This year’s workshop sessions were designed to help get people talking and thinking together in smaller groups. We hope everyone had the opportunity to enjoy themselves and meet some interesting people. Each team had a maximum of 20 people from different companies and they all worked together to produce a series of specific outputs to 10 challenges. Overall available time was 90 minutes and the results were submitted online. Here are the outputs of the team LUDDITES.

The Outputs

Name of team: LUDDITES
Names and superpower of members:

• The Pedestrian — Travels using the immense power of his strong legs
• Affable Girl — Has friends in real life
• The Remote Controller — Can manually push buttons on electronic devices
• The Cleaner — Can tidy without a robotic aid
• LowFi Man — Sees everything in low definition
• The Cat — Destroys birds
• The Brain — Stores information IN HIS BRAIN
• The T-Totaller — Resists Alcohol
• The Surface — +6 defence to iPad
• Unreachable Man — +4 defence to smart phones
• Always Buffered Man — Is… always buffered
• NaviMan — Has premonitions about minor traffic congestion
• Unity Man — Brings people together (via a closed platform)
• The Cartographer — Navigates using mighty eyes and ears
• The Librarian — Can read real books
• Captain Verbosity — Uses many words
• The Fireplace — Heats foodstuffs using FIRE
• The Undivided Atom — Resistant to nuclear power
• Thumb Girl — Can manually turn pages
• The Non-Sharing — Can avoid the crap out of Facebook

Using a single packet of spaghetti and marshmallows, LUDDITES built a spaghetti tower 37 inches tall.

To better their BoS experience, they wireframed a special Mobile App. They shared some screen shots with us. Unfortunately, we could not find the file.

LUDDITES talked about something important they learned in BoS 2012 in a 1 minute video. Watch it to learn more about ‘Money or Happiness’. (Because this was uploaded onto a screencast website, we couldn’t embed the video but I bet you a pack of Sugru it will make you laugh unless you have no sense of humour).

After cutting a piece of letter paper into a ring, LUDDITES claimed 20 people passed it over their head to the floor without ring breaking. You can see for yourselves here.

They built a spaghetti bridge to span the gap between two BoS conference tables without declaring the exact width.

They drew a cartoon that encapsulates the Business of Software Conference. Don’t they look remarkably familiar?!

In less than 140 characters, the proposed business strategy for Twitter of LUDDITES is to

• “Go to BOS 2012??? Profit!”.

Finally, LUDDITES explored the ‘Secret of Happiness’ in the world. In a 1 minute video they explained how software could increase happiness.

Thank you, LUDDITES for participating and being up to the challenge of BoS 2012 Workshop!

This is a summary of Paul Kenny‘s Business of Software 2012 presentation.

Sales Habits That Matter

The job of a sales coach is to listen to lots and lots and lots of pitches. After listening to sales calls for a while you develop a sense for how it’s going. Therefore, you should start listening to your interactions with your customers.

Create a sales culture in your business that allows you to repeat your successes.

Habits that matter (from Paul’s previous presentations):

• Understand value: What a salesperson is good at is creating value by identifying what customers really value and then verbalizing it.
• Dialog: Salespeople are great at creating dialog. Being good at it allows you to understand value. What great salespeople do is build a dialog around everything that’s going on to uncover real problems that they might be able to solve.
• Share Stories: Storytelling is about making the way you articulate your sales resonate with the customer. Don’t ask selfish questions. Selfish questions are those that steer the conversation in a direction that allows you to talk about the topics you want to discuss. For example asking “How important is a dashboard for you?”, and following up with “Well the great thing about ABC is how interactive the dashboard is.”
• Closing: The purpose of a business is to create customers.

Resistance is Futile

Resistance happens for all sorts of reasons. Resistance feels like hitting a brick wall. You have to think about it because it will define what type of business you are.

What is your sales super power? Use sales Jedi mind tricks to manage resistance.

There is no such thing as the perfect product, even in your imagination. Even if you build a fabulous product some people will say no. Nobody gets 100% market share. So you have to know how to respond when your customers say no.

The path of least resistance – salespeople go for the easiest deals. Most resistance is mundane and manageable.

• Too busy (no time)
• Not convinced
• Prefer another product
• No money
• My boss says no
• Not sure it fits our current system
• Found it difficult to use

The people who are awesome marketers are really bad at dealing with no. When a client says no, you say OK, but ask questions. You’ll end up with a meandering path that may lead to a yes, or at least to a better understanding of why the no. When we decide to be a little pushy we can learn a lot. You’d be surprised at how many opportunities are lost.

The reason we resist new and different products is because when making buying decisions we use our lizard brain first.

Image credit: @JimYoungPG

• It’s easier to say no than yes.
• People want to test your faith and stamina. People want to test you not because they think your software is suspect, but because they are unsure of your organization.
• Helps to resolve nagging doubt.

There’s more to learn from a qualified no than an unqualified yes. All the people that say no are the ones you will learn the most from.

Sometimes clients have delayed reactions. If you put enough cracks in their doubts you will end up with an easy sales in the future.

A sales conversation with no resistance rarely ends in a deal being done. If it’s too easy, it usually means they’re not going to pay.

Resistance is the beginning of disengagement. You must push back on customers, but you shouldn’t do it in a pushy way. If you win the argument, you lose the sale.

• Ego is involved in every decision.
• Battle lines may be drawn.

Three forms of resistance:

• Objections
• Price shock
• Delay: “I want to think about it.” You MUST challenge them to see what it is they are thinking about.

Two types of objections:

• Logical: “It won’t work for us.”
• Emotional: “I don’t like it.”

Two traditional responses to resistance:

• Attack: “You don’t get it.” This is predicated on the belief that the client is an idiot.
• Surrender: “Fair enough.” We are not a pushy company.

The top sales people have one effective response – they treat resistance as a huge game. They’re explorers. They treat it as a natural and necessary part of the sales process. They believe that no real deal will be done if there is no friction.

What makes a brilliant objection handler? Basics – client awareness, market and product knowledge, etc. More important is speed of thought, persistence, reframing, attitude of thinking on your feet and looking for the best way to articulate the benefit. For example, “Wow! That’s really interesting. What is it that makes you feel that way?”

General principals of handling objections:

• Understand and isolate the underlying objection (without asking “why”)
• Get on the customer’s side (empathize)
• Respond and reframe
• Confirm and close

Don’t ask “why.” Instead probe deeper by understanding what is the underlying problem. For example, ask “What are your objections?” instead of “Why don’t you like my product?”

Every price objection is about relative value. When confronted with price objections:

• Politely ignore – “Let’s look at what you’re getting and then decide if it’s worth your money.”
• Ask “In comparison to what?”
• Break the price down

If a client responds with “I want to think about it.”, the sale almost always goes down after the client has thought about it.

• This is hard, because if you go back, you’re being pushy.
• Do they really mean it? Or is that the end?
• Get them to articulate what they’re thinking about, even if you can’t sell it. Then you can follow up with ideas/research/whatever that will deal with it.

Within your organization:

• Discuss what your response is to resistance.
• Discuss how far it’s OK to challenge the client.
• Discuss how you’ll build into your sales culture a positive handling of resistance.
• Discuss what you’ll do differently next time.

[I’d like to thank Bill Horvath, founder of DoX Systems, for sharing his notes with me.]

This is a summary of Bob Dorf‘s Business of Software 2012 presentation.

Why most startups fail

Most startups fail to scale. More startups fail from a lack of passionate customers than anything else.

Code is only half the job. You can pretty much build anything these days. Technology isn’t the problem, figuring out who your customers will be and finding passionate customers is the hard part.

If you are a passionate founder, putting in 20,000 hours gives you about a 1 in 8 chance of success.

Every founding team needs three members: a hacker, a hustler, and an artist. Every morning the hacker and the hustler should get together. Then the hacker should spend all day on product development and the hustler should spend all day on customer development.

Way back in the day, building a successful company was all about rigor and process, but things have changed.

Most startups fail because they

• Assume customer problem is known.
• Assume product features are known.

They assume it’s a simple linear process of concept/seed round -> product dev -> alpha/beta test -> launch/first ship.

We assume the customer’s problem is known, and how to solve it. Yet as a startup, we have no customers!

Startup Enemy #1: Business Plans

Image credit: @mrt_sanchez

Business plans belong in the creative writing department, not the business development department of a university.

You should always be innovating. Always ask what can I change to make it better. Constantly seek customer feedback.

Always challenge your business model. No business plan survives first contact with customers. Ask Webvan.

What is a startup? A startup is a band of pirates who get together temporarily to see if they can make all the parts of a business plan come together. They are in search mode. Once they’ve done enough searching, they can put together a business plan based on facts. By definition there is no such thing as an eight year startup. It is a four year failure.

