Prejudice In Canada Essays - Discrimination, Abuse,

Preference In Canada The subject of my position paper should be a great many people in Canada are not preferential towards minority gatherings yet I discover it basically difficult to contend this on the grounds that ordinary I witness numerous events of biased conduct. My course book expressed that most preference is found in individuals who have little instruction or originated from lower-pay families, yet this announcement doesn't appear to be valid. The papers I read, and things individuals around me state and do show that partiality is near and likely consistently will be. The individuals who have been considered preferential on the grounds that they are from lower-salary families or have little instruction have been raised to battle for themselves. Hence, they may consider workers a danger, and accept they remove employments and cash from whites. Likewise, because of their absence of training they may not know that numerous workers start organizations of their own and utilize numerous whites in this way making more employments. Tragically, it isn't simply individuals in this gathering are preferential. The paper is a key bit of media that is frequently partial, you simply need to figure out the real story to understand this bias. Just yesterday I was flipping through the Toronto Star and a specific feature gotten my attention - Parents of killed kid express their Jewish displeasure and I pondered internally, their Jewish outrage? I didn't know that Jewish individuals had an alternate sort of outrage than some other ethnic gathering. Preference is additionally surrounding me regularly. I hear words like paki, chink, wop, Jew knave and nigger hourly when around companions and schoolmates. These racial slurs are tossed around without an idea of the genuine importance of them. Tragically guardians don't appear to have brought up their kids to instinctually realize that utilizing these slurs is totally unseemly and wrong. The most significant job a parent can play in their youngsters' life is that of a good example, yet numerous guardians, rich and poor, talk or carry on with partiality normally. Most youngsters grow up to have a significant number of indistinguishable ethics and convictions from their folks, in this way this chain of preference will probably never end. I wish I could state that a great many people in Canada are not preferential towards minority gatherings however I dread this fair I Humanism

Social Media Academic Essay

English 1020 October 31 2011 Menial Media: Employees Waste Hours of Time on the Internet Many individuals concur that long range informal communication in the work environment is simply requesting calamity and loss of efficiency. Having various sorts of informal organizations in the work environment could likewise prompt awkward circumstances between collaborators that could be terrible for business. In any case, some differ and accept that these locales can unite collaborators. In addition to the fact that they believe it would unite collaborators, they likewise state this could expand business due to the ‘family-like' style that the given office has.Although this might be valid now and again, considers show that most of the time, long range interpersonal communication is one of the ruins of an organization due to sites, for example, Wiki Links, Facebook and Twitter that cause unsettling influences in the work environment and may even reason a portion of the organization's pri vate data to be spilled. Since informal communication destinations are such an interruption and cause time to be detracted from efficiency, they ought to be prohibited from the working environment for representatives. Bringing long range interpersonal communication into the working environment is once in a while hazardous for one who is applying to get a job.Employers can explore future possibilities and see what their online life resembles. Albeit an individual will be unable to be totally seen exclusively by their person to person communication site, a business may pass judgment on them dependent on it. For instance, had somebody had an image of themselves labeled online for the general population to see, a business may consider that awful exposure for the organization and choose not to employ this individual. Be that as it may, the individuals who go after positions have choices to set their records on private and person to person communication organizations are not considered li able for the material posted. When joining either MySpace or Facebook [or Twitter], the client must consent to the terms of administration and to the Web locales protection policies† (Elzweig and Peeples â€Å"Using Social†). In the event that anything pessimistic occurs in the line of an individual not being recruited for a vocation because of a person to person communication site, that site won't be considered responsible. In a couple of cases this accomplishes work out to the advantage of the applier. â€Å"A CareerBuilder study of in excess of 2,500 managers, discharged in August of this current year, demonstrated 35 percent of respondents utilize internet based life to advance their companies†(Hunt â€Å"Finders Keepers†).This implies that there are unlimited open doors for individuals to secure positions on ads of person to person communication locales. Be that as it may, an organization can likewise utilize these locales to see past occupations and duties and determine the status of their experience. Once more, this is beneficial for certain individuals, however for other people, it is a bad dream experiencing their systems administration site and clear up their data. It is foolish for organizations to intrude in issues that don't concern them. Up to a representative is carrying out his responsibility right, at that point managers should mind their own.Employers who utilize long range interpersonal communication locales to ‘check up' or ‘review' their representatives are not being kind to the individual existences of their laborers. Assuming, maybe, an applier has made it past the phase of being handpicked and chosen through the out of line methods for long range interpersonal communication, he ought not be permitted to get to his own systems administration site during work hours. This is a significant interruption that could cause long periods of work and profitability to be put off so representatives can refresh statuses, tweet, and browse individual messages. Most business laborers confess to going through in any event one hour of their work time on a person to person communication site.Should organizations be answerable for paying representatives during the current hour of spare time? Just 10% of business permit their laborers to be on interpersonal interaction destinations at whatever point they please (Schiller â€Å"Employers Crack†). Some contend that these destinations are essentially ‘mind boosts' for workers. In any case, numerous others make a considerably progressively admirable statement that in the event that a laborer truly required a ‘mind boost', at that point he ought to go on a brief stroll outside: less efficiency lost, and substantially more solid. Informal communication destinations cause an excessive amount of interruption in the work environment and ought not be allowed.If the interruption of checking the site a couple of times each day isn't suffic ient, at that point think about cyberfights. Representatives upsetting each other over these destinations is asking for catastrophe. Displeased representatives lead to a despondent working environment, so why permit the chance of that to occur? Indeed, one might say that these interpersonal organizations could prompt a ‘family-like condition', anyway the opportunities for the last is significantly more plausible. Collaborators contradicting every others' very own lives is a significant danger to the soundness of the work environment and might prompt a worker being terminated or suspended.Embarrassing, puerile, and dishonorable contentions occur over the web each day. One legal advisor speaks,†I needn't bother with the world knowing each time I say something [. . . ] there's a great deal that you can do to change your settings† (Schaffer â€Å"Online Networking†). What might prevent these contentions from occurring between associates in a work environment? In any event, ‘friending' associates is a potential issue, particularly if the administrator of the record doesn't care