
Patio11 on his 362 day work year & what he does in his break - marklittlewood
http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/08/hello-ladies-patrick-mckenzies-362-day-working-year-other-secrets-of-his-success-a-guest-post-from-patio11/
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nicpottier
Am I the only one starting to get tired of these 'sell the shovels' sales
pitches directed at SAAS startups? I respect Patrick and what he's done, but
to me he is coming off more and more sleazy and this particular post doesn't
help the case.

Can we be successful without doing the hard sales thing? Is it getting worse
or am I just getting more sensitive to it? That's an honest question, shlock
like this just makes my skin crawl these days, but maybe I'm in the minority.

~~~
rschmitty
I think its getting so bad that in addition to the 'sell the shovels' there
are lots of 'how to sell the shovels' or 'how we can help you sell the
shovels' posts going around.

Don't dig for gold, sell shovels! Want to learn how to sell shovels? Subscribe
to our newsletter where we teach you 3-4 things and then end up with us trying
to sell you on stuff that will help you selling shovels.

Next thing you know, you are paying for 50 different services so you can
"focus on selling shovels"

~~~
jiggy2011
You could probably describe most economic activity that way, we have
relatively simple core wants and needs (we want sex not SaaS). We spend our
lives trying to acquire things that help us satisfy those by increasingly
indirect means.

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onion2k
If this article is designed to promote the Business of Software I think it's
failed entirely in my case. Working every day of the year aside from 3 days at
a conference is not something I have any desire to emulate, nor do I want to
hang out with people who think that's a good idea.

Work should be fun, interesting, challenging, and something that you can put
away occasionally to do other things. If you can't, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
marklittlewood
As Patrick has already responded, I don't think there is too much to add but
apologies if you feel the line is misleading. Anyone that runs their own
business is likely to be spending a lot of time thinking about the detail of
what they are doing and not have the time to step back and think about working
'On' their business. We try to create an environment that allows people to
step back from the day to day, and learn from each other.

We also happen to believe that far too many people spend their time as
entrepreneurs telling other people how hard they work etc, and that frankly is
not healthy. This is also a little 'tongue in cheek'.

~~~
spindritf
> Chris

This is OT but I have mixed feelings about the practice of using someone's
first name when responding to them on HN. On one hand, it's a bit e-stalky,
especially when the handle bears no resemblance to the name and just... sound
off. On the other, it's a rather elegant, understated way of distinguishing
comments made in some more or less official capacity from regular opinions.

~~~
marklittlewood
Oops. Edited an unintentional. I just happen to know who it was. My bad.

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dsr_
This... has the voice of a paid shill trying to work in references to the Next
Amazing Offer. It didn't read to me like patio11's essay or HN comment tone at
all.

[ed] Is this more effective at attracting the kind of people who pay to attend
the BoS conference than his usual voice?

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asmithmd1
Whoa! - $2500 for a three day conference. The "Business of Software"
conference is a pretty good business.

I know, I know - They rented a hotel ballroom and give you lunch and snacks.
It's too bad the self-organizing bar-camp thing kind of died when the great
recession ended. I thought it might kill expensive conferences like Craigslist
killed newspaper classifieds.

~~~
runako
I'm guessing that for the target audience, the 3 days of actual time is the
more significant expense.

~~~
jiggy2011
That would assume an annual salary of > $216,000 or so.

~~~
user24
Not really. Opportunity cost and all that.

~~~
jiggy2011
True

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ig1
It's a shame BoS have started selling the videos of talks when most
conferences are going in the other direction and releasing videos for free.

Given that many speakers are doing so to contribute back to the community and
build their own reputations it would be nice if conferences like BoS would be
run by the community for the sake of the community rather than by commercial
entities.

I'd be curious to know what percentage of the video sales price goes to the
speakers as royalties.

~~~
marklittlewood
BoS releases all of the talks for free within a year of them being made. We,
like many organisations are working hard to find a sustainable business model
for content. In some cases, the speakers ask that we do not release the talk
fro free. We do not share royalties with the speakers but then the cost of
preparing the videos is far in excess of the revenue we make from selling
early access.

If you have been to BoS you would know how community minded it is. It takes a
huge amount of work to put something like BoS on and to be honest, we think we
do a pretty good job of hosting and producing an event that is both very
different and refreshingly uncommercial in outlook.

~~~
ig1
I've been involved with running events so I appreciate that things like
venues, staffing, speaker expenses, etc can build up to a considerable amount
and that those costs have to be met somehow.

If it's a case of the event not being financially sustainable without
additional non-ticket revenue then maybe charging for videos is what has to be
done, but if the videos aren't bringing in a significant revenue stream while
presumably significantly reducing the number of viewers I'd have to ask if
that's a worthwhile trade-off ?