Startups should have more of an operating plan than a business plan. Alex Osterwalder’s business model canvas is a great start. The canvas has nine components, but the most important ones are:

• Value proposition – What problem do we solve?
• Customer segments – For whom do we solve it?
• Customer relationships – How do we get, keep, and grow them?
• Revenue stream – How do we make money?

The customer segments should be defined as tightly and narrowly as you can. Customer relationships is about the three most critical activities of any business. It is about your promise/pledge to the customer.

Take a couple of people to discuss and create new business models. When you’re done completing the business model canvas, you’ve got product-market fit. However, all you have are nine best guesses. How do we turn the guesses into facts? Go out and talk to your customers to find out if they agree with your guesses. This is where customer development takes over.

Customer Development

The customer development process is customer discovery -> customer validation -> customer creation -> company building. Customer discovery and customer validation form the search phase of the customer development process. Pivoting occurs as one cycles between customer discovery and customer validation. Customer creation and company building form the execution phase of the process.

The search phase is key. You can learn the execution phase in business school. The search phase takes you through the process of validating all the guesses you’ve made in your business model.

The Minimum Viable Product

Discovery begins with the minimum viable product. Develop the fewest possible features to make the point. You can use the MVP to test new ideas.

You want to have something customers can interact with, so create something as soon as possible that customers can play with – even if it doesn’t “work.” The reactions you get from customers that try your MVP are better than the reactions you get from simply telling them about it. Reactions are incredibly helpful in making design decisions.

An example of creating an MVP to test your value proposition is the diapers.com story. Diapers.com put up a website and started taking orders before they had any diapers in stock. They just wanted to know if their idea was worth pursuing further. They ended up driving all around town to different stores, buying diapers and shipping them themselves. When the orders grew, they rented vans to transport the diapers. They lost money in the process, but they weren’t testing profitability. They were testing the business model to see if they really had a business. They were testing their value proposition – their consumer promise.

An incidental loss per sale is worth the information gained when testing your value proposition.

An MVP is all about talking to customers. You want to get to your MVP as fast as you can so you can get honest feedback quickly. Ask your customers:

• If it didn’t suck so bad, how would you find it?
• What do other products do to solve the problem?
• What could ours do better?

The Pivot

The pivot is the heart of customer development. Pivoting is the iteration between customer validation and customer discovery. The pivot is fast, agile, and opportunistic.

Image credit: @GoghUA

Pivot if you start to hear consistently from 20 – 40 customers that something needs to change. Not when only 2 – 3 customers complain.

When pivoting, go back to the business model, make the change, go back to the customers, and ask if the better idea solves their problem. You cannot delegate customer validation. As the CEO, you MUST be involved.

Pivots in large companies happen all the time, but it usually comes with a firing. In a startup, a pivot is almost a celebration – you found a better way to reach customers, you found 20 more customers, etc.

One problem with pivots: premature evacuation (i.e. not talking to enough customers). Are you collecting enough data from your core customers to make a smart decision on a pivot? Three people told you it was bad, and now you are giving up?  No. Go talk to 20 more customers before making a decision.

You want to pivot as quickly as you can, as long as you are careful about premature evacuation. The pivot cycle time matters. Do it as quickly as you can, because you’ve got the ticking time bomb of a declining bank balance. Speed of cycle minimizes cash needs.

How do you know when you are done?

You are never really done, but you can scale back when you know who the customers are, how you will find them, how the product fits them, etc.

Use the business model canvas as your scorecard to know when you’re done.

Customer validation is like putting gas in a race car with a turkey baster (i.e. tweak the variables to see if the same customer quality/stick rate/cash conservation continue to work).

Make sure that all your guesses are validated by customers. Customer validation is a great activity to perform no matter how happy you are with your product.

Always look for passionate users (i.e. those who want the product to be better just as badly as you and your investors).

[I’d like to thank Bill Horvath, founder of DoX Systems, for sharing his notes with me.]

Dan Pink started his presentation by crediting Neil Davidson for the idea behind his new book, To Sell Is Human. Dan told us about an email he received from Neil and the followup conversations where Neil described how his sales force was gaming the compensation system. Neil tried to modify the compensation system, but every time he did his sales team would figure out a new way to game it. So Neil eliminated commissions for his sales force altogether, and it ended up working phenomenally.

Dan suggests that if/then rewards are extremely effective for simple, repetitive tasks, but fall short for conceptual, creative tasks.

Death of the Salesman

I wasn’t aware of it, but apparently there is this notion that salespeople have become obsolete. But that’s not true. In the US, 15 million people work in sales. 1 out of 9 people worked in sales before the age of the Internet, and today 1 out of 9 people still work in sales.

And of those that don’t have the term sales in their job title, most of them do non-sales selling. Non-sales selling is an indirect form of selling that involves persuading others to give up resources in exchange for something else.

So, what do people actually do day to day at work? A survey of 7000 adults in the US workforce asked: “What percentage of your work involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value for something you can offer?” The answer: 41%.

Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.

What does sales mean to you?

Many of us may be involved with sales in one way or another, but we don’t like it very much. When asked “When you think of ‘sales’ or ‘selling’, what’s the first word that comes to mind?” most of the responses were overwhelmingly negative. Of the top 25 adjectives, only 4 were positive.

The top responses were:

• pushy
• yuck
• ugh
• sleazy
• hard
• difficult
• annoying
• slimy
• dishonest
• necessary
• manipulative
• challenging

Image credit: @mdclement

(Before revealing these results, Dan asked the audience to shout out what one word they think best describes sales. One person said “hero.” I couldn’t see who it was, but I bet it was this guy.)

But this has nothing to do with sales. Rather it’s about the conditions in which sales take place.

The Information World

In the past the seller always had more information than the buyer. Therefore, the seller could hoodwink the buyer.

Information asymmetry is the perception that the salesperson has an informational advantage over the buyer. This leads us to caveat emptor – buyer beware. But with the age of the Internet and so much freely available information, this world is ending.

We are now in an era of information symmetry, where you can’t rip people off. Information symmetry leads to caveat venditor – seller beware.

How to do sales

If we are all in sales, but sales isn’t what it used to be, how do we do it?

Doing sales in a world of  information symmetry is no longer about Always be Closing.

It is now about

• Attunement: The ability to take someone else’s perspective. Having a sense of where people are coming from.
• Buoyancy: The capacity to deal with rejection.
• Clarity: The ability to share understanding of complex situations with clarity. Identifying problems people don’t know that they have.

Remember it’s not about you. Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame would pull up an empty chair during meetings to remind everyone of the customer. (This is similar to Hubspot’s Molly.)

Attunement

Attunement is about perspective.

Try an experiment: Stand in front of someone and ask him to draw the letter E on his forehead. Result: high power people are almost three times as likely as low power people to draw a self-oriented E.

Power leads individuals to focus too heavily on their own perspective.

Three laws of attunement:

1. Increase your power by reducing it. Reducing your power a little will sharpen your perspective taking abilities. One example is to put yourself in a small chair so your guest can sit in a large chair.
2. Use your head as much as your heart. Think about what the other person thinks, not what the other person feels. Perspective taking is not the same as empathy, but it is similar. Perspective taking and empathy are like fraternal twins instead of identical twins.
3. Mimic strategically. We are natural mimickers. We do it subconsciously. It’s a form of affinity. Negotiators who mimic their opponents get better deals. Mimic strategically to negotiate agreements that are more likely to benefit both parties.

Who make the best salespeople?

The common wisdom is that extroverts make the best salespeople. But, there is actually no evidence that this is true. The correlation between sales performance and extroversion is .07. However, this doesn’t mean that introverts are better at sales. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

A study was done to determine whether extroverts or introverts were better at sales. The result was that extroverts sold $125, and introverts sold $120. Virtually identical!

It turned out that ambiverts are the best salespeople. Ambiverts are people in the middle that score between about 3.5 and 5 on a scale of extroversion (the peak is at about 4). They are neither extremely introverted nor extremely extroverted.

Image credit: @GoghUA

There’s an inverted U relationship between sales performance and extroversion. This also happens to be the distribution in the population, which suggests that it’s what people do.

Sales Techniques

There are three abilities one should learn to be a good salesman.