for work or doesn't care for the individuals at work and overlooks the way that they have been ‘friends'.This word related peril could without much of a stretch be kept away from by not permitting person to person communication destinations in the working environment. Interpersonal organizations are intended for ones individual life; work isn't ones individual life, so one shouldn't blend the two. It is somewhat of a hazy area for a great many people since they don't know whether they should include colleagues onto their locales or not. Laborers should work during work time and play during play time. The two ought to never be blended. It is basically amateurish to have a Facebook page up while at a work desk.There is an opportune time for everything, and the perfect time for person to person communication and imparting is for save time , not working. Long range informal communication destinations sit around and assets for the organization. â€Å"If one worker invests one hour of organization energy in Facebook regular, it conceivably costs their boss more than $6,200 per year† (â€Å"Facebook Costs†). This time spent playing on long range informal communication locales is losing organizations cash, organizations are in an ideal situation simply releasing representatives home an hour ahead of schedule without pay while restricting interpersonal interaction destinations, than permitting laborers to squander this money.Another peril of permitting individual lives to conflict with work lives, is the material that is posted. It is an excessive amount of vitality to ensure that the manager can't see when, â€Å"Called in wiped out to work-Fishing Day! † is posted as a status. This could end a present vocation. Once, I worked in a dress store where a young lady phoned in wiped out, just to post on twitter a couple of h ours after the fact that she and her companions were having a sleepover. This appears to be quite innocuous, and despite the fact that I couldn't have cared less, my manager was very upset.She left a notice on the board the following day saying that if individuals were not going to be keen about what they posted on their long range interpersonal communication locales, at that point they would be terminated. It is likewise a serious issue to ensure that no unflattering pictures that shouldn't be seen by a chief, are not seen. â€Å"If a candidate or representative exhibits an absence of watchfulness and judgment by posting spring break photographs showing oneself obviously inebriated on a [social networking] page, a business who finds these photographs online may consider the photographs when choosing [. . . ] to hold the employee† (Baker â€Å"How Far†).Some state that individuals who are this thoughtless ought to be terminated in any case, however a great many people are totally absent minded of who they have acknowledged as their Facebook companion and in some cases simply don't think before they post. This situation could be totally maintained a strategic distance from if work and web based life were not blended. The ‘Basic Information' segment on long range interpersonal communication destinations is a factor that could destroy numerous connections at work. At work, associates presumably don't have the foggiest idea about the whole foundation detail of huge numbers of their partners. Simple research could prompt inappropriate preferences against others.Social organizing locales are taken outside of any relevant connection to the issue at hand when they are brought to the work place. That isn't what they were intended for. Critical colleagues may peruse a kindred laborers data and naturally choose not to like them due to the data put. The rushed speculation that is brought about by these kinds of locales are negative since it is difficul t to become acquainted with somebody except if time has been gone through with them. Long range interpersonal communication destinations take into account the ‘time spent' factor to be removed and hurried speculation on character to be set up. Despite the fact that the advantages of systems administration are self-evident, the way toward meeting new individuals, setting up customary contact and building significant connections, is reliably challenging† (Crappell â€Å"Preparing for Professional†). These destinations make it simpler to stay away from eye to eye discussion with an individual, and simply expect that an individual is actually similar to their online profile. Coincidentally speaking terrible about a ‘friended' associate on an informal communication site may be one of the most shocking things a specialist could do, except if this laborer was speaking awful about his boss.This isn't considered digital battles or digital tormenting on the grounds th at it was absolutely a mishap, and the slandered about partner realizes that. For instance, posting on Facebook that the man in the work area to the correct scents awful is anything but a smart thought; particularly because of the face that he is exhausted and on Facebook also. He sees this and doesn't need encounter, so he picks the other option: The Silent Treatment. Person to person communication locales cause developed grown-ups to act like kids. Individuals contend this can be forestalled by essentially paying attention.That, notwithstanding, doesn't factor in the way that individuals overlook names each day and could

The End Of World War I Essays - French Third Republic,

The End of World War I At the point when World War I finished on November 11, 1918, harmony talks went on for quite a long time because of the Allied pioneers needing to rebuff the foe and ?separating the riches of war.? A conventional consent to end the war was made and called the Treaty of Versailles. The issue that took the most time were the regional issues in light of the fact that the realms of Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman, and Germany had crumpled. These fallen realms must be split and America's President Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and David Lloyd George of Great Britain, were the principle deciders of this arrangement. During 1918, Russia was taken out of the war because of military routs and the Bolshevik Revolution. Despite the fact that Russia had not been some portion of the Central Powers, Germany held onto quite a bit of western Russia. After numerous long periods of belligerence, the four men had made western Russia into the countries of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. The Treaty of Versailles was either an arrangement of harmony or a retaliation for the Germans. In April of 1919, Germany was already caught and made to hold up in a little house that was encircled with security fencing. The Allied, who caught Germany, needed to make a harmony bargain to end the battling. The Germans concurred, yet they needed an arrangement that depended on the Fourteen Points yet clearly they were not going to get it due to the manner in which they were dealt with; the spiked metal was superfluous and ?ought to have warned them to what lay ahead.? At the point when the bargain was first acquainted with the Germans, they declined to sign it. It constrained the Germans to acknowledge full obligation regarding the war and strip themselves of its states, coal fields, and the regions of Alsace and Lorraine. It likewise made them pay crazy reparations to the Allies. In any case, on June 28, 1919, the Germans hesitantly marked the arrangement in light of the fact that the Allies wouldn't transform one word. Out of the $33 billion dollars the Germans needed to pay for harms, the nation was just ready to pay $4.5 billion of it. The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles helped set up for a whole new world war under 20 years after the fact in light of the fact that the Allied needed to prevent Germany from consistently turning out to be imperialistic again and still have them pay the war reparations. Germany contradicted these activities and was the most affected by the particulars of the Versailles Treaty. Germany got the unpolished finish of the war and was edgy to locate another pioneer to get out of their downturn. That pioneer was Adolf Hitler. World War I was won by the Allied in which a conventional understanding was made called the Versailles Treaty. It both acquired harmony and war the coming years. Because of the cruel ways of life it constrained Germany to live, World War II broke out inside twenty years time from the settlement.

