Steve Jobs quoting Picasso’s “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” and saying that Apple has “always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” It’s important to understand that copying is just creating an exact replica, whereas stealing is taking an idea and making it your own.

Have you ever heard someone say that you should sell the benefits not the features?

I don’t get it - I mean, I GET it, but really I don’t get it.

I heard this a few times when I was at Cantaloupe.tv and I was responsible for a sales quota. I heard it from sales consultants who would come in to coach the team and I would also hear it from amateur sales consultants - in other words, a sales guy who has had some success selling but has never had to teach sales.

I know what they’re getting at. They’re trying to caution against going into a sales scenario and giving a presentation or having a conversation that’s just a feature dump. Usually, when you go into a meeting and do a feature dump, you end up with the potential client/customer/user thinking “So what?”

“Don’t tell me about features, tell me how this is going to benefit me.” That is the general idea.

That makes sense for extremely complicated products - like something IBM would sell - but it doesn’t doesn’t make sense for a lot of consumer internet companies.

The customers of CIC’s have the advantage of having probably tried a lot of your competitors’ products. They probably came looking for you, rather than the other way around, and because they’re so well informed about the market, they know how certain features will benefit them better than you do.

Thus, when they come to your website, they want to very quickly find out what features you have to see if you are finally the company that can solve their problem or if your feature set also has gaps.

What they don’t want to find on your website is some obscure language about “benefits.” 

I encountered this today when I went to Tungle.me. The first language I see on their homepage is: 

• Eliminate double-bookings, time zone mishaps and the back-and-forth of finding a time to meet
• Easily schedule meetings, inside or outside your organization
• Invite others to schedule with you, without having to sign up

The first two are benefits, and the last is a feature. This tells me little to about how the application actually works. If I go to their “learn more” page, it’s a lot more of the same thing.

Does anybody actually go to Tungle.me not expecting it to provide all these benefits? Does anybody actually get any value out of the text on their homepage? This sounds like the language you’d use if you were trying to get me to COME to your website. I’m already there so I must know how you might be able to benefit me. Now tell me more.

Compare this to Proposable. Sure, their homepage has “benefits” language - “Painless Proposals.” but what you can’t miss is the big “Features” tab at the top of the navigation, and even better than that, their “Pricing” page outlines the features and costs perfectly.

I still need to try it to know if it’s for me, but I feel a lot more confident investing my time into trying Proposable having at least reviewed the feature set at a glance, than investing my time into Tungle.me.

In less than 7 minutes this video shows us that kindergarteners are the natural champions of the lean startup methodology and every business class we take further dilutes our successful, natural instincts.

“Business students are trained to find the single, right plan…what kindergarteners do differently is that they start with the marshmallow and they build prototypes” (Biz Students vs. Kindergartners starts at 1:50)

“With each version kids get instant feedback of what works and what doesn’t” (3:11)

“Sometimes, a little prototype of this experience is all that it takes to turn us from an uh-oh moment to a ta-da moment.” (6:34)

I think this “marshmallow challenge” could also be a great interview activity for lean startups.

This presentation explains how to use Survey.io to measure product/market fit. You will get more out of it if you visit the source of this presentation at Venture Hacks and take a look at the sample survey. You should also consider reading the transcript or listening to the audio that goes along with this presentation.

The best thing about starting a company in Indianapolis is you can avoid the “startup” hype. Indianapolis in general (not the tech community, but the general community) doesn’t care about startups. The only way they’ll pay attention to you is if you’re successful.

This is a good thing.

Even the most good intentioned founders can get caught up in the hype.

• The hype is what makes you seek unnecessary press, twitter followers, facebook fans, and other vanity metrics. 
• The hype is what makes you worry about how much money you’re raising, who you’re investors are, and who your partners are regardless of how it’s helping you serve your customer. 
• The hype is what makes you feel like you’ve accomplished more than you have or less than you have. 
• In general, the hype distorts the reality, which is lethal

If you phrase that another way, you also get the worst thing about starting a company in Indianapolis - it’s harder for legitimate startups to attract any hype. 

• The hype helps you get press, twitter followers, and facebook fans which help market your product
• The hype helps you raise money, attract strategic investors, and strategic partners to better serve your customers
• The hype can make you feel like you’ve accomplished more than you have which is good for morale, or less than you have, which pushes you to achieve more
• In general, the hype distorts the reality, which if channeled correctly, can be helpful

As they say, “all things in moderation.”

“…a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model.” -Steve Blank, Teaching Entrepreneurship-Logistics

Emphasis on the “temporary.” A lot of people like to say they’re interested in startups (just look at a lot of twitter profiles, you’ll see), but that seems ridiculous to me. Startups have their charms, but most of the fun seems to be had by those running profitable, sustainable companies. That’s what I’m interested in and the sooner we can get Pocket Tales there the better.

It’s like when people say they love puppies. I wonder if they hate when their puppies become mature dogs. Puppies make a ton of mess and are mostly a chore. No. I’d much rather have a fully trained dog.

I feel lucky to be interested in something that isn’t so fleeting. Puppy lovers are just setting themselves up for heartbreak.

The problem is, it’s hard to find a fully trained dog suited to you and your personality and that’s true of companies too. It be near impossible for me to get hired as the CEO of a profitable consumer web application that is as much aligned with my interests and skill set as Pocket Tales (or let’s be honest, the CEO of any promising web application, aligned or not).

So I put up with the startup mess, and even learn to appreciate its charms, because one day it will be a fully trained (i.e. “profitable) company. I’ll probably even miss how in the “startup” days it was easy to change direction or how quickly we could make big decisions.

Profitable companies, like fully trained dogs, just aren’t as easy to teach new tricks.

Mint continues to serve up great real-world examples of how to successful start and operate a new company. Here are a couple gems to demonstrate why you should read this article:

“The Product. Maybe we didn’t have a high viral coefficient but we had a great net promoter score…The delight after a quick setup, and having all those graphs and balances was palpable and emotional.”

“Blog / Original Content. Noah talks about the pre-launch days here but quite simply we focused on building out a unique personal finance blog…Eventually the blog became #1 in personal finance, and drove traffic to the app.”