and he was right about that. It is a high quality software and also, he had done a really good job of targeting. So, he had done a very good job of deciding which companies were the best fit for that product and my company Sales Gravy, we’re a fairly well-known sell training company. We work across the globe. We have a high profile. So, one of the things for him was, if I can get Sales Gravy to buy this, then I can get a lot of other training companies to buy this because I can tell them that Sales Gravy’s my client. I knew that was part of what he was doing and he was up front about that. About what an important prospect we were to him.

Jeb Blount: So, when you have the right prospect, where you know that what you’re selling is a fit and you know that you really help them, then that gives you that emotional reason to keep facing the fact that you’re getting knocked down, knocked down, knocked down because That told him to go away a dozen times. It allows you to do that.

Jeb Blount: Thankfully, he had so much conviction in what he was selling that he didn’t stop and it’s made all the difference for us as an organization. I can tell you straight up, the software that he sold us has helped us double the size of our company three years in a row. That’s how powerful that was.

John Jantsch: So, let’s focus on the prospecting part, which a lot of that was what he was doing. For a lot of people, that’s the hardest part. I mean, 90% of people couldn’t get past that because it’s so easy. It’s like, “No, and I don’t have time for you.” Click. To the buyers defense a little bit, I mean, I get those calls all the time and I just don’t have the time to invest in determining a lot of times, as I suspect you did, that that software was a good fit. No matter, all the promises, it like, “Yeah, I get that five times a day. What if it doesn’t?” So, I can’t take the time. So, how do you get past the fact that a lot of people just see that as you interrupting?

Jeb Blount: Well, you are interrupting. I mean, it’s just the fact of the matter. You’re interrupting and you’re asking them for the one thing that they don’t have any of, and that is time. So, there’s a couple of things. One of the things that Richard did really well in this situation is that he built familiarity. So, the last time that he got me on the telephone, I knew who he was. I’d heard his voice. I’d seen dozens of emails. He stalked me on LinkedIn. He called me and left me voicemails.

Jeb Blount: When I finally had a moment, I was in the situation where I couldn’t say, “No, I’m not going to give you time.” Because honestly, as a human being, with some level of empathy, he had just earned the right to have the conversation. The second thing that he did was, he was able to change his message. Because he left me so many voicemails, I heard different messages. So, he built these little commercials for me along the way.

Jeb Blount: So for him, he did that. I mean, he got to the point where I knew who he was and he had earned the right and part of like you said, “Do I know whether or not this is really worth my time?” Part of that is that the salesperson keeps showing up over and over and over again. Because if you think about it, most sales people hit the no once and they never call back again and I see that everyday in corporate America. When we’re working with people, working with a sales person, the question they ask is, “How many times should I call?” The answer is, that they currently have is, “I call once, they tell me, no. I never call back again.”

Jeb Blount: A great example is, I was working with this small company up in New York City and they sold advertising into restaurants. So, I was out with their sales people on the street in New York City, cold calling restaurants. We’re walking door-to-door, walking in and interrupting the day of restaurant managers in New York City, the hardest place in the world to sell. When we walked in, they told us to go screw ourselves.

Jeb Blount: We got told no in about 60 different languages and then, we went back the next day and went back the next day and went back the next day and it took about five times of walking in and them seeing you before they would give you a second look. Then they would say, “Yeah, get out of here but come back tomorrow.” And you knew you had cracked them and then, you’d come in the sixth time and then, they would give you a few minutes. You go in the seventh time, you got a meeting because their filter for whether or not it’s worth their time to invest in you was basically predicated on, did you have the chops to keep showing up over and over and over again?

Jeb Blount: I did the same thing. I love salespeople it’s what I do for a living. But I tell salespeople to go away all the time and it’s the ones that keep at it that eventually will at least get in, or I will at least look at their message. If I look at their message and I determine it’s not right for me, I’ll be respectful enough to tell them why it’s not the right time or right for me, rather than just brushing them off with, “I don’t have time.”

John Jantsch: Yeah. So in a way, you’re asking them to invest in you, before you’ll invest in them and I think that’s a great way to look at it. So, we talked about the prospecting one. You mentioned red herrings and micro-commitments and the fourth one, kind of that buying commitment. So I guess maybe, just briefly state what those are and then, I’d love for you to talk about some tactics for kind of turning those around.