Usability of a Principles of Marketing Course in the Field of Essay

Ease of use of a Principles of Marketing Course in the Field of Information Technology Project Management - Essay Example Understanding the connection between the two fields in this way includes examination of their extensions for intermingling. The extent of data innovation includes use of innovation in arrangement and the board of data for auspicious and effective correspondence to clients of such data. Such a degree includes investigation of business frameworks, structures, and advancement of answers for correspondence activities. Data innovation likewise includes readiness of calendars and undertaking records, databases, reports and assessments (Churchill and Lacobucci, 2009). The extent of a standard of showcasing course in this way offers data for relevance of data innovation. It for example includes reviews and examination of systems, for example, value, circulation, limited time ideas, and consumers’ reaction to advertising activities. Every one of these viewpoints are quantifiable in numeric information that requires data innovation for proficient account, investigation and correspondence (Churchill and Lacobucci, 2009). Subsequently, a standard of promoting course is pertinent in the field of data innovation in light of the fact that the extent of advertising bargains in information that is dealt with and overseen by data innovation

ClearSlide

ClearSlide INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in San Francisco in the ClearSlide office. Hi, Al, who are you and what do you do?Al: So I am Al. I am the co-founder of ClearSlide and I am an entrepreneur, a lifelong entrepreneur.Martin: Cool!Martin: Tell me about what is your background? What did you do before you started ClearSlide and what is ClearSlide by the way?Al: So I have been an entrepreneur all my life. I came out here to San Francisco in 97 and right out of the school I started the company. So I started Evite which is an online invitation product, it was popular in the days. And really since that I have started a number of companies, ClearSlide being the most recent. so I have never really worked for a company that I didn’t start myself.Martin: What is the connector between those different companies?Al: I think for me; I am excited about companies where using technology to communicate with people. There is a lot of technology that is just for technology sake so a faster hard drive or just to make the technology better. But I am very passionate with connecting to people and the way that you can use technology to tell their story and communicate with your friends, your colleagues what have you. That is something I see as very valuable and it is a thing I can get passionate about.So Evite was about getting connected with your friends offline and create parties, and ClearSlide is about communicating with your customers but in both cases it is people that are connecting and talking together.Martin: When did you have this “Aha” moment “Ok, I want to start ClearSlide”?Al: It was funny actually. So I started with Jim, my co-founder and we had worked together at Evite so we had known each other for about fifteen years. And we started with a different idea actually. We were selling something to advertisers, a media product and we found it very hard to tell our story with these media advertisers. You call them up and they say, “You have 5 minutes to pitch me. That’s it.” They give you very little time, it is kind of very competitive market. And we found that nothing, no technology let us tell the story the way that we wanted to or that was really compelling and so we initially created ClearSlide for our own use. A way to tell our story and we started using it with customers and we found that they were more interested in the way we were presenting. They don’t like actually our product but they ask, “What is that? What did you just use? That was kind of interesting.” And that happened two or three times in a row and we said, “Ok, what is this?”What we discovered was in the space of sales sales communication a lot of work could be done around the back office of storing data by your customers but not actually making that conversation better. And so we decided to shift gears and focus on that.I found too that most of the times the best startups are things you want to use yourself and a need that you discover that if you want t o use it and be the customer of your product you can really understand and be passionate about it. Same with Evite, the same with ClearSlide as well, it was something that we needed.Martin: Did you change the name from your old idea to the new?Al: We did. It was ShieldMedia before. We changed that very quickly to ClearSlide.Martin: And did you have some other investors in before?Al: No, no. So we have been working and it was early so three or four months in and we just started to get the product going so we actually didn’t get that investors in yet.Martin: And then what was the next three or six months looking like?Al: That was just very interesting. We had this ShieldMedia product and we had ClearSlide and it was important for Jim and I to really prove that there were customers willing to buy ClearSlide. So, I have been involved in business before where it seemed like a promise but there was not actually anyone that really wanted to pay you. We set ourselves a goal to find 5 peop le willing to give us money. So this was our goal and Jim arranged some conversations with customers and we went to pitch 5 customers in one day. What we did is we call them up and said, “Hey, here is our product. We are going to be doing a Beta in about a month but if you are interested we need a credit card right now.” And we had 5 out of 5, 100 percent in 24 hours.We didn’t have anyone to put the credit cards so we were just writing them down on paper. But we proved ourselves that there were people willing to put money behind this. And so for the next three to six months we just worked on building the product and talking to customers and just Jim and myself. I have been involved in business before where we raised money pretty early. But we really wanted to prove to ourselves that we can get customers that want to pay for it. I was just us working away for about nine months before we raised any money and by then we really had customers and we had enough revenue we could run profitably actually and then we said, “Hey, this is really the time to scale the business.”Martin: Imagine, I was one of those 5 potential clients. You are pitching to me and you need to convince me that I should not wait like for six months or nine months when you have your really good product ready but I should buy it now.Al: Part of that was to say a couple of things.One was to say, “Listen, we are looking for people to help guide the product and we are looking for feedback from you. Your feedback is going to be instrumental for what we build”and that is interesting for them because they can early be able to guide it.The other thing was kind of a ticking clock when we said, “I need that right now and we are only going to be about ten slots in this beta program and so I need a decision right away”. And that urgency drew up a lot in as well.Martin: So this really mean well in the next two hours or one or two-week time?Al: In that initial point it was on the call. Jim di d most of these pitches and it was basically a full pitch. We had a prototype to show, we walk through the product, walk through our vision because we are trying to do but if you wanted I need it (the answer) now. It worked.Martin: So you had 5 potential customers. What was the next step?Al: We had credit cards and we spent the next month or two building the product so we built it an early, early version and we said to those first customers “Hey, it is available, just to get you in” And In the early days we focused on person to person training, so we call them up and say, “Hey let me get you into the product. Let me show you how it works.” And we spent with each individual user to show them how it works which is time consuming but you also can hear what is working and what is not working, what they need and what they don’t need. That created a lot off product feedback early. We just did that over and over and over again.So in the first couple of months we probably spoke to hundreds of customers just Jim and just the two of us. Hundreds of companies and hundreds if not thousands of users and just over and over again you get them into the product and get them to use the credit card and you learn quickly what they are