Seth Godin

Good writing is a business and career advantage. Try to be clear, concise, and get to the point real quick. Here are some of my learnings and anecdotal incidents I have experienced so far. Still learning and recalibrating as I go on. Try following BLUF[1], a military communications acronym — “Bottom Line Up Front” — designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails. We, especially in the eastern culture, tend to weave stories and try to form a connection before hitting the point. When it comes to team communication, either in emails and other forms of communication, it is better to reverse it -- start with the important points and then, if needed, weave the stories to make it clearer and empathetic. However, just knowing the tips/tricks isn't enough, communication (more aptly writing) is a habit that becomes better with more practice. One common suggestion I advise my team is, "I cannot read your mind, you have to tell me. The same goes with the client/customer -- ask them, talk to them unless you can read their mind." If you work for a Startup or any Company for that matter, how do you think the founder or the C-Suites know what you did. Make it a habit to write weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly reports and email them. I guarantee you that it will come to pay you with compound interest in the future. Here is a scenario. You just joined a new company. You report to a few at the top and work with a few under you. You have to gain the trust of those below you and…

Possibly, but is "socializing" children what school is for? Is a homogeneous society where everybody has a similar "socializing" experience really what we want? http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf I always thought it was for learning. I would rather my child have an excellent education and potentially have some adult social lessons to learn as an adult than to be well socially integrated and poorly educated.

I think this Seth Godin PDF on Powerpoint is very good. "PowerPoint presents an amazing opportunity. You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience’s right brain (through their eyes), and your words can go through the audience’s ears to talk to their left brain. That’s what Stephen Spielberg does. It seems to work for him." http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf

Seems like a visual display of the timeless recommendations by Seth Godin in The Big Red Fez (http://www.sethgodin.com/fez/). Although newspapers are dying, this is something any good newspaper designer knows: the eye should immediately go to the most important thing on the page and sequence through the additional items ranked by importance. It doesn't matter if something is first on the page if it isn't the most dominant thing on the page.

Seth Godin's stuff is great! http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/

I'm going to take a guess because I'm obviously not part of your core team so I have no inside knowledge to how or what your doing. As other have posted in classic purple cow speak [1], you build a better product and remember "your product is not THE product"[2]. Part of Ash's lean canvas[3] even has a spot for alternatives which may even include competitors. The focal point is you need to start testing everything so you can: create a customer feedback loop of _learning_[4][4b]. Ash's model is a variant of the original "Business Model Canvas" which is also very good. I would urge you and everyone to LOOK at the examples and iterations of these models on the main site[5]. Some of the questions you start asking in this exercise are: - What is the problem your solving, and what are the possible solutions? - How will you reach customers, who are the early adopters? Its never too late, and like I said actually the beginning of the exercise. Even if you 'know this already', I would urge you to re-test and re-focus on your previous lean canvases/models. Success is in the finer details. Remember, you never stop learning about the customer. You want a 'specific' customer? You develop a strategy - focused on the problem. So there you go, a 'teaser' on building a better product. Now go read Eric Ries's[6] book[7], Steve Blank's book[8] for overall strategy. See the business model generation book and site[9] (there is an ipad app!) for more finer details. There is also a…

Skip the entire cold email and figure out a way to get the people you think should care about your thing, to care. Generally “content marketing” is the term for that, but a better way to think about it is: think of the problems faced by the people who might use your thing. What do they think about? What other tools do they use? Now, go write useful blog posts about that stuff. If you publish interesting things, people will actually want to hear from you. You’ll earn their trust and won’t need to beg or spam for it. Seth Godin explains this well: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-mark.html … and the first 4 chapters of his book are online: http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/thanks.asp

Yes, you do. Please read this: http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/brainwash.pdf Maybe "training to be slaves" is hiperbole, but as Seth Godin puts it, training to be "cogs in a machine" is quite right.

Do it! Good luck. http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/bootstrap.pdf

I hope you succeed in changing the system. School for most kids is "prison-lite". Like if you don't show up on time for roll call, you get punished by being held in recess or forced to pick up garbage around the school. And this is not some third world school I am talking about. This is schools in cupertino, one of the wealthiest and most "progressive" areas in the world. http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf > Years ago, five friends and a I were put in charge of a 150 rowdy fifth-graders for a long weekend up in Canada. It was almost impossible to be heard over the din—until I stumbled onto the solution. All we had to say was, “points will be deducted,” and compliance appeared. There weren’t any points and there wasn’t any prize, but merely the threat of lost points was sufficient.

You can download The Bootstrapper Bible by Seth Godin for free. It's "Free for 2 weeks only through December 30th!" http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/bootstrap.pdf‎ If you haven't gotten into an incubator, you should think about bootstrapping as long as you can until you find your product market fit. If you burn investor's money before you find a fire that can grow, you will be forced to quit.

Some great free marketing resources: http://headrush.typepad.com/ (highly recommended) http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources http://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketing-guides/ http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/free_stuff.asp http://www.fogcreek.com/guide/

Forgive the fact it comes from a shameless marketer. I've always thought "panic early" was good advice, though: http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/panic.pdf

If your slides are like this, sure, it'd need to be a multi-post series or an ebook (though, ebook might not be a bad option) or something like how Seth Godin presented his iconic "Really Bad Powerpoint": http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf ..edit: I like Markdown too much.

Same reason they're on YC News: They're doing something remarkable, in the Godinian sense. ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/ )

Personally I don't care if the product is web embeds or some other kind of tech. It seems to be good to make good-looking presentations and bad at making bullet-points and tables I've been sharing Seth's Godin "Really Bad Powerpoint" http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf for nearly a decade now (it's been around since 2001, but I was a consultant back then. Tables and bullet points put food on my table) and I'm still hoping someone will help the rest of the world understand. Google Slides didn't achieve that (quite the opposite actually if you've ever seen some Slides presentations) Prezi is definitely progress, but most people just import powerpoint presentations so it doesn't really work. Conclusion: I won't judge Bunkr on features or tech, but on what presentations it actually yields. (full disclosure: I don't know anyone in the Bunkr team personally, but I'm part of the same accelerator as them)

Permission Marketing http://www.sethgodin.com/permission/

Seth Godin has a blog that's short and sweet: http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/ http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/ is interesting when it comes to career advice. http://www.codinghorror.com - technology related. http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/ - another smart blogger and not very mainstream. http://randsinrepose.com/ - writer of managing humans. has an impressive blog.