Jeb Blount: Sure, so red herring objections are really not… they’re not real objections. But typically, when we’re in these conversations, sales conversations, especially for entrepreneurs, we feel nervous. A lot of it is because we have everything on the line and we feel a little bit vulnerable. In those initial meetings, what will happen is, you’re having a conversation with someone and they’ll say, “Well listen, I can’t talk anymore until I know how much it costs.” Or, “I just want you to know I’m not buying today.” They’ll throw something like that out really early in the conversation and what happens is we end up chasing that and we burn all the time that we have with them, dealing with something that’s not really a price objection. It’s just what they say. They don’t really have anything else to say to you.

Jeb Blount: So, it’s important in those situations, that you acknowledge it. So, the way I acknowledge anytime I get a red herring, is just write it down on a piece of paper, ask them if there’s anything else. Then I moved directly into my conversation, which usually sounds like this. I’s say, “If it’d be okay with you, let me ask you a few questions about you and then, we can talk about what we do and you and I can determine from there, whether or not it makes sense for us to keep talking.”

Jeb Blount: So, I use this process where I just, I pause for just a moment, acknowledge it, write it down and then, I ignore it. Most of the time red herrings never, ever come back up again and sometimes they’re important. Write it down, come back to it later. But don’t allow a red herring to disrupt your conversation. Maintain control and keep the meeting moving the way you want it to move.

Jeb Blount: Micro-commitment objection is really simple. All of sales is a set of commitments. So prospecting is asking for time. Sales is asking for commitments and those commitments are small micro-commitments along the way. So, for example, if I’m selling something and the best way that I can determine what to sell you is to go walk through say, your warehouse or walk through your building or take a look at your data or spend a day in the life with one of your AR clerks, whatever the case may be. If I’m doing that, I want to ask for micro-commitment and the more micro-commitments I can get along the way, the more my buyer’s invested in the process. Which means it’s more likely that they’re going to see it through to an outcome and my opportunities not going to stall.

Jeb Blount: So, I’m constantly asking people for my micro-commitments at test engagement and make sure that we’re moving forward. But from time-to-time they’ll say, “No.” They’ll say, “I don’t understand why we need to go do a tour of my warehouse. I mean, it’s just a warehouse. Why can’t you just send me a quote?” Or, “I don’t know why we would need to do that.” Or, “Why don’t you just email me the proposal and then, I’ll call you and we can meet later versus setting up a meeting with you.”

Jeb Blount: The thing about micro-commitments is all you have to do is just explain the value. These are real, low-key objections. They’re not harsh. They’re rarely rejection. We get a little bit flustered, but all you have to do is explain the value. So if someone says, “Look, I don’t know why we need to do this.” I say, “Listen, the reason that this is important is because the way I work as an organization is that every solution that I build is custom to my client’s unique situations. Until I get to know you, it’s going to be impossible for me to put together a blueprint for how we would serve you. All I’m going to need is about 15 minutes of your time to go through this information. So how about Thursday at two?” Really simple. If you can give a good explanation, they will rarely tell you no.

Jeb Blount: Then finally, they’re buying commitment objections and buying commitment objections are just people’s… They’re concerned about making a mistake. It’s their fear of taking risks. It’s their attachment to the status quo. What I’m doing now, even though it’s not perfect, it’s probably going to be better than taking a risk of change.

Jeb Blount: With micro-commitment or with buying commitment objections, it’s really about building your case through discovery, making sure that you’ve done all your work along the way. You really understand what’s important to them, why they would do this and it’s relating to them as a human being. Making sure that you are clarifying exactly what they mean. So, if someone says, “Your price is too much.” My question’s always. “How so? Help me understand that.” Because sometimes, it’s maybe the startup cost but not the ongoing cost.

Jeb Blount: Then the key here is, with buying commitment objections is recognizing that buying commitment objections almost always come from a place of fear. It’s just natural for human beings. We’re adverse to risk and along… as we’ve gone through our lives, when we avoid risk, we have a tendency to stay alive, so it’s part of our makeup. So, you have to minimize their fear while maximizing the future outcomes, while showing them what they’re going to get. The best way to have the ammunition that you need in a buying commitment objection is to have done a good job in the sales process doing deep discovery and built a good business case.

