

Ask HN: Meeting Apple Marketing person for first time tomorrow - any advice? - nvsp

I'm building a Mac app targeting the educational iBooks market. We're still in private beta, but several people from Apple have signed up to our launch email list already.<p>Today, I was contacted by a Business Development Manager at Apple's Marketing team. He requested a phone meeting with him tomorrow, to learn more about what we're building and how we envision it being used in schools.<p>Any advice on what I should and should not say / ask?
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georgespencer
Apple's marketing department is an area I am intimately familiar with.

1\. Are you _targeting_ the iBooks market, or are you targeting the iBooks
market? That is: are you competition to Apple, or a potential success story
for them?

2\. Apple meets interesting companies who are in interesting fields regularly.
Biz Dev is a broad title. It can mean any of the following:

i. Hey let's be friends! ii. This is a market we're going to highlight in the
next keynote and you might fit in well. iii. This is a market we are keen to
exploit more and you're potentially competition. iv. We want to acquire you.
v. We want to fuck you, hard.

If you're not sure which of those it's going to be you need to take a long
look at Apple's objectives with iBooks and education and work out where you
sit on their radar.

3\. Don't give anything away that Apple couldn't already have reasonably
worked out. Talk about the size of your team and your experience in this
market, but don't talk about investment or investors. If they ask specifically
then just politely say that its' confidential, and that you're sure someone
from Apple can understand that.

4\. Be passionate about the public side of your roadmap. Discuss the key
problems and the solution you have to them. Have answers to the challenges
you're likely to face (I guess traction is one).

Don't ask about Apple's plans because they won't tell you anything. However,
do think about things that Apple could do that would help you get into this
market and really open it up. Frame some questions around that if you can.

Sorry this is a little broad. I don't think you're naive enough to be
expecting an acquisition or something, but you should also be prepared for the
fact that they will probably speak to 100 companies like you every week, just
so they have you on file.

~~~
nvsp
Thanks George, that's very helpful. I wasn't expecting an acquisition :-)

We're positioning ourselves as complementary to Apple's iBooks Author tool, so
I sure hope they don't see us as competing, we have no intent of doing so.

Thanks again!

~~~
georgespencer
No problem. I'd love to hear how it goes; my email address is in my profile.