really reacting on.I think the other issue, sometimes entrepreneurs have a product, but that willingness to pay means that they (customers) actually value. Sometimes people say, “I like it, it sounds good” but then they actually pay you and so asking for the money early you are able to kind of really gauge what they really value, what they see as interesting. So yes, we were just doing that over and over again.Martin: How did you find the first customers and made them sure?Al: Early on we knew that these are sales teams and so we were thinking “Hey, who do we know that are head of sales?” Fortunately, in our previous history we were connected to some folks that were head of sales. And sometimes it was the folks in our network, in J ames network particularly. But other times it was just cold calling. It was just identifying someone who we knew would be a good prospect and just reaching out.Martin: At what point of time did you say, “Ok, maybe we should raise some external funding”?Al: It was interesting. So about nine to ten months in we have hired our first employees. We initially thought we have the budget for one, but we were really stretching to hire two. It was well on my first few sales wraps. And we spent a few months and Jim really trained them and we could develop the product or work with them and once we found that they were also having success, meaning that we were able to reproduce the success we had then we were like “Wow, this Is working. We just need to add more people to it.” And at that point we said, “Hey we should raise. We had something repeatable, scalable that resonate with customers. Let’s raise some money behind it”.Martin: And how long did the fundraising process take you? Al: It probably took about two days, a couple of days.Martin: Two days!Al: Partially though there is a lot of preparation that goes into it. So, first of all it is everything you have done for the company but also those two days were all about researching the best people to talk to, having connections. There are a couple of weeks of preparation before it, so make sure you are talking to the right people and have the right messaging and everything is kind of really tight. And then really in our first or second meeting, where was I and Aydin (our seed investor9, and it was about a five minutes in and he said, “I want to invest. I want to lead this round” And I said, We haven’t even shown you what we do yet,” and he was like “I have seen enough.”At that point we said, “Wow, somebody is really excited”. We met a few other people that were great investors but didn’t really click as quickly as Aydin did and so he let a round and we met with a couple of other people. SO i t was only a couple of days.Martin: I would have assumed that it was more similar to the sales experience in the first place So you got the two days.Al: That is right! I have found that when raising money,it is important to have a tight window because investors want to see momentum so it is helpful to keep it really fast.BUSINESS MODEL OF CLEARSLIDEMartin: Al, let’s talk about the business model of ClearSlide. What are the typical customer segments that you are targeting and what is exactly the value proposition that you are delivering to them?Al: We target sales and marketing teams primarily in enterprise companies. So anything from a couple of sales reps to a thousand of sales reps, for example Comcast. Generally, the verticals are any enterprise team, but we are heavy in media and technology but also in healthcare and financial services, kind of traditional enterprise teams.The value proposition is basically to make you more productive. We are there to help in your conversation s with your customers, to make those go better but also to give you insights to what happened both for the sales rep and for the sales leadership to understand: Is my message working? Is my approach working? Can I improve things or as a company could we have better messaging to improve things? So we spent a long time on insights and analytics to drive better results behind the scenes as well.Martin: So does that mean that you are integrating with other kind of sales funnel management tools? Or is it that you are providing the sales on a management level as well?Al: We are doing it with CRM primarily which keeps the data from your customers. But we found that we really take over ones the sales rep starts to work with an account. So early in the funnel you have marketing tools that are targeting the customer figuring who the right customer is but they haven’t actually started the conversation. So once the conversation starts we can take over.Martin: Good, and can you also describe w hat the ClearSlide product looks like?Al: In the product is a few main features or functions.One is around speaking to a customer and that is called live pitch and you can use it over the phone and in person. We have both web technology and mobile technology so when you communicate you can use all your collateral power points or PDFs, your video files and present it to the customer.We also have e-mail pitch which is for sending content collateral. So after meeting I might send you a deck. And what I do is I send you a link and you will be able to visit it in a web browser or on your mobile device. When you do I get insights that you opened it and you spent time on slides, what was most interesting to you.Those are really the two key interaction methods either in-person or over the phone or e-mail. But there is also a whole suite on analytics and insights where you can understand both is the customer interested but also you can roll that data to the sales team. So you can say which c ontent is working best, which sales reps are being the most productive. We are actually working on predicting type technology where based on all the data we have we can predict which deals are likely to close or not close so we can help leadership understand what is really happening and be able to manage to coach the team.Martin: Al, how is the revenue model working?Al: So that is one of the great things, at ClearSlide we use SaaS in general. It is a very simple model. It is basically per user. It is a subscription model so enterprise SaaS model where we charge per user per year such type pricing. And it depends on various things with the different packages with pricing but it basically scales up based on the size of your team.Martin: Is it really like on a per year basis or on a per month basis?Al: When we quote a customer we will say on a monthly basis, here is your cost per month. but generally, most of our contracts have an annual commitment or multiyear commitment. When we star ted actually in the early days we were more month to month as we started to get the business growing, but at this point it is mostly annual or multiyear commitment.Martin: Can you give us some insights in the organization? What is the typically the functional split so to speak of the people working here?Al: In ClearSlide, two biggest teams are sales and technology. Our sales teams are spread across three offices in the US â€" here, New York and Seattle. We are thinking about international offices as well. We are both inside sellers which sell over the phone and field sellers which sell in person so it is really based on the size of the deal. If it is a larger deal it really makes more sense to meet in person. If it is smaller, we can settle it over the phone.And then on the technology side we have a lots of development talent, operational talent, IT. Because our product is pretty broad into the technology we offer we do both mobile web, we do analytics and insights, we also do conve rsion and we do gmail plug ins, our plug ins. There is a lot of technology behind the stack, there is lots of different types of developers and technology people in the company. That was all wrapped into our technology team.At that point those two teams are roughly similar in size. So I’d say 40 percent of the company is in the sales and 40 percent is in the technology engineer teams and then about 20 percent is in our support functions.Martin: You seem to have a lot of experience in terms of sales. What are the most important ingredients for a great sales pitch to really close it?Al: To close it?Martin: For real in two minutes or five minutes.Al: I think the biggest thing is to show value. A lot of times people will show the product and show features but it is really important to show the value that you provide to that person. What we often have found is that sometimes sales folks start to a cookie kind of approach and they don’t modify or