Another podcast series I have been neglecting is The Startup Success Podcast. Here is some of the interesting bits from the last couple (okay, last a lot). In general, this podcast is pretty good for startups, though the plugs for Windows and the Rails love-in can get a bit annoying, though I understand why they are there (and easy to fast forward through).

Episode 19 – Lou Carbone, (total) user experience expert

  • If you don’t get the experience right, it doesn’t matter if you got the code right
  • If you would talk about something, it is an experience. If not, then it is just a transaction
  • Enhance and empower the user
  • What Apple is really selling is a Mindset, not a product. They look at their products from both a functional and emotional level
  • Don’t bit off more than one experience at a time
  • Have empathy for the user. Actually care about them
  • Have to start from the Customer back. Not from the Product out. Hopefully they cross somewhere.
  • Choice is raising the bar significantly in terms of minimum standards of experience
  • ‘Making and Selling’ vs. ‘Sensing and Responding’
  • Don’t think of it as a Product, but as Long-term Value
  • Emotion trumps rational thought
  • How do you fit into someone’s life
  • Would people mourn the loss of your company?

Episode 21 – Screencasting with Ian Ozsvald

  • It’s probably faster, easier and more effective to use a video for instructional tasks
  • Who your audience is determines what the ‘right’ way is to make a screencast
  • One of the mistakes of a first-time screencaster is to not edit. To clean up the cuts. To remove the umms and ahhs
  • If you cut out all the hour glass segment then it feels like something is missing. Trim it to about half a second
  • There is no point in scripting word-for-word when you are a domain expert and that is targeted at converted user
  • Screencasts aimed at non-converted users (on the front page, 2 – 3 minutes in length) should be scripted for polish
  • For a perfect result, do the audio separately. That is time consuming though. But if you know your application and know what you want to say you can likely do it in a couple runs synchronously.
  • Give the demonstration you want to give, not just the one that you recorded
  • If you record the audio live, you can’t really edit it by hand later.
  • Send a customized screencast to users which are having tech support issues
  • Practice. And then practice some more.
  • Post-production your audio to remove line noise, breathing, pops, etc.
  • Having the tools is one thing, but having a professional who knows how to use them is another
  • How to build a screenscast series from Ian

Episode 22 – UTest’s Matt Johnson

  • You have two sets of customers. Those that pay for your software, and the community around it. Both types need to be serviced.
  • How do you define what is a professional tester?
  • We’re not concerned [at this point] about being cash-flow positive has got to be the scariest comment I’ve heard on any of the many startup podcasts / blogs I pay attention to.
  • Pay-for-performance is an interesting model, but this is something people advise against in internal test teams. So why would you want to participate in such a market
  • If your in-house QA team can’t keep up with new versions / features / environments / etc. then you should fix the root cause of that. Not to reflexively go to an external party. Do you need to hire more? Train more? Get developers doing more initial testing, etc.
  • Booting people off the platform for NDA violations is not really an effective punishment
  • Create a virtuous cycle in community driven businesses
  • The UTest community is highly technical and web-oriented. That lack of diversity is a bit worrisome. Anyone could join, but its a somewhat self-selective group who knows about UTest.
  • Engage your community, don’t dictate to them.

Episode 28 – Sramana Mitra’s Entrepreneur Journeys

  • Starting a startup is now reset back to what it was like prior to the original .com bubble
  • Get negotiating leverage, prove your business plan, before going to the market for money
  • Build your business with customer money, not equity money
  • Venture capital early on is not a conducive to build a great company
  • Sell, design, build and sell is the order to success. Not design, build and sell
  • Don’t waste money building something until you have validated your idea
  • The validation that matters: are customers writing cheques
  • Face reality early on, rather than pretending that it is around the corner
  • Hire do-ers up front before management teams; people who deliver
  • Create a culture of value-generation
  • You will become monetarily rich from a startup is so rare, it might as well be a myth. Being rich other ways is much more likely
  • You have to have an appetite for risk and are comfortable with the possibility of failure

Episode 29 – Bjorn Herrmann and StartupSchool

  • The people who should be educating people are those who have the knowledge
  • Add an element of the unexpected to your idea(s) to help it stick
  • Supercool School sounds like a pretty neat platform. Think online lunch-and-learns. Maybe I’ve solved my course delivery problem…
  • How to test with Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2:
    • Get RC
    • Test your application
    • Publicize compatibility
    • Light up new features
  • Windows Application Compatibility Cookbooks

Episode 30 – Julien Codorniou and BizSpark

  • The three things a startup needs – Software, Support and Visibility
  • The real goal of BizSpark is to grow the next generation of Microsoft partners.
  • BizSpark enrollments are increasing as the greater market is shrinking
  • Advice to startups – engage others / experts / partners for help

Episode 31 – Gibraltar Software

  • Like your own version of MS’s user experience program
  • Gibraltar records and sends error and usage information to your support staff and provides powerful, yet simple analysis and visualization tools so you can triage customer issues faster, better optimize development priorities and continuously improve software quality.
  • Bought back the IP from the company they worked for when they developed it
  • How to determine how clued in a partner is with technology trends (like Twitter) – Tweet that you are going to use their product and see how long it takes for them to respond
  • Corporate blogging / tweeting is humanizes your application and gives you a forum to explain certain ideas and assumptions built into your product
  • Have generic articles for the blog queued up for when you have other, more pressing time constraints. Mix those in with topical, timely posts.
  • Schedule and timebox your blogging