• Pitch
• Improvise
• Serve

The elevator pitch is a 20th century relic. Try these pitch techniques:

• Question pitch: Phrasing your pitch like a question is very powerful. When you ask a question, you force the listener to summon their own answer in their head, and come up with their own reasons to agree with you. And everyone loves their own reasons. This technique is only powerful if you have a strong case. An example of this in use was when Ronald Reagan asked “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” during a debate with Jimmy Carter.
• Rhyming pitch: Rhymes are highly memorable and perceived to be more credible. Rhymes also make it easier to understand the message. Things that are easier to understand are easier to believe. An example of the rhyme pitch is the famous quote from the OJ Simpson trial, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” The candy company Haribo has a rhyming slogan in all the languages they operate in. The English slogan is “Kids and grownups love it so, have it so in Haribo.”
• Pixar pitch: Every Pixar story has the same narrative structure. It’s as follows: Once upon a time there was _____. Every day, _____. One day ____. Because of that, _____. Because of that, _____. Until finally ____.

[I’d like to thank Bill Horvath, founder of DoX Systems, for sharing his notes with me.]

Thank you for making Business of Software so memorable. As I get ready to check out and head home to my family in the real Cambridge, I cannot pretend I am not very sad that Business of Software is over. It was a wonderful experience again for me. I hope you enjoyed and valued it.

Software people aren’t supposed to be interested in stuff that isn’t bits and bytes, or so the stereotyping goes. So why do I feel so emotional that BoS is over for another year? Probably because one of the things that is very obvious about the kind of people that come to BoS is that they are as soft and squishy as liberal arts majors like me. A key takeaway from this year’s BoS for me, echoed time and time again in the stage and corridor talks, was the interaction between wetware (people) and software. Software is pointless unless it makes a difference in people’s lives. The people who come make BoS special.

Using some software makes me angry. This note from a person made me cry a little but also made me very happy…

“You just made a huge group of people doing world-changing things a little more badass. I trust these last few days will be in YOUR memoirs. Astonishing event.” Kathy Sierra.

We would love to get your feedback on what worked, what didn’t and how we can make BoS better next year. Please take a moment to fill this out. I would also welcome your comments on the WiFi.

Thank you once again for taking part and making Business of Software so incredible. I am going to pick on one individual here for a special mention – BoS is as much about the people that come from around the world to listen and talk as it is about the speakers and you know you all rock, big time – but I do want you to recognise the huge effort and phenomenal skill of Wendi Labbie who has been the brains behind the operations at Business of Software for the past 5 years. Thank you Wendi.

Safe travels and until next time…

Best,

Mark Littlewood

Business of Software, The wrong Cambridge – my real family is in the other one.

@marklittlewood

Keep being badass, fearless and awesome.

This is a guest post from Joe Corkery. Joe is Vice President of Business Development at OpenEye Scientific Software in Cambridge, MA. Remarkably, Joe has been with OpenEye for nearly 13 years helping it grow from 3 people to over 40 at last count. In an earlier life, Joe ran away from writing code to attend medical school, only to be drawn back in after graduation. Despite not having access to a prescription pad, he is passionate about drug discovery and the impact computers have on that process, among others.

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Welcome to Boston and to Business of Software 2012! I am really excited for the meeting this year and while I expect the meeting to keep us all quite busy, I thought as a native Bostonian, I would share some ideas on how to get around town as well as some fun things to do in your free time (particularly Sunday or Wednesday afternoon).

Getting Around Boston

Boston is an extremely walkable city and has excellent public transportation. In fact, Boston’s subway (officially known as the MBTA or more simply just the “T”) was the first subway to operate in the United States. Assuming that you are staying at the conference hotel (the Intercontinental), you will have easy access to the T via South Station which is only 2 blocks away. Both the Red Line and the Silver Line (an express bus) stop at South Station. You can also access the Blue Line at the Aquarium Station which is a longer, but not too long, walk in the opposite direction. You can find a subway map on the MBTA website (PDF version). There are also a wide variety of iPhone and Android apps that might be of interest as well in planning your trips.

Getting To and From the Airport

There are many easy ways to go between the airport and the Intercontinental Hotel. If you don’t have a lot of baggage, I would recommend using public transportation because with the airport fees and tunnel tolls, your taxi ride will start at $10 before you even set foot in the car. As an incentive to take public transit, the MBTA is currently offering free service on the Silver Line to and from Logan airport. The bus travels regularly between each terminal at the airport and South Station (your destination). If the weather is good and you are looking for a fun and/or different experience, you can take the Water Taxi across the harbor between the airport and the Intercontinental Hotel (which has its own stop).

Walking The Freedom Trail

The Freedom Trail (PDF map) is one of Boston’s most popular tourist attractions and is well worth doing if the weather allows. The trail begins at Boston Common and meanders between the many historic sites along the streets of Boston for about 2.5 miles ending in Charlestown. If you don’t stop at all along the way, it should take less than an hour to walk. However, if you want to spend time at the various historical sites, be prepared for the trail to take half a day or longer. If constrained by time, I’d recommend ending early in the North End and skipping Charlestown. If you do go all the way to Charlestown, you can pickup the Water Taxi by the Navy Yard and take that directly back to the hotel in time for the cocktail reception. You can also pickup the Water Taxi in the North End at the Fairmont Battery or Burroughs wharves.

Depending on your schedule, I’d recommend having dinner in the North End while you are there. The North End is Boston’s Italian neighborhood and is home to many wonderful restaurants. One of my personal favorite restaurants is Artu on Prince St, which is just around the corner from Paul Revere’s house. That being said, it is hard to go wrong with any of the abundant choices. If you are specifically looking for pizza, seek out Pizzeria Regina on Hanover St.

The North End is also famous for its pastries (in particular the cannoli). You will undoubtedly see lots of people walking around with boxes from Mike’s Pastries during your walk. Personally, I would avoid Mike’s as it is a bit of a tourist trap and try either Modern Pastry (also on Hanover St) or Maria’s Pastry (on Cross St). If you go to Maria’s be sure to try the almond macaroons as they are delicious.

If you are getting started early enough and are interested in Dim Sum for breakfast/brunch, Chinatown is only a short walk from the hotel and pretty much on your way to the start of the Freedom Trail at Boston Common. Hei La Moon is probably the closest Dim Sum restaurant to the hotel and is quite excellent. Other great choices include Chau Chow City and China Pearl. All three are very popular on Sundays, but China Pearl tends to have the longest lines. Chau Chow City has the distinction of being open very late in the evening as well. If I remember correctly, the restaurant stays open even after the bar closes (bars close at 2 AM in Boston and 1 AM in Cambridge).

If you’ve already done the Freedom Trail and are looking for something similar, you can try the Black Heritage Tour which also starts at Boston Common, but over across from the State House. You can walk this trail by yourself or join a Park Ranger guided tour (recommended). The Black Heritage Tour takes you through the streets of Boston’s historic Beacon Hill neighborhood. Charles St (the main street in Beacon Hill) is home to a variety of interesting local shops and restaurants. One of my personal favorites in the neighborhood is a Persian restaurant called Lala Rokh on Mt. Vernon St.

The Boston National Historical Parks Service has an excellent iPhone and Android app to assist you in planning/executing your tour of either the Freedom or Black Heritage Trails.

Boston Common and Beyond

In addition to being the starting point for the Freedom and Black Heritage Trails, Boston Common is a nice area to enjoy being outdoors. There are often a variety of street performers out on nice days and if you brought your family, there is a carousel and a playground. Across from the Common are the Public Gardens, home to the Swan Boats (closed for the season unfortunately) and the “Make Way For Ducklings” statues (always a big hit with children).

On the other side of the Public Gardens is the start of Newbury St, which is Boston’s prime shopping street. There are lots of fancy shops, restaurants, etc. and is a great place for people watching. Running parallel to Newbury St is Boylston St, home to Boston’s flagship Apple store. So, if you didn’t get your iPhone last week, this might be your opportunity (please note that I have no idea what their inventory status is at the moment). There are also a number of restaurants and fun bars along Boylston as well. For the runners in the crowd, the finish line for the Boston Marathon can be found on Boylston St next to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.

If you’d prefer to stroll along the river instead of the streets, you can access the Charles River Esplanade via a footbridge near the corner of Beacon and Arlington streets. The bike and foot trails along the Esplanade run for many miles up the Charles River and makes for a great place to go for a stroll, a run, or a bike ride. Here’s a useful running map (PDF) that provides distances between the many bridges that cross the river.

Fenway Park

Fenway Park is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and it is open to the public everyday for tours between 9 AM and 5 PM (except on game days when it closes 3 hours before game time). The Red Sox are away on Sunday, so that would be a good day to visit. The Red Sox will be playing their last three games of the season (against the Yankees, of course) at home Monday through Wednesday, so it’ll be a zoo over there and I wouldn’t even try to find same day tickets.