John Jantsch: Just to let you know, this episode is brought to you by Break Through the Noise, the new book by Tim Staples. If you’re a marketer, an entrepreneur or a small business owner and you have a limited budget to market to and connect with your customers, you need break through the noise. Tim Staples shares the nine essential rules for mastering the art of online storytelling and provides tools to help you outsmart the social media algorithms, increase your share of voice and build your brand. Breakthrough the Noise by Tim Staples is on sale now, wherever books are sold.

John Jantsch: So you spend a good chunk of the book talking about asking as a skill and how and why. I think that’s a part that most sort of beginning salespeople miss, is that they want to show up and talk about their stuff and a lot of times, we’re not even giving the buyer a chance to object to anything because we want to talk about ourselves. So, how do we develop this habit of making sure that we’re asking plenty of questions before we start trying to sell anything.

Jeb Blount: Well, I think first of all, you’re exactly right. You’ve got to ask questions and do discovery. The easiest thing to remember is this, when you ask for the sale, if you haven’t asked questions to begin with, you’re going to be dealing with price. So, you’re going to go straight to the bottom, deal with price because that’s the only thing that differentiates you. When you ask great questions, when you get out of your own way, rather than just pitching and explaining and telling, when you do that and then you go, “You want to buy?” The only way they can buy from you is based on you lowering your price because you created no differentiation from your competitors. So that’s one part of asking.

Jeb Blount: One is asking questions. Open-ended questions, artful and strategic questions that provoke awareness in building your business case. The problem with salespeople, more often than not with asking, is they don’t ask for what they want. So for example, if I want to come do a tour of your facility, I have to ask for that. If I want to sell, I have to ask you to do business with me. If I want time, I have to ask you for time.

Jeb Blount: The problem is, is when we ask, it creates this deep sense of vulnerability. We ask with confidence that we want something, then the person could tell us, “No.” We begin anticipating that we’re going to get rejected and therefore we don’t ask at all. What we do is we sit and wait for the prospect to do the job for us. That they’re going to somehow come to their senses and close the deal or give us time or what have you and it just doesn’t work that way.

Jeb Blount: One of my favorite quotes from Jim Rome is that, “Asking is the beginning of receiving.” I mean, if we want a deal, we have to ask first. So, asking is the most important discipline in sale, asking for what you want. If you want to get something you have to ask for it. We start the book that way because when you ask, you are going to get told no. When you ask, you are going to get rejected. Those things are true and when you begin anticipating that or when you change your behavior because you don’t want to feel the pain of rejection, all of a sudden you stop asking or you ask in a way that is so passive and insecure, that you’re never going to get what you want.

Jeb Blount: So, what you need is first of all, to understand where that pain comes from so that you can be aware of it. Awareness is the mother of change. But, next you have to have a set of frameworks, so that when you ask and you get the objection, when it happens to you, that you can rise above the emotion. What I teach people when I’m working with them on objections is that the emotion that you feel about being rejected, because it’s not comfortable. Nobody likes to feel that way. That happens without your consent. You don’t get to choose the emotion. The only thing you can choose is how you respond to that, what you’re going to do next, how you rise above it.

Jeb Blount: One of the really simple mechanisms that we teach people is something called the ledge and it’s what neuroscientists call the magic quarter second. So, when you get someone telling you no, an objection, that happens at the… your response the emotional level and it kicks off something called fight or flight, which changes your physiology and it changes the way that you deal with it and it makes it really hard to think.

Jeb Blount: So the ledge, this magic quarter second, gives you just a moment to get your neocortex or your thinking, rational brain in executive control over your response. So, for example, if I asked you for time and you said, “Jeb, I’m too busy today.” My ledge in this situation would be, that’s exactly why I called because I figured you would be. I say that every single time. But just that simple moment of having something that I say and respond to, anytime someone says that to me. Someone says, “Your prices are too way too high.” I always say, “How so?”

Jeb Blount: But because I have that, it gives me a moment to think and if I can have that moment to think, I can get out of the emotional state that I’m in, that makes it difficult for me to respond and get back into a rational state that allows me to be in control of my emotions and therefore, deliver a response that helps me get past the objection.

