Sales Principle 2 of 10

When you first set your mindset to help your customers as I discussed in Sales Principle #1, then you are on a journey to immense success. To make the journey more enjoyable and sales less of a grind, I firmly believe being authentic and genuine are essential. 

If you are a complete bozo, I’m not sure what to tell you. Hopefully, this article can help. 

This is more about building real lasting relationships. None of that fake stuff. Keepin’ it real. 

At Skiplist, one of our core values is “Relationships over Money.” Easy to say but very hard to practice. 

Everyone at Skiplist profoundly believes in our core values. This is our differentiator and what makes working at Skiplist a blast.

Sales Principle 1 of 10

I’ve heard many definitions of what is sales, but Mark Cuban put it best, “Selling is not convincing. Selling is helping.”

It is unfortunate that “sales” is often associated negatively. I’ll admit sales rightfully gets a bad rap, and there are many bad salespeople out there. We have all experienced a tricky or pushy salesperson. You feel horrible and used. 

Have you seen Broiler Room, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wolf of Wall Street and so on? Slick hair, thousand-dollar suit. Excuse me while I clutch my wallet.

My journey at Skiplist has been nothing but exciting. Over the last year, we have grown tremendously with each person bringing a diverse background to the table. Never a dull moment at Skiplist that is for sure. 

From starting our podcast to meeting Gary Vaynerchuk, the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds is genuinely humbling. 

While cryptocurrency has only recently become a popular term in finance, it has been around for a long time. Before names like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin even existed, there were attempts to create a decentralized currency.

Skiplist principles - Part 3 of 3

Now that I travel, I find myself feeling the phenomenon of sonder. Sonder is the feeling you get when you realize that everyone around you has a life of the same vividness and complexity as your own.

Skiplist principles - Part 2 of 3

The need to challenge myself has been with me since childhood; even then I saw the value in continuously working to get better. Whether sports or video games, I loved the opportunity to compete: reveling in the wins and being distraught in the losses.

Skiplist Principles - Part 1 of 3

At Skiplist, we are on a mission to transform the world through incredible and thoughtful software. I am regularly up at night wondering how we create the culture needed to execute on such an ambitious mission. Although I don’t know the future, I do know culture is not created by accident.

Continuing our series on diversity, in this post, I discuss why diversity is important to every business. In particular, how important diversity is to building great products and the bottom line. Making some cash!

Diversity is crucial to a software company’s continued success.

One 2011 Forbes study of large corporations found that having a workforce with a “diverse set of experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds” was “crucial to innovation and the development of new ideas”, as well as being extremely important “to attract and retain top talent.”

Data is King.

In today’s connected world, data is the lifeblood of all successful organizations. With data, organizations are able understand their markets, make decisions that help drive increased traction and revenue, and build products that their customers want, purchase and use. Without data, organizations are fumbling in the dark: making wild guesses about what they should or shouldn’t do.

To intelligently connect many pieces of legacy infrastructure to the internet, you’ll need to do it in such a way insights can be gleaned from the all data it generated.

The premise sounds simple enough, but in practice the project would require deep knowledge of a wide range of technologies. By breaking the problem down into discrete, logical pieces, we were able to prove that a working solution was possible.

Skiplist is JavaScript turtles all the way down.

It is like a zombie virus. The language has taken over everything. And, my hand has a bite. Do I embrace my inner JavaScript kitty, become what I have always feared, or should I chop it off while I have a chance?

This week I optimized an in-memory cache lookup. The customer dataset was a few orders of magnitude larger than anticipated. As a result, we had to refactor an in-memory cache data structure.

I have often heard people say, “the data speaks for itself.” This sentiment is not only naive, it is also very dangerous — especially in a world of big data and machine learning. All data is seen through a lens, and the conclusions drawn from the data will change with the perspective of the interpreter.

HIPAA compliance is an intimidating road that must be traversed for any organization that has aspirations of breaking into any part of the medical domain. Skiplist can show you how to thoughtfully traverse the technical side of this path.

Let your product earn its complexity.

This article is originally published at UpCounsel. By UpCounsel Privacy Attorney Michael Witt

In their rush to market their products or services, many startups inadvertently overlook potential legal obligations. For startups, overlooking privacy and data protection could be extremely costly. These costs could arise from system redesign and development activities and fines, particularly from the European Union’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)that goes into effect May 25, 2018. Fines under the GDPR may reach as high as 4% of global revenue or $20 million dollars in situations in which the breached entity has ignored its privacy obligations.