Indoor Activities

If the weather isn’t that great, there are still lots of places to visit including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (although the Gardner Museum does feature a large open courtyard that is better appreciated on a non-rainy day). The Gardner Museum was the site of a very famous art heist. The art has yet to be recovered and there remain empty spaces on the walls from where the paintings were taken. Both of these museums are very close to each other and can be accessed by the Museum of Fine Arts stop on the E branch of the Green line. Admission to the Gardner Museum is discounted with an MFA ticket and is free if your name happens to be Isabella.

Boston’s Museum of Science is also very popular (especially with children) and is one of the starting points for the Boston Duck Tours (although these are also definitely better on a good weather day, they still work well in rainy weather). The Museum of Science can be reached at the Science Park stop on the Green Line (but be sure to catch a train bound for Lechmere otherwise, you’ll have to change at Government Center as many trains terminate there instead of going all the way to the end at Lechmere).

Both the Harvard and MIT campuses are close by on the Red Line (Harvard Sq and Kendall Sq stops respectively). Both universities have a collection of wonderful museums. Harvard Square is a vibrant community with great bookshops, a variety of restaurants, and interesting shops.

In addition to museums, there are a number of movie theaters around including the AMC Loews Theater on Boston Common, the Simons IMAX Theater at the Aquarium or the independent Kendall Square Cinema in nearby Cambridge (accessible via the Red Line).

Another fun option would be to tour the Harpoon Brewery over in the Seaport District (a 1.1 mile walk from the hotel). Be sure to check the website for weekend tour hours. While on your way, you might consider popping into the Institute for Contemporary Art. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard it’s nice.

Late Night on the Waterfront

The Intercontinental Hotel bar is a fun place to hang out but you might find yourself wanting to wander a little more broadly for some variety. If you are interested in live Irish music, I’d recommend heading over to the Quincy Market area to the Black Rose to listen over a pint (or two) of Guinness. Live music usually starts sometime between 9 and 10 PM. Check their website for details. If you’re feeling a little more adventurous, just around the corner from the Black Rose is the infamous Hong Kong, known for their scorpion bowls and night club. If you are interested in comedy, check out ImprovAsylum over in the North End. This is just a small sampling of the many options available. Have fun!

Anything else?

Trying to sum up all the great things to do in Boston is quite a challenge, but I hope that I’ve been able to provide a few ideas for your brief free time. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me directly (twitter: jcorkery or in person at the conference). See you Sunday night!

As several hundred software introverts and a few converted extroverts converge on Boston for Business of Software next week, I thought it would be worth sharing my daughter’s advice on how to ‘network’ (talk to people). She includes a free tour of the real Cambridge in her two minute video guide…

An 8 year old’s effort at a guide to networking. We had fun making it. See you in Boston!

http://businessofsoftware.wistia.com/medias/8a2yp2pjmx?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

• Tip number 1 – Talk to people.
• Tip number 2 – Be visible & don’t hide behind technology.
• Tip number 3 – Introduce people.
• Tip number 4 – Be yourself & be interested in others.

This is a guest post from Trevor Lohrbeer. Trevor is the founder and CEO of Lab Escape, a data visualization company that sells heat maps for embedding into desktop & web applications. He blogs about how to optimize your decisions at Lean Decisions and on entrepreneurship, networking and personal development at Fast Fedora.

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Attending Business of Software is about the people, not the content. While you’ll learn a tremendous amount during the sessions, if content is all you want, you can register for the free online streaming.

The people you meet make the conference. They provide the true value of attending Business of Software and keep you coming back year after year.

I’m attending Business of Software for my third year. As someone who used to be incredibly awkward and bad at meeting people (and who still is from time to time), I figured I’d share some tips that I’ve learned for connecting with others and making the most out of your experience.

Before the Conference

Preparation helps. Don’t wait until you arrive to start figuring out who and how you will connect with others. Use these tips to get a head start.

1. Learn How to Connect

If you’re shy or introverted, check out Sacha Chua’s The Shy Connector presentation and her follow-up post. Then read Scott Dinsmore’s The 31 Habits of the World’s Best Connectors for more tips.

2. Make Yourself Known

Give others the opportunity to find and connect with you:

• Register on Sched, the official conference web site.
• RSVP to the event on LinkedIn.
• Tweet using the hashtag #BoS2012. Tweet your home city to connect with others near you. Tweet your interests and see if anyone shares them. Tweet what you’re doing in Boston so people can join in.

3. Connect With Others

Don’t wait until the conference starts to begin making good connections. Do some prep work and start early:

• Review who’s attending using Sched and the LinkedIn event. See who shares common interests or needs with you, and who you know in common.
• Bookmark people you want to meet. Review their photos to help recognize them at the event.
• Reach out to people before the event. Follow them on Twitter or send them an e-mail. Emphasize what you have in common and how you can help each other.

I wait until I meet someone in person to add or accept them as a contact on LinkedIn or Facebook, but others accept contacts more liberally. Develop your own style for how to use these networks before the conference.

4. Create an Event

Not everyone flies in Sunday night and leaves Wednesday afternoon. Last year, several of us met via Twitter and had dinner together Saturday night. I made awesome connections that night that I still stay in touch with.

Organize a pre- or post-conference event. Share one of your passions or explore the wonders of Boston. Host a dinner, pub crawl, walking tour, trip to Salem, run or a game night. Then announce it on Twitter using #BoS2012 and post it to the Facebook page & LinkedIn event page.

I’ll be hosting a dinner Saturday night. If you’re interested in attending, tweet me at @FastFedora (and tag it #BoS2012 so others can see it and join in).

During the Conference

Once you arrive at the conference, the magic starts to happen. Get a good rest the night before.

5. Smile

Look friendly and inviting: smile. At a conference of mostly introverts, smiles alleviate nervousness and help us naturally connect with others. If someone smiles at you, consider it an invitation to go up and say hello.

6. Introduce Yourself

Say hi to the people next to you. The Business of Software badges list our interests, so use those as conversation starters. Or ask an intriguing or helpful question. Two of my favorites: “What’s your greatest passion and why?” and “Who would you like to meet at Business of Software?”.

7. Introduce Others

Listen to what people say they need or who they’re looking to connect with. Take the opportunity to introduce them to someone you know, or someone you just met.

Too shy to introduce yourself? Find a buddy and go around introducing each other to new people. Often it’s easier to introduce someone else than it is to introduce ourselves.

8. Take Notes

Jot down a couple words on the back of that new person’s business card to help you remember the connection. Record the topic you talked about, ways you can help each other, or notable aspects about how they look. Use these notes when connecting with that person after the conference. You’ll be meeting people for three days. Don’t rely on your memory.

9. Monitor Twitter

Set up a search for the #BoS2012 hashtag and monitor the conversation throughout the conference. Watch what people are talking about and jump into the conversation when you have something to say. Look for activities being scheduled through Twitter to find other opportunities for connecting in a small group setting.

10. Use Body Language

Keep your body language open and inviting. Stand straight with your shoulders back, arms open. You’ll not only appear confident and approachable, you’ll raise your testosterone and lower your cortisol, helping you to feel less stressed and more in control. Avoid crossing your arms—bring an extra jacket in case you get cold to avoid the stern teacher look.

11. Be Personal

Share your personal interests and desires. Everyone attending, from the speakers to the person sitting next to you, has a complex set of interests and needs. Deep connections happen when we share our full selves, not just our work selves. Don’t focus purely on business. Share your personal passions too.

Though avoid using the person you just met as your therapist. Save your deep emotional turmoil for another time. Aim to make connections, not instant best friends.

12. Be Respectful

When a speaker is talking on stage, listen. Don’t have extended side conversations—take those out to the hall. If you have to get a few last words in after a speaker starts, whisper and keep it short.

After the Conference

After you get back, don’t let your connections wither. You’ll be tired. You’ll be inspired with new ideas and knowledge. But take the time to reach out and solidify the connections you made.

13. Send Follow-Ups

E-mail the people you met and tell them you that you remember them and enjoyed meeting them. Use your notes to reference your conversations. If you were going to send them info or make an introduction, do it. Send them links to any notes or posts you wrote about the conference.

14. Connect via Social Media

Add the people you connected with to LinkedIn or Facebook. Follow people on Twitter. But keep in mind that not everyone uses every network, and some people only use Facebook for personal use, so don’t be offended if the request isn’t always accepted.

Use tags in LinkedIn or lists in Facebook to track who you met at Business of Software and how you might want to follow up in the future.

15. Write a Blog Post

Summarize your notes from the sessions or your experience at Business of Software into a blog post you can share with others. Or provide a forum to continue the discussions started at the conference. Aim to provide value back to the Business of Software community. Share the link on Twitter using #BoS2012, then post a link on the the Business of Software Facebook page.

