Be Unreasonable – Aydin Mirzaee’s Take on the World.

Geni.com does a good job of allowing you to very easily create a family tree. It’s nice because you start adding members of your family and if you add their email addresses, they will be notified. Once they are notified, they can log in and make changes to the family tree and add more details. Of course, the number 1 concern here is privacy. The good news is that Geni has lots of privacy settings.

As far as I know, the company has raised more than $10 million dollars in VC money. I know that they make some money off of selling premium accounts but I’m not sure if that business model will be enough to make them nicely profitable… maybe I’m missing something…

All in all, great website. Try it out!

Aydin.

This week, SuitUpp is back to Sean John. I can’t help but look at this and think that this is something that a mobster would wear… but, that’s just me.

I bumped into Natasha D’Souza the other day and she told me about her new Social Media Company. Natasha’s a social media wiz and if you’re looking to make your presence known on the internet, you should absolutely consult with her. You can check out VirtualEyeSee (the company) here: http://www.virtualeyesee.com.

A bit late in writing this… but, might as well put it up. I made sure to set 3 different goals for this year (each with measurable benchmarks). The goals are all-encompassing enough that I can relate almost any activity that I partake in daily to one of them.

The idea is that whenever I look at the time (watch, clock, cellphone, tv, computer), I’ll have to remember to ask myself “is what I’m doing right now the most efficient way of spending my time in accomplishing one of those 3 different goals”. Answering this question over and over again daily should “theoretically” help me keep the resolutions. Let’s see how it plays out.

Aydin.

Thanks to Pat Phelan’s blog, here is a quick video from TED of one of the coolest things I’ve seen this year:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntg1Gpgjk-A]

Ever since we finished v1.0 of our products at Chide.it about 3 weeks ago, we’ve been on the ground selling to customers. It’s tremendous fun to see how your products make a difference in people’s lives!

Something that has been very helpful to us thus far is a change of approach in our sales presentations. In the beginning, we focused a lot on what ReviewRoom (our document collaboration software) was capable of. In other words, we kept outlining the features that the tool had. The customers would then have to figure out for themselves how this tool would be useful day to day in their businesses.

After analyzing the the first series of presentations that we conducted, we realized that it’s not about the features and the power of the tool but, but rather the impact the tool will have on people’s businesses. It’s not even about the general impact, but rather the specific impact that it will have for the customer who you are presenting to.

The best way to approach these presentations, as we’ve realized, is to understand specifically how people conduct their processes today. If possible, it would be great to get the customers to admit to some of the frustrations that they experience in the process today. Armed with this information, you can then tell them about the benefits that your product will have for them. Once the customers are convinced that the benefits are worth it, they are already convinced that a product that would give them those benefits would be worth investing in. Then, of course, you can show how the features your product already has helps the customer get the benefits you sold them on.

p.s. yes, hindsight is 20/20

Selling software is a very interesting process. It so happens that its really not just about telling interested parties about all of the features that you have and how using the software can make life so great. Yes, this is part of the process too. But, the reality is that all this will do is get people interested in your product. There are so many other factors that come to play in selling and it would be difficult to talk about them all.

However, I will say that not only is it very important to tell potential customers how using your software will make their life better, but you also have to let them know how disappointing and difficult their life will be if they don’t buy your products. Most people will do more to avoid the negatives resulting from not buying than they will do to gain the positives from buying.

Aydin.

I have a lot of meetings in Coffee Shops. Yesterday, as I was chatting away at a meeting, I noticed a really fancy phone in the hands of a guy who seemed to be intensely coding away. He was a RIM developer. Of course, I had to ask him to let me play with the phone he was programming (which of course was the good old BlackBerry Storm – i.e. first ever touch-screen BlackBerry).

I won’t repeat all of the information that you’ll be able to find on the internet, but, here are some new things that I learned about the phone:

1) It has copy and paste.

2) It doesn’t have wifi!!

3) The touch screen is actually tactile. In other words you have to press down the screen for a button to be pushed (unlike the iphone that simply detects touch).

4) When the phone is held in the vertical direction, it doesn’t show the full keyboard. When the phone is shown sideways, then you can see the full keyboard. That’s smart

5) The browser is not nearly good as the iphone’s. However, it’s better than that of my BlackBerry 8830. In order to zoom in, you’ll have to double tap the screen rather than using the two-finger zooming procedure in the iphone.

6) Its a world phone (like the 8830).

It seems like a great phone and I’m really hoping to get my hands on one as soon as I can (I’ll write more when I actually can use one for daily use).

Aydin.

Everyone knows that in a startup there are no excuses to be made. When something needs to be done, someone needs to do it, and it needs to be done ASAP. Saying things like, “I’ve never done it before.” and “can I work on something else?” don’t cut it. Inevitably, you’ll be faced with a task that you won’t love doing. When that time comes, rather than asking yourself “why do I have to do this?”, try asking yourself “how can I do this most efficiently and enjoy the process?”. That’s a much better question and it’ll get you a much better answer.