the type of person they are selling to . If you are talking to VP of sales or CMO or head of finance or CEO those are all very different roles and those roles care about different things. As you begin to customize your approach based on who you are pitching to and the kinds of challenges that they are facing.For a VP of sales rather than talking about e-mail pitch you might talk about how the challenges in scaling a team, how you are hiring the right people, or if you have one sales rep that is productive how do you replicate that across other sales reps. Those are the challenges, those are the things he deals with every day. And so we start with those and show benefits against those and then show the value, then show the actual product behind that as well. But you have to get really emotionally connected to the challenge or the problem that you are trying to face. And so that is probably one of the biggest insights.I think simplicity is key. If you are able to pitch it in two minutes or three minutes and have it be effe ctive than that’s where you get to start. You can always make it longer if they want to dig in but you will have to be able to sink the idea in the early days.Martin: So currently the story of ClearSlide sounds to me like very straightforward. Any roadblocks along the way that you needed to shift around?Al: I think one of the challenging things for us was trying to figure out the right customer segment and how we sell to it along the way. In the early days we were selling to teams of five or ten or twenty and now we found success at 1000 or 2000. And the way you sell to a thousand-person team is very different than the way you sell to a small team.And so one thing that is challenging about the business it has been the breath of customer base and to sell over the phone SMB (small mid size business) it is a lot of different skills and a type of organizational approach and the selling approach is very different along the way. So we were kind of fine tuning that and it has been chall enging.I think there are always people along the way as you grow. Initially as an entrepreneur you try to get that product fit. Once you get that then it really becomes about scaling the people organization and it is really about building the best teams, getting the right people. There are always times when it works or it doesn’t work as you grow and as you grow quickly those things can be challenging at points. I think those two are probably the biggest ones.Martin: Can you elaborate on how are you currently acquiring or doing the sales for larger customers or the smaller customers?Al: How are we breaking in?Martin: Yes, because you said that your sales approach is different between those two segments.Al: The biggest thing when you sell to small companies is the users, the sales reps and the decision maker are very close. They might sit in the same office. It might be a small company of 10 people and there might be 10 reps using the product and their manager is right there and ha s a credit card. And it is a more simplified approach or a faster approach. It can be more driven by the users using the product.In a large company, there may be many levels in between the user and the budget owner. What that means is that you have to sell on multiple levels and you have to be able to get users using it but also get a senior leader understand the budget reasons for doing it and the risks and the rewards and the benefits to that level. So what we have found is it is a sale where you have to at multiple levels and do bottoms up selling and also top down selling where you want to break in high and go low or go low and break in high. If you do those both well everyone up and down the chain is a supporter.We have had situations where we don’t do that well, where maybe the users like the product but the leader doesn’t know why it is valuable or vice versa the leader likes the product but the users don’t know why it is valuable. And that will create friction because you don’t get buy in across the organization. A lot of times the approach needs to have a multiple layer approach for to work effectively.Martin: Imagine, you identified the budget owner and you are pitching him so that you convince him. At some point having this really in parallel for me It is quite hard because you first need to get it into their hands and if the budget owns says, “Yes, now you can do it, then you have some kind of staging: signed off by the budget owner, pushing through all the organization, penetrating the users, and making sure that they are using it. And then have this kind of dual track approach. Or do you see this in another way?Al: It hopefully starts that way. If you start high and go down is also a great place to start. The problem can be if you can’t get the attention initially and maybe after starting low you can get attention high.The other thing we found is even if you get the decision makers initially excited we have seen a lot of buyer approac h these days where they are very collaborative and even though the leader might like it they really want to see that their team has adopted it and likes it: So, I am interested, but you have to prove to me that my team will use it and use it well and I am going to see value from it.”So we often do these trials or pilots program to say let’s get a hundred users using the product and will report back up both back up to the user but also what is the value. Here is some deals we have closed with ClearSlide, this is the value that we drove. And once you meet that you really need everyone on board and those leaders will be looking for feedback from their teams in terms of how effective it was.Martin: What is the typical time of having such a trial period because for you showing some tracktion and usage?Al: It varies. It can be anywhere for smaller companies it can be a couple of weeks and for larger companies it can be a couple of months I’d say. And then showing the value really de pends on sales cycles. Sometimes they will sell very quickly in which case you have got short deals, in other cases the sales take longer so you can show pipeline. Here is the customers that have been moving the pipeline and here is how we have generated a value.Martin: Then basically you are doing an A/B test, so here is how you performed before and now look at the sales pattern and the closing rate and so after using our tool it is like that. So here is the value.Al: Exactly. We show the team how they used to sell or that team and some other teams. What has been great is once you have sales that have gone through the process then they know the value of ClearSlide. So sometimes at that point they just buy it because it has been proven to them. But if you try to show credibility then these are some of the steps that we go through.Martin: And are you seeing a lot of recommendations or referrals because if you are like you said targeting some sales department of company A and some of the sales reps is leaving the company, taking this experience to another company and then having something like inbound sales?Al: Absolutely. One that is specific for sales is they are tend to be very word of mouth driven and they very much get credibility value what the other co-workers use or what the other colleagues use or have used in the past. We have very often seen that work very effectively. Actually our program is here to track when users leave companies and where they go so we can then sell to the new company as well. We find that to be very effective.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM AL LIEB In San Francisco (CA), we meet Co-Founder Board Member of ClearSlide, Al Lieb. Al talks about how ClearSlide was founded, how the current business model works, as well as he provides some advice for young entrepreneurs.