16. Keep Connected

Continue to follow the #BoS2012 hashtag to see the post-conference followups. Join the Business of Software LinkedIn group and like the Business of Software Facebook page to stay connected throughout the year.

That’s all I have for now. If you want to connect with me at the conference, just look for the fellow in the black fedora and say hi.

Good news! Once again, you can watch the livestream of every talk at next week’s Business of Software Conference. We know it isn’t the same as being there to talk and network with some of the most interesting people in the software business today – but you will see some brilliant talks about growing long term, sustainable, profitable software businesses. Thanks to the generous support of Avangate, The BLN, Bulger Partners and Red Gate Software for making this possible.

To watch, you will need to set up a free BoS account with a valid email address – you will also be subscribed to the Business of Software email list. (You can unsubscribe at any time and we will never sell your email address). Make sure you choose your username carefully – it cannot be changed. You only need to do this once.

To set up your FREE BoS account with a valid email address, click the big orange button…

You will receive a confirmation email and if your browser is set to accept cookies, you will be logged in automatically when you return to the BoS website.

Once you’re logged in to your BoS account, to access the livestream, click the big yellow button:

Note you will not be able to access this unless you are logged in to your BoS account.

Follow us on Twitter @bosconference and use the hashtag #BOS2012 for your tweets.

Watch sessions anytime during the event (running 9am-6pm EST Monday 1st October, Tuesday 2nd October and 9am-12.45pm, Wednesday 3rd October).

Business of Software is a single track conference where every session is Keynote quality – we hope you will get a lot out of it.

We know it isn’t the same as being there but we hope you will be able to catch some of the talks from some brilliant people: Peter Bauer, Mimecast; Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual; Dan Pink, Drive; Joel Spolksy, Stack Exchange; Gail Goodman, Constant Contact; Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot; Noah Kagan, App Sumo; Peldi, Balsamiq; Mikey Trafton, Fire Ant Software; Paul Kenny, Ocean Learning; Jason Cohen, WP Engine; Adii Pienaar, Woo Themes; Dan Lyons, Newsweek; Professor Noam Wasserman, Harvard Business School.

With excellent timing, Mimecast, supplier of cloud-based email archiving, security and continuity for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, today announced a $62.15 million Series C funding led by, Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors Dawn Capital also participated. Mimecast will use the funding to accelerate the development and deployment of new technology, and to support plans for rapid expansion in the US market.

Peter Bauer, CEO & founder of Mimecast, who is speaking at the Business of Software Conference in Boston on 1st October about, ‘Founding Principles vs Scaling Principles’ commented,

“We are pleased to have secured funding to accelerate the growth of Mimecast’s business in the US and across the world as well as to drive more innovation in corporate email. Even better and most importantly though, it means the drinks are on me at Business of Software next week.”

Please note we might have just made this quote up…

Seriously, congratulations Peter and the whole Mimecast team. You have created a business from nothing that is putting a dent in the corporate email universe. We look forward to seeing you next week in Boston.

You can watch the livestream of Peter’s talk, along with all the others, for free, by registering here.

We received this email amongst others…

“Sorry to bother you with a trivial question, but this is my first time at BoS and I was curious as to the dress code at the conference.  Thanks.”

I am always tempted at this point to respond by saying, ‘Black Tie’.

The dress code for Business of Software is, ‘Clothes’.

Please come and wear what you feel comfortable in, and comfortable thinking and talking in. People wear all sorts of things.

The bell curve would cover shorts and thongs/flip flops at one end, three piece suit and tie at the other. The majority of attendees will wear t-shirts of casual shirts, skirts, chinos, jeans. Hats optional. Ties are not  advised as they can constrict the flow of blood to the brain thus making thinking harder but it is entirely your choice as long as you don’t offend others.

This is a guest post from Joca Torres. Joca is the director of product development and product management at Locaweb, Brazil’s leader in web hosting, cloud servers and SaaS applications like email marketing and online stores, serving more than 250,000 customers. His first startup experience was in the early 1990s when he founded and ran one of the first Brazilian ISPs. He has been working with internet related software ever since.

Joca is also the author of The Startup Guide: how startups and established companies can create and manage profitable web products. The book is in Portuguese, but Joca was kind enough to translate a few sections of it for us. Sadly, this is Joca’s last guest post in the series. Joca also posted all of the book’s content on the “Guia da Startup” blog (in Portuguese).

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During BoS 2011 Alexis Ohanian made me think a lot about the reasons that move people to build a software startup in his talk entitled “How to Make the World Suck Less Using Software“. Alexis’ talk kept coming to my mind when I wrote this post in March.

This post will be more philosophical than my previous posts. It will bring more questions than answers. The purpose of these questions is to help readers think about the real goals in having a startup. Building a business from scratch is very difficult and consumes time, energy and money, but can bring many rewards. The reward does not necessarily come in the form of money, so it is very important to put some thought on your motivation and goals before starting this journey.

Why create a startup?

A startup, like any project, requires considerable effort. When we invest some effort into a project we normally expect some reward that does not necessarily mean money.

Let’s leave aside the startup world and think about other endeavors. When we invest in a romantic relationship with someone, we know that this type of relationship has a good side but also has its tricky side. What rewards are we expecting from a romantic relationship? When we have a pet, with all the joy and love that the pet can bring, we know it also brings responsibility and commitment to care for this animal for years. What reward are we after? If a pet is already demanding, what about children? It’s commitment and responsibility for life, with very high cost, lots of worries, great chances to hear outrages, especially when they become teenagers. What is the expected reward when someone decides to have children?

Ok, I went a little too far in the example of the children since in this case there is an unconditional love that is impossible to explain, but I think I’ve achieved my goal to make it clear that not every project has a unique focus on money as a reward.

Growth startup vs lifestyle startup

Sometime ago Rafael Rosa, who worked with me at Locaweb, introduced me to the concept of lifestyle startup lifestyle as opposed to most commonly known concept of growth startup:

• Growth startup: are startups that have one main goal, accelerated growth so you can make founders, investors and shareholders substantially richer when the startup is acquired or goes through an IPO. When you are focused on accelerated revenue growth, or accelerated growth of number of users, all your actions are motivated by this goal, which has priority over all other issues, including customers, products, employees, suppliers, quality, etc. unless those issues help you achieve your growth. In this type of startup you normally hear questions like “how do we make this product sell more?” or “can we create a different product or add-on to collect some extra money from existing customers?” or “how do we double our user base in X months?”. In this kind of startup it’s common to find people who put money as priority.

Lifestyle startup: in this type of startup the revenue sustains the business and the lifestyle of its founders and employees. Revenue is like oxygen, you need it to live, but you don’t live for, you don’t live to get as much of it as possible. As soon as this issue (the company’s sustainability and sustainable lifestyle of founders and employees) is resolved, the company may have total focus on the customer, product, employees, suppliers, quality, etc. It is common to hear questions such as “how do we make a great product that solves real customer problems?” or “how can I improve this product so it solves the problem of more people?”. In this kind of startup it’s common to find people who put other people and their problems as a priority.

Note that the above concepts apply not only to startups but to any company.

Sometimes it can be difficult to identify what type of startup we’re dealing with, as both can produce products with excellent quality that solve the problems of many people.

You may be wondering “If the two types of startup can produce good products, great quality, isn’t it better to grow fast and get rich soon? I know this is going to be very tiring, but the reward is huge!”

I cannot answer that question because it is a personal choice. There is no better person than yourself to decide that. However, you need to remember that the chances of a successful growth startup tend to be small since there’s not much space for fast growth since this type of accelerated growth normally requires a lot of financial investment, which in turn will make you seek an outside investor.

It is also important to mention that the startups that achieve accelerated growth are rare. According to the Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) publication, Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2011, less than one percent of companies with ten or more employees are gazelles – employers that have been in operation for no more than five years with ten or more employees that increase employment by 20 percent per year or more for three years. According to the same study companies that grow faster than the pace of gazelles (the super gazelles) are even more rare – so rare that it is very difficult to measure them statistically.

As we know that the number of employees is often directly linked to revenue growth, it is easy to conclude that the revenue super gazelles are also very rare, so rare that they don’t have statistical relevance. Except that they are absorbing all the media attention, precisely because they are exceptions.

On the other hand, a lifestyle startup has greater chances of succeeding since by having few customers it can already show positive results. A lifestyle startup can have evolving goals. Initially the startup goal is to pay its own bills. Then the next goal may be to add up to your monthly salary to help you buy a house or pay for your kids’ education. And so on. With a lifestyle startup it can grow at your own pace.