Jeb Blount: The one thing that you must take to the bank and understand about your interactions with people in a sales conversation, is that the person in that conversation that exerts the greatest amount of emotional control is the person who has the highest probability of getting the outcome that they desire?

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think it probably, also has a little bit of impact of disarming the sort of knee jerk reaction. Like, “I’m too busy. You’re priced too high.” I mean some of that’s just defense, isn’t it? If we aren’t prepared to sort of deflect that defense mechanism, we’re never going to get a chance to show the value we can bring.

Jeb Blount: Yeah. I think it’s probably, when… We think about that more, “Let’s focus on disrupting the pattern.” So, when someone says, “I’m too busy.” Typically, that’s just their… It’s a reflex response. That’s why I call them buyer scripts, right? So, it’s just what they say. So, if you say, “I’m too busy.” I’m going to say, “That’s exactly why I called, because I figured you would be.” There not expecting that. I mean, they’re not expecting a salesperson to say that. They’re expecting me to argue with them or to say, “What’s a better time to call you.” I just say, “That’s exactly why I called because I figured you would be and all I want to do is find a time that’s more convenient for you.” I say that every single time. It’s got about a 70% probability of getting the person to tell me yes.

Jeb Blount: So, in that particular case, I’ve got a stock response. I was just working with a rep who is selling into CFOs and he sells software that helps them reduce their SGNA costs and he was having a hard time dealing with it, when the CFO said, “I’m not interested.” Because they all say, “I’m not interested,” because they’re too busy. His response, the way that he broke that up, he said, “That’s exactly what I thought you’d say because every CFO I call tells me they’re not interested, before they learn that we can rapidly reduce their SGNA costs and give them the ability to invest that money in places that grow the business.”

Jeb Blount: The week before he was using that turn around, he got four meetings. The week that he started using the turnaround, he got 18 meetings. So, it was just breaking through that little bit of resistance and doing something that allowed him to rise above the emotion and then, disrupted the pattern of that CFO, “I’m not interested.” That moved them to a place where they were willing to meet with him and that’s when he began… could begin to make the case because you can’t make the case on a simple prospecting call. It’s moving fast. You interrupted their day. You need to get the meeting to have that conversation.

John Jantsch: All right, I’m going to end on one you can probably swat right out of the park. But I’m going to ask you this question because I’m sure that lots of listeners out there and lots of folks who come to you probably have this. So you have a story in there that yes has a number and you essentially say, “If you ask…” Like a lot of salespeople, you have to ask enough people in order to get to yes with somebody. But here’s my question, so you had the number in there 11. You asked people to sing, Mary Had a Little Lamb and you said, typically somewhere around 11… by the 11th person, you finally got somebody to do it. So, let me ask you this, does that mean though that 10 people were damaged along the way?

Jeb Blount: No. I mean, the story is, I was in New York City. I was more damaged than not because I was usually getting F you, when I asked the question. So, I was the one that was getting damaged. But most people answer… I asked them… They went on with their life. I mean, they may have at dinner said, “Hey, this crazy guy on the street asked me to sing, Mary Had a Little Lamb into a camera.” But more often than not, they just forget, they have no idea.

John Jantsch: Let me make sure I focus on that. You use that as an example. So let’s say, just in the cold calling environment is what I’m really asking. So yeah, you finally find somebody who will meet with you, but the 10 people… And I’m saying damaged, that’s harsh. But I mean, are the 10 people that you interrupted, had a bad experience?

Jeb Blount: Well, only if you’re a total schmuck. But other than that, no. A great example of this is, I was working with a group up in Atlanta and we were doing cold calls. I was working, we’re working with them doing cold calls. The fourth person I called was just the meanest, most awful human being. She was so ugly to me and I’ve made thousands of calls, but she really hurt my feelings. Then I was even thinking that this is Atlanta, Georgia. So usually, you get told no nicer than you do in New York City.