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in San Francisco in the ClearSlide office. Hi, Al, who are you and what do you do?Al: So I am Al. I am the co-founder of ClearSlide and I am an entrepreneur, a lifelong entrepreneur.Martin: Cool!Martin: Tell me about what is your background? What did you do before you started ClearSlide and what is ClearSlide by the way?Al: So I have been an entrepreneur all my life. I came out here to San Francisco in 97 and right out of the school I started the company. So I started Evite which is an online invitation product, it was popular in the days. And really since that I have started a number of companies, ClearSlide being the most recent. so I have never really worked for a company that I didn’t start myself.Martin: What is the connecto r between those different companies?Al: I think for me; I am excited about companies where using technology to communicate with people. There is a lot of technology that is just for technology sake so a faster hard drive or just to make the technology better. But I am very passionate with connecting to people and the way that you can use technology to tell their story and communicate with your friends, your colleagues what have you. That is something I see as very valuable and it is a thing I can get passionate about.So Evite was about getting connected with your friends offline and create parties, and ClearSlide is about communicating with your customers but in both cases it is people that are connecting and talking together.Martin: When did you have this “Aha” moment “Ok, I want to start ClearSlide”?Al: It was funny actually. So I started with Jim, my co-founder and we had worked together at Evite so we had known each other for about fifteen years. And we started with a di fferent idea actually. We were selling something to advertisers, a media product and we found it very hard to tell our story with these media advertisers. You call them up and they say, “You have 5 minutes to pitch me. That’s it.” They give you very little time, it is kind of very competitive market. And we found that nothing, no technology let us tell the story the way that we wanted to or that was really compelling and so we initially created ClearSlide for our own use. A way to tell our story and we started using it with customers and we found that they were more interested in the way we were presenting. They don’t like actually our product but they ask, “What is that? What did you just use? That was kind of interesting.” And that happened two or three times in a row and we said, “Ok, what is this?”What we discovered was in the space of sales sales communication a lot of work could be done around the back office of storing data by your customers but not actually making that conversation better. And so we decided to shift gears and focus on that.I found too that most of the times the best startups are things you want to use yourself and a need that you discover that if you want to use it and be the customer of your product you can really understand and be passionate about it. Same with Evite, the same with ClearSlide as well, it was something that we needed.Martin: Did you change the name from your old idea to the new?Al: We did. It was ShieldMedia before. We changed that very quickly to ClearSlide.Martin: And did you have some other investors in before?Al: No, no. So we have been working and it was early so three or four months in and we just started to get the product going so we actually didn’t get that investors in yet.Martin: And then what was the next three or six months looking like?Al: That was just very interesting. We had this ShieldMedia product and we had ClearSlide and it was important for Jim and I to really prove that there were customers willing to buy ClearSlide. So, I have been involved in business before where it seemed like a promise but there was not actually anyone that really wanted to pay you. We set ourselves a goal to find 5 people willing to give us money. So this was our goal and Jim arranged some conversations with customers and we went to pitch 5 customers in one day. What we did is we call them up and said, “Hey, here is our product. We are going to be doing a Beta in about a month but if you are interested we need a credit card right now.” And we had 5 out of 5, 100 percent in 24 hours.We didn’t have anyone to put the credit cards so we were just writing them down on paper. But we proved ourselves that there were people willing to put money behind this. And so for the next three to six months we just worked on building the product and talking to customers and just Jim and myself. I have been involved in business before where we raised money pretty early. But we really wanted to p rove to ourselves that we can get customers that want to pay for it. I was just us working away for about nine months before we raised any money and by then we really had customers and we had enough revenue we could run profitably actually and then we said, “Hey, this is really the time to scale the business.”Martin: Imagine, I was one of those 5 potential clients. You are pitching to me and you need to convince me that I should not wait like for six months or nine months when you have your really good product ready but I should buy it now.Al: Part of that was to say a couple of things.One was to say, “Listen, we are looking for people to help guide the product and we are looking for feedback from you. Your feedback is going to be instrumental for what we build”and that is interesting for them because they can early be able to guide it.The other thing was kind of a ticking clock when we said, “I need that right now and we are only going to be about ten slots in this beta p rogram and so I need a decision right away”. And that urgency drew up a lot in as well.Martin: So this really mean well in the next two hours or one or two-week time?Al: In that initial point it was on the call. Jim did most of these pitches and it was basically a full pitch. We had a prototype to show, we walk through the product, walk through our vision because we are trying to do but if you wanted I need it (the answer) now. It worked.Martin: So you had 5 potential customers. What was the next step?Al: We had credit cards and we spent the next month or two building the product so we built it an early, early version and we said to those first customers “Hey, it is available, just to get you in” And In the early days we focused on person to person training, so we call them up and say, “Hey let me get you into the product. Let me show you how it works.” And we spent with each individual user to show them how it works which is time consuming but you also can hear what is wo rking and what is not working, what they need and what they don’t need. That created a lot off product feedback early. We just did that over and over and over again.So in the first couple of months we probably spoke to hundreds of customers just Jim and just the two of us. Hundreds of companies and hundreds if not thousands of users and just over and over again you get them into the product and get them to use the credit card and you learn quickly what they are really reacting on.I think the other issue, sometimes entrepreneurs have a product, but that willingness to pay means that they (customers) actually value. Sometimes people say, “I like it, it sounds good” but then they actually pay you and so asking for the money early you are able to kind of really gauge what they really value, what they see as interesting. So yes, we were just doing that over and over again.Martin: How did you find the first customers and made them sure?Al: Early on we knew that these are sales teams and so we were thinking “Hey, who do we know that are head of sales?” Fortunately, in our previous history we were connected to some folks that were head of sales. And sometimes it was the folks in our network, in James network particularly. But other times it was just cold calling. It was just identifying someone who we knew would be a good prospect and just reaching out.Martin: At what point of time did you say, “Ok, maybe we should raise some external funding”?Al: It was interesting. So about nine to ten months in we have hired our first employees. We initially thought we have the budget for one, but we were really stretching to hire two. It was well on my first few sales wraps. And we spent a few months and Jim really trained them and we could develop the product or work with them and once we found that they were also having success, meaning that we were able to reproduce the success we had then we were like “Wow, this Is working. We just need to add more people to it .” And at that point we said, “Hey we should raise. We had something repeatable, scalable that resonate with customers. Let’s raise some money behind it”.Martin: And how long did the fundraising process take you?Al: It probably took about two days, a couple of days.Martin: Two days!Al: Partially though there is a lot of preparation that goes into it. So, first of all it is everything you have done for the company but also those two days were all about researching the best people to talk to, having connections. There are a couple of weeks of preparation before it, so make sure you are talking to the right people and have the right messaging and everything is kind of really tight. And then really in our first or second meeting, where