Nothing prevents you to start with a lifestyle startup and it grows up to the point where it catches attention of investors who will make you an investment proposal to turn your startup into a growth startup. At that point you can decide whether to continue with a lifestyle startup or want to get into the rhythm of accelerated growth. Again, this is a very personal choice and the only person able to answer is you.

What kind of doctor are you?

Let’s move the viewpoint from the startup founder to the customer, i.e., use your customer hat and think as a customer. What type of startup do you think would you, as the customer, prefer to solve your problems?

People who read my posts on my personal blog know that I like to make comparisons between business world and medical world:

• Leading is similar to being a doctor
• Software development, craftsmanship and how to choose a professional
• The Checklist Manifesto

So here goes another analogy using the medical world. Move again your point of view and suppose you are a patient who received the news that you have a certain issue that requires surgery. What doctor would you choose to do this surgery, one who’s primary purpose is to get rich with medical practice or one who is really passionate about medicine and about making other people’s life better? Again, sometimes it is difficult to identify the type of doctor we are talking to, but normally the way she describes your case and how it could be solved will give you hints on what type of doctor she is.

Tweet from the Dalai Lama

I follow the Dalai Lama on Twitter. He posts a daily message related to Buddhism. For those unfamiliar, Buddhism is a religion that is concerned about why people are not happy and how to help people to be happier. That’s how I explain Buddhism to my 6 year old daughter.

Back in March, in the same day I was writing this chapter of the Guia da Startup book that you are reading now in English he tweeted:

“Wealth may contribute to our happiness, but it’s not the most important factor; by itself wealth fails to bring us deep inner satisfaction.”

Quite in sync with the reflections that are necessary when we are thinking about our future projects, including starting a startup.

Ask yourself

Ask yourself some questions to be sure you really want to have a startup, and if you’re with the right motivation:

• Have you heard so much about startups that you don’t want to be left out of the trend?
• Or do you actually found problems of a group of people and with your knowledge you think you can solve them?
• What reward do you expect from your startup?
• If money is a solved question in your life, would you still want to solve this problem of a group of people?

Example of a non financial reward

To illustrate how we can have other kinds of reward other than money I’ll tell the story of a ContaCal user. ContaCal is a web product I created in 2011 during nights and weekends with no connection with my day job in order to experiment with building a startup using the most recent methodologies and best practices. ContaCal is a calorie counter system with a twist. Besides telling you the amount of calories you’ve ingested it also tells you the quality of these calories. If you want to read more about it, you can read my previous posts.

The quote below is from a lady over 70 years old who weighed more than 105 kg (231 lbs). She is a priest of an Afro-Brazilian religion named Candomblé, hence the name “Mother Shirley”. She suffers from coxarthrosis, a degenerative disease, which leads to the destruction of the hip joints, more specifically, the coxofemoral joint. Since she was overweight, she needed to loose 15 Kg (33 lbs) in order to be eligible to be submitted to surgery. She found ContaCal, signed up and started to use it. Below is her testimony:

“Dear friends, as you know and guided me very well, I’ve been doing the diet and counting my calories since June 2011. So far I’m 17 kg (37 lbs) thinner, eating 1,100 calories per day. Now the doctor said he will be able to perform the surgery on my coxarthrosis. Thank you for always encouraging me to go forward. God bless you.” – Mother Shirley.

She didn’t pay a penny because she used ContaCal prior to January, when I started billing, but the simple fact of knowing through testimonies like this that ContaCal is able to help people is a reward that, to me, outweighs the financial return.

Next steps

This is the last post of the Guia da Startup series. I was planning to be at BoS 2012 so we could talk in person about software and startups but unfortunately I won’t be able to be there. :-/

I’m pretty sure BoS 2012 will be fantastic and you’ll enjoy it a lot, so please don’t forget to tweet and post about it so the ones who were not able to be there like me can grab a bit of what’s rolling.

And feel free to contact me anytime via Twitter, my personal blog or email me.

This is a guest post from Joe Corkery. Joe is Vice President of Business Development at OpenEye Scientific Software in Cambridge, MA. Remarkably, Joe has been with OpenEye for nearly 13 years helping it grow from 3 people to over 40 at last count. In an earlier life, Joe ran away from writing code to attend medical school, only to be drawn back in after graduation. Despite not having access to a prescription pad, he is passionate about drug discovery and the impact computers have on that process, among others.

Joe gave a Lightning Talk at Business of Software 2010, and he has been gracious enough to share his experience with us. In his first guest post, Joe explained why you should give a Lightning Talk. In this guest post, Joe shares some insider tips on preparing for a Lightning Talk. Thanks for sharing, Joe!

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So, if you are anything like me, you probably put off preparing for your Lightning Talk as long as I did in preparing this blog post. Sorry about that! Nevertheless, I think the advice is still valuable and applicable even this close to the meeting.

Have a provocative and memorable title

The title of my talk in 2010 was “How to make a billion dollars in 7.5 minutes” and based on the conversations I had at the meeting, it really caught people’s attention and piqued their interest. When you only have 7.5 minutes and are sandwiched between a number of other speakers, it is a huge help to have people thinking about your talk before it begins and able to remember the hook afterward. However, it is important that the subject matter of the talk relate to the title, because otherwise, remember the title won’t reinforce your actual performance.

Put your name on your slides

I know it seems like an obvious thing, but it easy to forget (I know I did), so make sure that your first slide has your name and the title of the talk on it. I had forgotten to do this and was very fortunate that this was pointed out to me as I was loading my presentation onto the conference computer.

In addition, put your name on the last slide too. Either your first slide or your last slide is going to be shown during the transition between speakers, so you might as well keep your name in front of people so they don’t forget who you are.

Network

In my previous post on Why You Should Give a Lightning Talk, I talked a lot about how giving a Lightning Talk would enhance your ability to network at the meeting. What I didn’t mention then though is that as a result of those efforts, you can start to build a little hype (and/or mystery) around your talk and if you are lucky, find a way to incorporate some inside jokes for the crowd.

Practice

I know this should go without saying but you need to practice, a lot, (much more than you might think). Getting the timing right is extremely difficult especially when you are not the one controlling the advancement of the slides. Once you have the slides created and the basic content down, you need to go find a quiet room and set PowerPoint up to auto-advance your slides every 30 seconds and just keep practicing your talk. By the time you actually present, you should know exactly how long it takes you to present the content of any given slide. Unfortunately, what you won’t know is how the audience will react to each slide, so you need to prepare built-in talking transitions for each slide that can be adapted to the unexpected laughter or to the deadening sound of silence as you realize that nobody got your joke.

In addition, I would also recommend that you practice presenting with a big digital timer in front of you counting down (as well as counting up) your time so that you’ll be prepared for either circumstance when giving your talk. I found the experience of watching a timer count down to be very disconcerting as it threw off my internal time tracking process (I had practiced using a stopwatch that counted up).

Your slides are context not content

One thing I noticed in reviewing the previous years’ winning talks as well as those that I thought went well my year is that their slides were very minimal. The slides were usually just brief touch points occasionally visited during the talk that provided the audience a reminder as to what you are talking about.

Making your slides too central to the talk sets you up for a significant challenge because if your slide needs to be visible to make your point, you may find yourself stalling while you wait for the slide to advance if you didn’t have your timing just right. Trust me, idling at a transition can be very painful to watch as well as experience.

Furthermore, don’t even think about putting enough text on your slide so that you are tempted to read from the slide. There is nothing worse than watching a speaker read their slides and in a situation like this, you can’t afford to waste any time not engaging the crowd.

Be relevant (and funny)

I have to admit that I was really excited about my talk because it was drawing from my background in drug discovery and exploring how lessons learned there could be applied to software development. I agreed that it seemed like a bit of a stretch and Neil even asked me when I applied whether I could make it relevant. In the end I think it was relevant enough and I think people could see my passion for the subject matter, but when I saw Patrick’s and Portman’s talks the next day I knew I was in trouble because they were talking directly to the audience in a language they could understand and to which they could relate. When you couple that with both of them being very funny, the game was up.

Learn from previous winners

Sadly, I was called out of town last year and missed the Lightning Talk session much to my dismay so I don’t have a lot to say about the winner at Business of Software 2011 except that I heard great things about the talk afterwards. But what I do know is that the videos from the winners from the previous years are available online and I’ve included them below for your convenience.