Jeb Blount: So, it was bothering me, but I couldn’t flinch, because I’m in front of a bunch of reps that I’m training how to do cold calls. So, I kept on going, but finally it was bothering me so bad, I went back to the top of the list and I called her back 30 minutes after I’d called her the first time. When she answered the phone, I did exactly the same thing that I’d done the first time. And she said, “Yeah, come on by on Wednesday.” She didn’t even remember that I called her. I don’t know what she was in the middle of. I don’t know what was going on, but that happened.

Jeb Blount: My son called me earlier this week and and said… he said, “You’re not going to believe this.” He said, “I talked to the CEO two weeks ago, who told me that to go away. I’m never going to do business with you and oh, by the way, I’m busy for the next six years. So, don’t ever call me back again.” He said, “I was sitting there and I was thinking about it. I’m like, I’m going to call the guy back.” So he said, “Two weeks later, I called him back.” He said, “I changed my message up just a little bit.” And he said, “I ended up getting the meeting.”

Jeb Blount: It’s like, that’s what happens to people all the time. Is that you get off the phone thinking that that person is still thinking about you but they’re not. It’s probably no different than, someone cuts you off in traffic and you drive on and you’re so pissed off at them and you’re thinking about them grinding your teeth and thinking about all the things you can do with retribution and meanwhile, that person is driving on. They haven’t given you a second thought. They’re just going on with their day. All you are is an inconvenient interruption and they forgot about you the minute that you got off the phone. Unless of course, I mean, if you’re just a total jerk on the phone with them, they may not forget you, but that’s just so weird for sales people to do that.

Jeb Blount: Usually, I try to get past an objection a couple of times. If I don’t, I hang up and I move on and I call them back a couple of days later. So you’re not going to cause any damage calling people, doing prospecting, having conversations. More often than not, you’re going to create respect because you’re willing to call back. Which, I think is essentially, what happened to my son when the CEO realized that this kid who’s 21 years old wasn’t willing to back down. That CEO had deeper respect for him and was willing to give him 20 minutes of his time.

John Jantsch: Jeb, where can people find out more about you and Sales Gravy and any of your books?

Jeb Blount: Absolutely. All my books, I’ve written 10 books, they’re on Amazon. So, you can grab those, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Most bookstores, most airports you’ll find my books. Salesgravy.com is my flagship website. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of free resources there that you can grab. You can get my podcast, along with this one. Because this is the podcast Mark and I listen to every single week, but you can grab my podcasts on all the major podcast providers, Sales Gravy, G-R-A-V-Y, is the easiest way to pop that in. YouTube channel thousands are… Thousands, about four or 500 videos there, I think. Then, you can catch me on all the major social networks. I’m @salesgravy, wherever you go.

John Jantsch: Well, Jeb it was great catching up with you and hopefully, we’ll run into you there soon out on the road.

Jeb Blount: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

from http://bit.ly/331ydF9

#Marketing Plan

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theinvinciblenoob · 7 years ago

Link

Scalar Capital is a San Francisco-based hedge fund company specializing in crypto assets. In fact, it is one of roughly 300 crypto-focused funds that have sprung up in the last year or so.

That kind of market zaniness makes it difficult to carve out a niche, but Scalar has a bit an edge on this front, thanks to its founders’ backgrounds. Linda Xie, who studied economics at UC San Diego, spent a couple of years out of college as a portfolio risk analyst with the insurance giant AIG before joining Coinbase as a product manager, a role she held for more than three years before leaving last fall to start Scalar.

Her cofounder, Jordan Clifford, has a computer science degree from Carnegie Mellon and spent a few years as a business analyst with Capital One before bouncing around a couple of startups and landing at Coinbase, where he worked as a software engineer for roughly 18 months, meeting Xie in the process.

Though it’s far too early to say whether Scalar can, well, scale, a source close to the firm says the duo has already raised $20 million from investors that include VC and crypto enthusiast Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam, and angel investor Elad Gil, among others. We spoke with Xie recently to learn more. Our chat has been edited lightly for length.

TC: When did you first become interested in crypto assets?

LX: I first came across bitcoin in 2011. At the time, I was working (first as an intern) at AIG, which was hiring a lot of risk analysts after the financial implosion. And I saw a lot of what went wrong and became very interested in decentralized systems. When Coinbase came along and I saw they were working with [retailer] Overstock, [helping enable bitcoin as a form a payment for its customers], and working with regulators to take bitcoin mainstream, I wrote to them, and they brought me on.