was I and Aydin (our seed investor9, and it was about a five minutes in and he said, “I want to invest. I want to lead this round” And I said, We haven’t even shown you what we do yet,” and he was like “I have seen enough.”At that poin t we said, “Wow, somebody is really excited”. We met a few other people that were great investors but didn’t really click as quickly as Aydin did and so he let a round and we met with a couple of other people. SO it was only a couple of days.Martin: I would have assumed that it was more similar to the sales experience in the first place So you got the two days.Al: That is right! I have found that when raising money,it is important to have a tight window because investors want to see momentum so it is helpful to keep it really fast.BUSINESS MODEL OF CLEARSLIDEMartin: Al, let’s talk about the business model of ClearSlide. What are the typical customer segments that you are targeting and what is exactly the value proposition that you are delivering to them?Al: We target sales and marketing teams primarily in enterprise companies. So anything from a couple of sales reps to a thousand of sales reps, for example Comcast. Generally, the verticals are any enterprise team, but we are heavy in media and technology but also in healthcare and financial services, kind of traditional enterprise teams.The value proposition is basically to make you more productive. We are there to help in your conversations with your customers, to make those go better but also to give you insights to what happened both for the sales rep and for the sales leadership to understand: Is my message working? Is my approach working? Can I improve things or as a company could we have better messaging to improve things? So we spent a long time on insights and analytics to drive better results behind the scenes as well.Martin: So does that mean that you are integrating with other kind of sales funnel management tools? Or is it that you are providing the sales on a management level as well?Al: We are doing it with CRM primarily which keeps the data from your customers. But we found that we really take over ones the sales rep starts to work with an account. So early in the funnel you have marketi ng tools that are targeting the customer figuring who the right customer is but they haven’t actually started the conversation. So once the conversation starts we can take over.Martin: Good, and can you also describe what the ClearSlide product looks like?Al: In the product is a few main features or functions.One is around speaking to a customer and that is called live pitch and you can use it over the phone and in person. We have both web technology and mobile technology so when you communicate you can use all your collateral power points or PDFs, your video files and present it to the customer.We also have e-mail pitch which is for sending content collateral. So after meeting I might send you a deck. And what I do is I send you a link and you will be able to visit it in a web browser or on your mobile device. When you do I get insights that you opened it and you spent time on slides, what was most interesting to you.Those are really the two key interaction methods either in-pers on or over the phone or e-mail. But there is also a whole suite on analytics and insights where you can understand both is the customer interested but also you can roll that data to the sales team. So you can say which content is working best, which sales reps are being the most productive. We are actually working on predicting type technology where based on all the data we have we can predict which deals are likely to close or not close so we can help leadership understand what is really happening and be able to manage to coach the team.Martin: Al, how is the revenue model working?Al: So that is one of the great things, at ClearSlide we use SaaS in general. It is a very simple model. It is basically per user. It is a subscription model so enterprise SaaS model where we charge per user per year such type pricing. And it depends on various things with the different packages with pricing but it basically scales up based on the size of your team.Martin: Is it really like on a per year basis or on a per month basis?Al: When we quote a customer we will say on a monthly basis, here is your cost per month. but generally, most of our contracts have an annual commitment or multiyear commitment. When we started actually in the early days we were more month to month as we started to get the business growing, but at this point it is mostly annual or multiyear commitment.Martin: Can you give us some insights in the organization? What is the typically the functional split so to speak of the people working here?Al: In ClearSlide, two biggest teams are sales and technology. Our sales teams are spread across three offices in the US â€" here, New York and Seattle. We are thinking about international offices as well. We are both inside sellers which sell over the phone and field sellers which sell in person so it is really based on the size of the deal. If it is a larger deal it really makes more sense to meet in person. If it is smaller, we can settle it over the phone.And then on the technology side we have a lots of development talent, operational talent, IT. Because our product is pretty broad into the technology we offer we do both mobile web, we do analytics and insights, we also do conversion and we do gmail plug ins, our plug ins. There is a lot of technology behind the stack, there is lots of different types of developers and technology people in the company. That was all wrapped into our technology team.At that point those two teams are roughly similar in size. So I’d say 40 percent of the company is in the sales and 40 percent is in the technology engineer teams and then about 20 percent is in our support functions.Martin: You seem to have a lot of experience in terms of sales. What are the most important ingredients for a great sales pitch to really close it?Al: To close it?Martin: For real in two minutes or five minutes.Al: I think the biggest thing is to show value. A lot of times people will show the product and show features but it is rea lly important to show the value that you provide to that person. What we often have found is that sometimes sales folks start to a cookie kind of approach and they don’t modify or the type of person they are selling to. If you are talking to VP of sales or CMO or head of finance or CEO those are all very different roles and those roles care about different things. As you begin to customize your approach based on who you are pitching to and the kinds of challenges that they are facing.For a VP of sales rather than talking about e-mail pitch you might talk about how the challenges in scaling a team, how you are hiring the right people, or if you have one sales rep that is productive how do you replicate that across other sales reps. Those are the challenges, those are the things he deals with every day. And so we start with those and show benefits against those and then show the value, then show the actual product behind that as well. But you have to get really emotionally connected to the challenge or the problem that you are trying to face. And so that is probably one of the biggest insights.I think simplicity is key. If you are able to pitch it in two minutes or three minutes and have it be effective than that’s where you get to start. You can always make it longer if they want to dig in but you will have to be able to sink the idea in the early days.Martin: So currently the story of ClearSlide sounds to me like very straightforward. Any roadblocks along the way that you needed to shift around?Al: I think one of the challenging things for us was trying to figure out the right customer segment and how we sell to it along the way. In the early days we were selling to teams of five or ten or twenty and now we found success at 1000 or 2000. And the way you sell to a thousand-person team is very different than the way you sell to a small team.And so one thing that is challenging about the business it has been the breath of customer base and to sell over the ph one SMB (small mid size business) it is a lot of different skills and a type of organizational approach and the selling approach is very different along the way. So we were kind of fine tuning that and it has been challenging.I think there are always people along the way as you grow. Initially as an entrepreneur you try to get that product fit. Once you get that then it really becomes about scaling the people organization and it is really about