Watch Justin Goeres’ talk from BoS 2011.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/justin-goeres-quicktime-h-264-5964366

Watch Patrick McKenzie’s talk from BoS 2010.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/patrick-mckenzie-marketing-to-minorities-4951666

Watch Mark Stephens’ talk from BoS 2009.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/mark-stephens-at-bos-2009-3287655

Watch Alexis Ohanian’s talk from BoS 2008.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/alexis-ohanian-at-business-of-software-2008-1363422

Prepare for disaster and be ok with it

Sometimes things just go wrong and there isn’t anything you can do about (especially when the clock is ticking). The more gracefully you are able to handle your slides not working as behaved the better off you’ll be. That being said, do everything in your power to avert disaster in advance. One way of doing that goes back to a previous point – don’t put a lot of content (especially media) into your slides!

Heck, if you’re really serious about it, trying practicing your talk with no slides at all to prepare for the case when all your slides come out all one color.

Lastly, have a good time

Win or lose, giving a Lightning Talk at a conference like Business of Software is a great and rare opportunity. I met more people at that meeting as a result of the talk than I could have imagined – it truly was a unique opportunity, so embrace it!

See you soon.

It’s fair to say that one of the things that makes Business of Software interesting for the attendees is that while everyone cares about building the best software businesses that they possibly can, the sheer depth and breadth of interests of the attendees makes for some incredibly stimulating conversations in the corridors, at mealtimes, in bars and tea rooms.  Aside from the conversations that people have about the rewards, benefits, trials and tribulations of growing software businesses, you almost always meet incredibly memorable people who are passionate about something.

Nothing illustrates this better than the eclectic nature of, ‘Talk to me about…’ Every attendee is asked what they would like to appear on their badge under the heading, ‘Talk to me about…’ Here are the responses so far. Something for everyone we think!

• ERP and Saas
• Organisational culture
• Data and visualization for the non-developer
• Programming & beer
• Growing an Enterprise SaaS Company
• International distribution
• Conference fear, humor, running, pragmatism vs negatism, my recent corporate move and adventures.
• A technology enthusiast, sport addict, early adopter, nature and aerospace lover. Most of time BI consultant.
• My life as a consultant
• windows phone 7 crossfit SOA
• Stuff
• Scientific data and distributed collaboration networks
• What you would like to do for the rest of your life.
• Mobile apps
• Anything that’s on your mind:)
• drinklobby
• Entrepreneurship, Investing
• How much you spend on coffee every month?
• Email
• Scrum Software
• Cloud Databases
• SEO, SaaS, ASP.NET
• WordPress, Social Media, SEO
• Your pain with email volumes, mobile applications, startup, inbound marketing, getting useful stuff coded faster, …
• International expansion and transformation from on premise to SaaS
• Desktop software!
• Transitioning a company from services to products
• Growing without blowing up
• SharePoint + Enterprise Mobility Applications
• Online Advertising
• Anything (I have domain knowledge in both licensing — a.k.a. anti-piracy — and update software).
• Software for scientists.Working with outsourced programmers.Site licensing.
• Financial analytics
• Changing the world. One career at a time.
• developer happiness.
• Growth in new markets
• Marketing
• bootstrapping
• Email Marketing, Bootstrapping
• Managing virtual teams
• Marketing
• developer happiness.
• Software components market, online marketing and how you want to takeover the world.
• Bootstrapping a company for over 6 years in NYC
• Startups, Web, JavaScript, HTML5
• Startups, VC, Web/Mobile, Hacker News, Tennis, Beer
• Scalability, Mobile
• Growing an Enterprise SaaS Company
• Email
• Email marketing
• Creating awesome user experiences for affinity groups.
• Scaling culture
• Software Development Help with tech team building Prototype to Production path
• Company Culture
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• Things that make you happy.
• Sydney Australia, Lean startups, B2B, SaaS stuff
• Reducing administrivia Hiring geeks
• Re-engineering products from on-premise to SaaS
• Delphi
• String theory
• Next year’s Business of Software.
• Infrastructure & Hosting
• how to build a community online and around your products and solutions
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• Lean Startups (especially within existing businesses)
• rural entrepreneurship Alabama Football
• Performance
• Microsoft, social media, JavaScript
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• Delivra
• FoxPro, Germany
• Programming for Kids
• Riding Bikes
• Mobile Apps, Beer, Photography
• HelpSpot
• How to scale a people heavy software business
• Anything
• Egyptology Working with universities Having a team on multiple continents
• Innovation, creativity, software, marketing, folk music, dancing, bagpipes
• Growth
• Bootstrapping profitable web apps
• you
• budgeting. Or other stuff.
• Why is shipping software so hard?
• AuditShark
• Cool stuff
• Bootstrapping
• Network Uptime
• landscape photography
• Selling your company
• I am the office Administrator and do not have an answer for this
• All things Google
• Anything under the sun
• Building a software business
• selling enterprise software online
• Agile Development
• Budgeting
• Global Spec, Inc.
• your software engineering challenges.
• Branding, Customer Acquisition & Finding balance as a working mom
• developer happiness.
• Growth strategies
• Marketing
• Cloud marketing, basketball.
• Brooklyn
• Trello, FogBugz, and Kiln!
• Everything
• I am the office Administrator and do not have an answer for this
• Anything that Makes Your Company a Success!
• Apps For Kids
• Your great new company
• Adobe AIR
• What one thing you did this past year that had the biggest impact on your business
• Scaling internationally
• Continuous deployment, hiring, wine.
• Mobile apps
• The future.
• Design, User Experience, Entrepreneurship
• Document Management, Technology, Aviation
• Converting traffic into sales-ready leads
• Organic Growth
• Ruby/Rails
• Anything
• Delivra
• My favorite speaker so far…
• Community Web Sites
• Ubuntu
• APIs
• Finding the right market problems to solve
• What’s the next paradoxical truth that will change the world?
• Your dreams; your challenges; where you’re going.
• Rhino 3D
• Life
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• I am the office Administrator and do not have an answer for this
• 3D Modeling
• Relativity
• Teaching, scaling infrastructure to millions of users, distributed source control, and sushi.
• Anything
• Can I help you with Email Overload?
• Hacker News, web dev
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• Growing a successful B2B brand
• Improving site SEO
• International expansion and transformation from on premise to SaaS
• Building off-the-shelf software for an industry dominated by Consulting
• big ideas i can learn from
• Everything!
• The “right” way to validate a business idea.
• Competitive Analysis, Startups
• Boot-strapping a business.
• Visual Communication
• Making drugs
• TBD
• Company Culture
• New Ways to Work
• Challenges working with offshore teams
• High-frequency/wireless electronic design software
• Jobs to be done
• Growing the team
• Scrum Software
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• how to build a community online and around your products and solutions
• Scrum Software
• TEA or Coffee but TEA is my life!
• Scaling personal customer support
• Software
• Working @ Stack Exchange!
• startups, bootstrapping, branding, africa
• Burritos
• organic growth
• Helping Communities Engage and Interact
• Disruption of mainstream media by new media.
• The Startup Owner’s Manual
• The business of software
• WordPress Hosting
• Channels
• Computer Assisted Document Review (Predictive Coding)
• Engagement Marketing
• Sales
• Inbound Marketing Startups
• Microsoft, Rails, Agile, Big Companies
• Virtual Phone Systems
• Microsoft, Office, Large scale engineering challenges
• E-commerce, site search, SaaS, SEO
• Black Bear Ops
• Agile
• POS
• Machine learning
• Data Analysis
• your first startup
• Browser Security
• Packaging CAD Software
• Small start-ups
• Interacting with your customers via Mobile
• lean decisions, heat maps, life hacking
• Channels
• ProProfs.com, Freemium, SAAS, Web Apps
• Snowboarding!
• Growing your business
• Customer Succes, Retention and Engagement. Real-time In-App messaging based on behavior
• Please leave blank
• Please leave blank
• Anything
• Lean software development, PaaS
• Liverpool FC
• Changing enterprise software modells
• Licensing Protection, Remote Support and anything about software
• This is my second startup.
• Dreams
• Community
• Your favorite interview question.
• Amazing customer service experiences.
• Technology, education, managing tech teams
• Address management & validation
• Deployment Automation
• Project Sequencer
• Continuous Delivery
• I’m a product-tech-business-healthcare guy
• Painless, Paperless Board Meetings
• Improving software sales
• Selling for people who hate sales
• ISV’s, WPF, Desktop Development
• Moving to the Mountains in WNC
• custom software development
• the important elements of growing a software business
• Startup Selling
• Making events more memorable
• software product management
• design, data or development
• Virtual Phone Systems
• Anything
• Medical Imaging
• Disruptive cancer startups.
• Product Management ERP Systems
• Growing a software group
• Risk Management, ITIL, TOGAF
• iOS, Rails, Full-stack products
• Tiny, One Man, Software Shop
• User Experience, Design, Mobile stuff, Art
• Mr. Flibble, creativity & user experience.
• customer development, ideas, cool experiences and war stories 🙂
• MEP Ninja
• Entrepreneurship, Social Media, iPhone Development
• Product Configurators
• Dale Lutz Co- Founder and VP of Product Dev of Safe Software Inc.
• Don Murray Founder and President of Safe Software Inc.
• Anything
• Enterprise software
• Heroku, Web Apps, Mobile Apps, Ruby
• Audio
• feedbackpro.me
• Quovus Technologies
• The Cloud and intrapreneurialism
• Anything
• Lean, MVP, Agile, Sales
• Automation of Best Business Practices
• iOS apps
• turning value into money, and leading people. (experiences to date include sales, marketing, playing “lean startup”, leading small teams)
• Product Management
• Growing new business in a big company.
• TBD
• software, comics, magic, and running
• TransferBigFiles.com
• Sales, Marketing, Agile, Project Management, Product Management.
• Capturing and acting on employee ideas for new software services, talent development, eudaimonia, fishing
• Technology for CSAs and farms!
• Data/cross border commerce/Anything international
• Website Builders (think Weebly). Design.
• Enterprise software
• SaaS eCommerce solutions
• my crippling shyness
• How to be successful with software as a service
• SaaS and Talent Management
• Mobile Applications
• Founding dilemmas
• Everything
• Finding customers’ pain, open source business models, data porn.
• FreshBooks, Swordfighting, Comic Books
• Scaling Software Business
• Corporate Finance, Machine Learning, Mountain Biking
• Configurators
• Hiring Developers
• E-Commerce, Automated Production, Hiring and Managing Engineers
• Differentiation
• Marketing & Growth
• Measuring foreign aid results.
• Anything!
• Data Mining & Profitability Software
• sorting out messes, especially technical ones
• Building your next great idea.
• Product Management, Design and customer communications, in a startup
• My “Aha” Moment
• CrossFit
• User Superpowers
• User Superpowers
• Wodify
• IBM Lotus Domino
• Backup and Disk Imaging
• Agile Growth Strategies
• Staying healthy and taking over the world.
• Eat real food and more around more.
• Fearless Marketing
• Agile, TDD
• Product Strategy
• your company
• Network Monitoring Software
• Agile
• Culture & HR in the Tech World
• Software startup culture inside large companies
• Lean and Agile development. Behavioral economics. Software processes (unit testing, refactoring, pair programming).
• metrics
• Scaling my software businesss
• IBM Lotus Domino
• Business of Software
• The Business of Software
• Business of Software
• Databases
• WordPress, nonprofit technology & developing world surgical care
• leadership and being a part-time remote CEO
• Business partnerships and development, small biz
• Working with us! Ruby apps for the enterprise.
• Metrics
• The Internet of Things
• Cloud, Strategy, Cooking
• Founding member of jQuery Project Front-End & Mobile ExpertFormer developer, now CEO
• Open Web Technologies
• Product Strategy
• Windows 8 Apps
• Retention, Trial Conversion, Lifecycle Marketing, User Onboarding
• Business, programming, college football/basketball, poker
• GIS, SaaS, DaaS, Scrum and the terrible weather in the UK
• Software and Accounting
• emerging trends
• Technology, Wine, SaaS, Scaling Culture
• Founding and Scaling.
• Starups, Mobile Payments, Physics
• micro-ISV’s; scaling; founder transition; leveraging external resources
• SaaS, Data Quality, Cloud Computing, Address verification, International address validation
• Usability, Analytics, SEO, Polyphasic Sleep, Travel
• Product Quality, Growing customer base, Prioritizing list of product demands
• Product Lifecycle
• Partner Strategy
• Mahesh PaiAffinnova, Inc.
• Increase productivity of rapidly growing development teams.
• SaaS Ecommerce solutions
• SaaS eCommerce solutions
• Snagit Camtasia Studio Coach’s Eye
• Backup and Disk Imaging
• Scaling a technology business
• Inbound Marketing
• Why you’re at BoS & what we can do to make it better
• Web and Mobile Design and Development Services for Startups
• Medical Informatics
• Geo-location and Product Management
• Products
• Web AppsBug Tracking Funnel Optimization
• You
• Sales channels best practice
• your best practices in development, testing and support
• b2b product marketing and sales
• Being a CTO, product marketing, triathlons, document management
• Is validating your idea more important than creating the product?Do you really need investment capital to start a software company?
• Things!
• BoS Scholarship Winner
• How engineers can do marketing
• What’s next?
• 3D Sudoku
• Growing sales in foreign markets
• SaaS, Surfing
• SaaS, Email
• Scaling a technology business
• Bootstrapping Outsourcing Task and Project management
• Sending smarter emails
• Managing hundreds of remote workers
• Marketing, analytics, security, SaaS
• Sales & Marketing
• Early stage investment and mentorship
• Business Intelligence Analytics
• Code Can Be Beautiful
• Education software.
• Cazoomi
• Software as a Service; Software Entrepreneurship
• Pattern Recognition
• Organizing the process of building great software products.
• Promoting your Software on BitsDuJour!
• How we make BI Analytics easy for business users?
• Custom software development, product development
• product management, project management, agile development
• your company
• SaaS, software development, IT infrastructure, programming frameworks
• Life after product/market fit
• capital and acquisitions
• Simple marketing for complex products
• Humanism and non-profit marketing
• Great companies need great leadership talent. This is where we come in…
• Startups & Parenthood… And what makes those great
• Growth
• Our 3-D Extravaganza!
• Agile Growth Strategies