TC: What were you doing there exactly?

LX: Initially, I was working with law enforcement to help them catch criminals. It’s how I became interested in Monero [a privacy coin that launched in 2014 with privacy features meant to give users a degree of anonymity]. Then I later became a product manager at Coinbase, building internal tools, which is when I met Jordan. He was an engineer on the same team, and we were educating people internally about different cryptocurrencies and really enjoyed that and realized we wanted to spend our time investing in this. So we decided to leave last year and start this fund together.

TC: How is Scalar unique in what it’s doing?

LX: It’s a very volatile space, but we’ve already been able to see what it takes to succeed through our work at Coinbase. I’ve also advised Ox [a decentralized exchange on Ethereum] and through that work seen what it takes to build a successful crypto project from creating a white paper to building community. Full disclosure: the cofounder is my husband. But over two years, I helped set up its structure, connected it with advisors and investors, and helped make sure its tokens are distributed, and I’m taking what I learned and applying it to other projects. Even if it’s a liquid asset that we’re getting involved in, we try to be as helpful as possible, both on a technical level, as well when it comes to strategy and recruiting.

Our fund is focused on crypto assets with a core focus right now on privacy coins, which we think are undervalued. But we’re also investing in different smart contracts platforms and scaling solutions — different technologies that we think are going to be a big deal.

TC: The latter two don’t sound very liquid. As a hedge fund, aren’t your investors expecting returns fairly quickly? Or do you sell the projects’ tokens right away on the secondary market?

LX: I don’t think anyone can promise exact returns. It’s going to take a few years to [start to see] some of the winners in this industry. But we’ve made it really clear to our investors that this industry is [in the very early innings]. We’re still figuring out the technology and how it gets to scale, but we believe that by getting in early, we’ll be able to capture massive amounts of value.

TC: How many different coins have you invested in so far, and how do you think about company or project “stages” and whether and when it makes sense to invest?

LX: We’ve invested in over a dozen privacy coins. For the early-stage ones, where there’s no product or code available, we’re very dependent on background of the team. But even at that idea phase, we’re thinking through the token economics.

When we get to later-stage projects, we’re looking at the open source code; we’re looking at the community; we’re assessing how do you create a moat. Community is definitely one of the most important pieces — are there people using it and giving their feedback or is this a purely speculative community. We’re also looking at the token itself and considering the supply and the ownership that the team has and its vesting schedule. At the end of the day, making sure the tech is sound and the code is secure and that a team is using the best coding practices and that its developers are competent is the most crucial aspect of what we do. Jordan handles a lot of [this work] but we also have technical advisors.

TC: So many tokens are being generated that Thomson Reuters just added 50 tokens to its financial data feed. Should we expect public exchanges that, instead of company shares, sell company tokens? Is that where things are heading?

LX: First, the vast majority of tokens right now are terrible. Many of them come with zero rights to company revenue or anything; they’re just used for fundraising. I do think we’ll see a trend toward security, where you can tokenize traditional securities and you’ll have 24/7, liquid markets that are accessible globally. I do eventually see many companies, but public and private, tokenizing their securities and releasing them in this form.

That’s not what truly excites me, though. That just mirrors our existing financial system. I’m much more excited about concepts where you’re disrupting something using cryptography, where a crypto asset is not seizable by any government and you can store money with it and anyone can have access to it.

TC: There are so many deals out there. How would you characterize your investment pace?

LX: There are so many terrible deals out there. The best deals are highly competitive. As for pace, it goes through cycles. We’ll fund some really compelling projects, then months will pass where there’s nothing.

TC: Who are your typical co-investors, and what size checks are you writing?

LX: We mostly find ourselves in VC rounds, with some of the investors in our management company — people who are thinking longer term and who realize that crypto is in its early days. The size of checks completely vary based on our conviction.

TC: What’s one new area of interest for you?

LX: Ethereum is right now the dominant smart projects platform, but there’ve been some issues with scaling, so we’ve been looking at some competitors in what’s becoming a smart contracts war. There are dozens, but only a handful are really good in our opinion, and a lot of them make trade-offs. You want three attributes in an ideal world: scalability, security, and decentralization. Right now, there’s this state where you can only have two. Security is paramount, so the trade-off is between scaling and decentralization. Ethereum is very focused on decentralization; other projects are more focused on scaling and they’ve made decentralization trade-offs.