Obviously the answer for that is going to be different if you're optimising
for profit or for community benefit, but that's why I'd rather have community
events run sustainably by non-profits than on a purely commercial for-profit
basis.

[I have no issues with videos being charged for / with-held at the speakers
request though]

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dudurocha
[http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-
constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-
contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

I think this is one of the best talks I ever watched. It's about startup life,
without glamour, false-hope or delusional expectations. The fact that it's not
a twenty-something year old guy, who sold it's business for millions of
dollars in only 2 months, makes an excellent talk to anyone who has a SaaS
software, consultancy business or is looking in join the startup bandwagon.

~~~
mp99e99
She quotes calculating churn as 1/churn rate.. in this example she said her
churn was 2.2% month meaning lifetime value of 45 months. But that doesn't
make sense, since its compounding/exponential.. its really only 32 months (not
45). Then she talks about having to explain the math to the VC. Am I missing
something here, because I find this fairly alarming coming from a successful
company.

~~~
patio11
Let C be the original number of companies (or their billings, doesn't matter.)

In month 1, we have 1 * C companies. In month 2, we have 1 * .978 * C
companies. .978 is the survivorship rate, which is the inverse of the churn.
In month 3, we have 1 * .978 * .978 * C companies.

Given that we are most keenly interested in how many company-months we rack up
over time, we can solve for this with sum of an infinite geometric series. The
formula is C / (1 - s) for s is the survivorship rate, or C / (churn).

Exactly like Gail said it was.

~~~
graphene

        the survivorship rate, which is the inverse of the churn
    

That's an odd definition of survivorship rate though, isn't it? Suppose churn
is 75%, that would give a SR of 1.333, which doesn't make sense to me...

More logical I think would be SR = (1-churn). Of course, .978 is close enough
to 1.0 that it doesn't matter, and I don't understand how the grandparent
arrived at 32 months.

Edit: your two formulas for total company-months also imply that sr =
(1-churn), so maybe I'm missing something?

~~~
mechanical_fish
Survivorship = (1 - churn)

With this definition, a churn of 0.75 is a survivorship of 0.25.

You're perhaps being misled by the offhand phrase "the survivorship is the
inverse of the churn"; in that sentence "inverse" is not being used in the
mathematician's strict sense of "reciprocal", but in the more colloquial sense
of "a thing that moves in the opposite direction from the previous thing".

None of us understand where 32 months came from.

~~~
graphene
Ah, that makes sense, thanks, in my mother tounge there's no specific word for
"reciprocal", we just use "inverse" for both meanings.

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antidaily
TL;DR He goes to the Business of Software Conference.

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summerlunch
Why is everybody saying that this post seems sleazy? Am I the only one that's
not seeing it like that? He is only trying to encourage people to attend the
BoS conference by telling us about the benefits. How else would you do it?

~~~
nandemo
I don't think it's sleazy at all. It's simply enthusiastic.

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NZ_Matt
Ha! I read the first few paragraphs and then scrolled down until I got to the
P.S.

Brilliant!

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norswap
I think the problem with this kind of approach to marketing is that you have
to be a marketing geek to enjoy it. I wish there was a minimal approach for
people who find marketing bothersome.

Also, this is more controversial, but I think patio11 should make his points
faster. His posts tend to be overly long for what they bring to the table.

~~~
wikwocket
The default approach for people who don't want to market themselves or their
wares is to get a salaried job that doesn't deal with customers. A perfectly
acceptable option for those who want to just hack/just write/just do their
thing.

Probably all of us struggle to see where on the continuum of [stereotypical
hacker who fears sunlight] to [real estate agent that also writes code] we
lie, and what sort of job/career/ambition we best fit into.

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peterwwillis
If a company is big enough and should have documented their network for
liability insurance, either A. I know places who didn't have it, or B. I know
places that hid it, or C. it isn't always required. Weird.

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michaelmartin
The analogy at the top of this needs a little work. Scott Pilgrim (Michael
Cera) wasn't in the Social Network (Jesse Eisenberg)

Both great movies though :)

~~~
marklittlewood
Great comment below the blog post...

Matias, this phenomenon is known as the “Eisenberg Uncertainty Principle.” A
movie fan cannot know whether a character is played by Jesse Eisenberg or
Michael Cera with any degree of confidence until he observes the whole movie.
This is because the parts played by these two actors can only be accurately
modeled by a complex wave-like function. Cinematic physicists are not sure,
but it seems likely that, for any given movie, the part of the geeky outcast
is played by both Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera simultaneously. Only when
you watch the movie does the waveform collapse and you observe one or the
other actor.

~~~
michaelmartin
Haha, fair enough, I stand corrected then. Well played.

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dschiptsov
Who cares?

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knes
Nice way to sell your brand patio11.