Every year, when the Business of Software finishes, some people want to leave for the airport, jump on a plane to get back to their family and start doing stuff in their business. However, lots of people want to stick around and talk about some of the issues the conference has raised, what they will do in their businesses as a result of what they have learned and what goals they will set themselves for the coming year. Others have asked for the opportunity to look at some areas that might be of less interest to the overall group but could be of value to a subset of our attendees. Finance is often raised as a subject that some people would like to discuss and understand in more depth for example and we recognise this is an important topic for a section of our attendees.

This year, we are going to try to let people with common interests get together in small groups to discuss some of these issues. No lectures, no powerpoint, just discussions led by people that might have some experience in a particular topic, or people who want to try to solve a particular issue that they face with others that have been through the same experience. There is no AV and no presentation, simply a room and a circle of chairs. Everyone who participates in a small discussion like this should come prepared to listen and talk.

We have a few suggested sessions already, and you can sign up to attend from here. Places are limited to ensure an open, constructive discussion where everyone gets the opportunity to participate effectively.

Click on the links to register.

• What next? Commit to action one idea from BoS and sharing the outcome with this group over the year.
• Exits: Building for successful exit – what should you be doing  if you are thinking about selling your business?.
• Growth strategies: Buy vs Build. What are the advantages and disadvantages of growth through each approach?.
• Partnering: Effective partnership strategies.
• UX and Engaging Customers: Troubleshooting Customer Trials and the Onboarding Process.
• How to get the right advice: How to choose advice & advisers at different stages of company growth.

If you’re coming to Business of Software in Boston in less than 2 weeks time, try to find some time either side of the conference to take in some of Boston.

It is a truly beautiful city.

Here is a flavor in time lapse video from Yao Li with a soundtrack from the film Inception.

The City of Boston from YaoLi on Vimeo.

I want to apologize to you if you have been trying, unsuccessfully to register for BoS over the past few days. There has been an issue with our registration system that has given a conference full message when people have tried to register. We still have some places left and also still have some space left at the conference hotel at our conference rate.

If you have any problems with either, please contact wendi businessofsoftware.org for assistance.

We were trying to think of a way to show why the delegates at Business of Software, make the event so special and valuable for all the attendees. Then is struck us, these videos of previous delegates, will make you understand.

Everyone cares about building great software businesses.

If that is you too, its not too late to join us this year, but it is getting close!

On site delegate feedback 2011 – 3 minute version.

On site delegate feedback 2011, with added morsels from speakers – 9 minute version.

On site delegate feedback 2010, with added morsels from speakers.

On site delegate feedback 2009.

If you feel the same way, come and join a community of people who are passionate about building great software businesses.

I know a lot of folks have been waiting with baited breath to hear about the winners of the Avangate scholarships at Business of Software this year.  There was an extremely strong field with nearly thirty entries, so big congratulations to the victors:

• Edwin Siebesma, MeetingKing
• Vineet Sinha, Architexa
• Brice Wilson, In Touch Teacher LLC
• Antony Goldbloom, Kaggle
• Clint Wilson, Cazoomi

There’s a warm welcome waiting for you at BoS, chaps.  And commiserations to all who didn’t make it this year, but can I just point out there is still a $500 discount for the next thirty registrations?