Pictured above: Jordan Clifford and Linda Xie

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 7 years ago

Text

Scalar Capital, a hedge fund for crypto assets, plants its flag in an increasingly crowded landscape

Scalar Capital is a San Francisco-based hedge fund company specializing in crypto assets. In fact, it is one of roughly 300 “crypto” funds that have sprung up in the last year or so.

TC: When did you first become interested in crypto assets?

TC: What were you doing there exactly?

TC: How is Scalar unique in what it’s doing?

LX: It’s a very volatile space, but we’ve already been able to see what it takes to succeed through our work at Coinbase. I’ve also advised Ox [a decentralized exchange on Ethereum] and through that work seen what it takes to build a successful crypto project from creating a white paper to building community. Full disclosure: the cofounder is my husband. But over two years, I helped set up its structure, connected it with advisors and investors, and helped make sure its tokens are distributed, among other things, and I’m taking what I learned and applying it to other projects. Even if it’s a liquid asset that we’re getting involved in, we try to be as helpful as possible, both on a technical level, as well when it comes to strategy and recruiting.

TC: The latter two don’t sound very liquid. As a hedge fund, aren’t your investors expecting returns fairly quickly? Or do you sell the projects’ tokens right away on the secondary market?

TC: How many different coins have you invested in so far, and how do you think about company or project “stages” and whether and when it makes sense to invest?

TC: There are so many deals out there. How would you characterize your investment pace?

TC: Who are your typical co-investors, and what size checks are you writing?

TC: What’s one new area of interest for you?

Pictured above: Jordan Clifford and Linda Xie

Via Connie Loizos https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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stopkingobama · 8 years ago

Text

Trump will likely win reelection in 2020

Photo: White House

Musa al-Gharbi, Columbia University

Most Americans don’t like Trump.

Trump will most likely be reelected in 2020.

How can both of these statements be true? Here’s how:

Even when people are unhappy with a state of affairs, they are usually disinclined to change it. In my area of research, the cognitive and behavioral sciences, this is known as the “default effect.”

Software and entertainment companies exploit this tendency to empower programs to collect as much data as possible from consumers, or to keep us glued to our seats for “one more episode” of a streaming show. Overall, only 5 percent of users ever change these settings, despite widespread concerns about how companies might be using collected information or manipulating people’s choices.

The default effect also powerfully shapes U.S. politics.

Four more years

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms as president of the United States, serving from the Great Depression to World War II. To prevent future leaders from possibly holding and consolidating power indefinitely, the 22nd Amendment was passed, limiting subsequent officeholders to a maximum of two terms.

Eleven presidents have been elected since then.

Eight of these administrations won a renewed mandate: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Even the three single-term aberrations largely underscore the incumbency norm.

Had Ford won in 1976, it would have marked three consecutive terms for the GOP. If George H.W. Bush had won in 1992, it would have meant four consecutive Republican terms.

Since 1932, only once has a party held the White House for less than eight years: the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter from 1976 to 1980.

Therefore, it’s a big deal that Trump is now the default in American politics. Simply by virtue of this, he is likely to be reelected.

Popularity is overrated

Trump won his first term despite record low approval ratings, triumphing over the marginally less unpopular Hillary Clinton. He will probably be able to repeat this feat if necessary.

The president continues to enjoy staunch support from the voters who put him in the White House. He has raised millions of dollars in small donations for reelection, pulling in twice as much money as Barack Obama in his first 100 days. And he’s already putting that money to use running ads in key states that trumpet his achievements and criticize political rivals.

Although most don’t like or trust Trump, polls show he seems to be meeting or exceeding Americans’ expectations so far. In fact, an ABC News/ Washington Post survey suggests that if the election had been held again in late April, Trump would have not only won the Electoral College, but the popular vote as well – despite his declining approval rating.

To further underscore this point, consider congressional reelection patterns.

Since World War II, the incumbency rate has been about 80 percent for the House of Representatives and 73 percent for the Senate. Going into the 2016 election, Congress’ approval rating was at an abysmal 15 percent. Yet their incumbency rate was actually higher than usual: 97 percent in the House and 98 percent in the Senate.

As a function of the default effect, the particular seats which happen to be open this cycle, and Republican dominance of state governments which has allowed them to draw key congressional districts in their favor – it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to gain even a simple majority in the Senate in 2018. The House? Even less likely.

Trump … or who?

Due to the default effect, what matters most is not how the public feels about the incumbent, but how they feel about the most likely alternative.

Carter didn’t just have low approval ratings, he also had to square off against Ronald Reagan. “The Gipper” was well-known, relatable and media-savvy. Although the Washington establishment largely wrote off his platform with derisive terms like “voodoo economics,” the American public found him to be a visionary and inspirational leader – awarding him two consecutive landslide victories.

Trump’s opposition is in much worse shape. The Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging voters for the better part of a decade. Democrats are viewed as being more “out of touch” with average Americans than Trump or the Republicans. Yet key players in the DNC still resist making substantive changes to the party’s platform and strategy. Hence it remains unclear how Democrats will broaden their coalition, or even prevent its continued erosion.

Trump is not likely to follow in Carter’s footsteps. Other modern precedents seem more plausible.

For instance, Truman had an approval rating of around 39 percent going into the 1948 election, yet managed to beat challenger Thomas Dewey by more than two million in the popular vote, and 114 in the Electoral College. The president had been holding raucous rallies in key states and districts, growing ever-larger as the race neared its end. However, the media disregarded these displays of support because his base was not well-captured in polls. As a result, his victory came as a total surprise to virtually everyone. Sound familiar?

One could also look to Trump’s harbinger, Richard Nixon. Throughout Nixon’s tenure as president, he was loathed by the media. Temperamentally, he was paranoid, narcissistic and often petty. Nonetheless, Nixon was reelected in 1972 by one of the largest margins in U.S. history – winning the popular vote by more than 22 percentage points and the Electoral College by a spread of over 500.

Of course, Nixon ultimately resigned under threat of impeachment. But not before he radically reshaped the Supreme Court, pushing it dramatically rightward for more than a generation. Trump is already well on his way in this regard.

And like Nixon, Trump is unlikely to be impeached until his second term, if at all.

Impeachment would require a majority in the House. Removing Trump from office would require at least a two-thirds vote in the Senate as well.

Nixon faced impeachment because, even after his landslide reelection, Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. Clinton was impeached in 1998 by a Republican-controlled House, but was acquitted in the Senate because the GOP controlled only 55 seats.

Without massive Republican defections, Democrats will not be in a position to impeach Trump, let alone achieve the two-thirds majority required in the Senate to actually remove him from the Oval Office. The 2018 elections will not change this reality.

In other words, we can count on Trump surviving his first term – and likely winning a second.

Consider the example of George W. Bush, who, like Trump, assumed the presidency after losing the popular vote but taking the Electoral College. His tenure in office diverged wildly from his campaign commitments. He was prone to embarrassing gaffes. He was widely panned as ignorant and unqualified. Forced to rely heavily upon his ill-chosen advisors, he presided over some of the biggest foreign policy blunders in recent American history. Many of his actions in office were legally dubious as well. Yet he won reelection in 2004 by a healthy 3.5 million votes – in part because the Democrats nominated John Kerry to replace him.

Without question, Kerry was well-informed and highly qualified. He was not, however, particularly charismatic. His cautious, pragmatic approach to politics made him seem weak and indecisive compared to Bush. His long tenure in Washington exacerbated this problem, providing his opponents with plenty of “flip-flops” to highlight – suggesting he lacked firm convictions, resolve or vision.

If Democrats think they will sweep the 2020 general election simply by nominating another “grownup,” then they’re almost certainly going to have another losing ticket.

For Trump to be the next Jimmy Carter, it won’t be enough to count on his administration to fail. Democrats will also have to produce their own Ronald Reagan to depose him. So far, the prospects don’t look great.

Editor’s note: This article has been corrected. The original version had the wrong year for George H.W. Bush’s reelection bid.

Musa al-Gharbi, Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

#2020 #trump #Big Government #Donald Trump #White House

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americanlibertypac · 8 years ago