building the best teams, getting the right people. There are always times when it works or it doesn’t work as you grow and as you grow quickly those things can be challenging at points. I think those two are probably the biggest ones.Martin: Can you elaborate on how are you currently acquiring or doing the sales for larger customers or the smaller customers?Al: How are we breaking in?Martin: Yes, because you said that your sales approach is different between those two segments.Al: The biggest thing when you sell to small companies is the u sers, the sales reps and the decision maker are very close. They might sit in the same office. It might be a small company of 10 people and there might be 10 reps using the product and their manager is right there and has a credit card. And it is a more simplified approach or a faster approach. It can be more driven by the users using the product.In a large company, there may be many levels in between the user and the budget owner. What that means is that you have to sell on multiple levels and you have to be able to get users using it but also get a senior leader understand the budget reasons for doing it and the risks and the rewards and the benefits to that level. So what we have found is it is a sale where you have to at multiple levels and do bottoms up selling and also top down selling where you want to break in high and go low or go low and break in high. If you do those both well everyone up and down the chain is a supporter.We have had situations where we don’t do that we ll, where maybe the users like the product but the leader doesn’t know why it is valuable or vice versa the leader likes the product but the users don’t know why it is valuable. And that will create friction because you don’t get buy in across the organization. A lot of times the approach needs to have a multiple layer approach for to work effectively.Martin: Imagine, you identified the budget owner and you are pitching him so that you convince him. At some point having this really in parallel for me It is quite hard because you first need to get it into their hands and if the budget owns says, “Yes, now you can do it, then you have some kind of staging: signed off by the budget owner, pushing through all the organization, penetrating the users, and making sure that they are using it. And then have this kind of dual track approach. Or do you see this in another way?Al: It hopefully starts that way. If you start high and go down is also a great place to start. The problem can be if you can’t get the attention initially and maybe after starting low you can get attention high.The other thing we found is even if you get the decision makers initially excited we have seen a lot of buyer approach these days where they are very collaborative and even though the leader might like it they really want to see that their team has adopted it and likes it: So, I am interested, but you have to prove to me that my team will use it and use it well and I am going to see value from it.”So we often do these trials or pilots program to say let’s get a hundred users using the product and will report back up both back up to the user but also what is the value. Here is some deals we have closed with ClearSlide, this is the value that we drove. And once you meet that you really need everyone on board and those leaders will be looking for feedback from their teams in terms of how effective it was.Martin: What is the typical time of having such a trial period because for yo u showing some tracktion and usage?Al: It varies. It can be anywhere for smaller companies it can be a couple of weeks and for larger companies it can be a couple of months I’d say. And then showing the value really depends on sales cycles. Sometimes they will sell very quickly in which case you have got short deals, in other cases the sales take longer so you can show pipeline. Here is the customers that have been moving the pipeline and here is how we have generated a value.Martin: Then basically you are doing an A/B test, so here is how you performed before and now look at the sales pattern and the closing rate and so after using our tool it is like that. So here is the value.Al: Exactly. We show the team how they used to sell or that team and some other teams. What has been great is once you have sales that have gone through the process then they know the value of ClearSlide. So sometimes at that point they just buy it because it has been proven to them. But if you try to show credibility then these are some of the steps that we go through.Martin: And are you seeing a lot of recommendations or referrals because if you are like you said targeting some sales department of company A and some of the sales reps is leaving the company, taking this experience to another company and then having something like inbound sales?Al: Absolutely. One that is specific for sales is they are tend to be very word of mouth driven and they very much get credibility value what the other co-workers use or what the other colleagues use or have used in the past. We have very often seen that work very effectively. Actually our program is here to track when users leave companies and where they go so we can then sell to the new company as well. We find that to be very effective.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM AL LIEBMartin: Al, you have started so many companies directly after university. What have been the major learnings for you that you would like to share with first time entreprene urs about really starting and building companies?Al: I’d say one big lesson I have learned is that in terms of ongoing process oftentimes an entrepreneur will have an idea and launch the idea whenever the initial phase is. Sometimes that works well, fantastic, sometimes it doesn’t but then ok, it didn’t work. On to the next thing, right, I am not going to do this. And what I have found is that it is very much iterative optimization type of approach where you have to get out there, try something, see what works, listen to customers very well and then adjust quickly based on that and keep that loop between the feedback you are getting and your product very tight and fast. If you do that effectively you can get better quickly and things can go in a positive direction.I have found that actually one of the biggest drivers of success is the ability to iterate in ongoing way, in a way that really listens to the customer needs more so than anything else.Martin: And what other type of learnings did you have, especially with problems and situations that are most likely to occur when you are an entrepreneur?Al: One of the things for starting entrepreneurs is as companies go through different stages the needs of the companies change and the needs of the kinds of people change, and even the way you spend your times changes.As an example, in two-person company it is all about trying to figure out your vision and the product that you are trying to build and that is all that really matters. Then when you are five or ten and fifteen or twenty, a hundred or two hundred things change and the needs change. One example is what I found is at about 50 people you can know everybody and everybody knows everybody else. There is not a lot of need of process or system and those sorts of things. Once you get 60 or a hundred those things start to break down. Someone gets hired and everybody: “Who is the person that.” And you start to have needing processing more efficiently the channels of how things go through.I think to be sensitive to what your needs are right now the way you need to spend time as an entrepreneur or co-founder, or your team needs to spend time it can change very quickly. And if you are looking for it you can be effective, but if you are not you can get caught behind it and something that was working two weeks ago sometimes isn’t working anymore.Martin: And how did you feel once you have crossed like 50-60 people coming to your office and say, “Actually, I don’t know these people. Is this my company?”Al: I think it started happening around 100-150. Particularly when you are going quickly. Jim and I and other founders definitely wanted in the early days to interview everybody. So up until 50 or a hundred we had interviewed everyone or at least knew it was part of the process. And then there was a point at which you stop doing that.It is tricky too when you do sessions around the vision of the company and we have meetings where we tried to connect with all new people but sometimes on those meetings you go around and you would ask: How long have you been working here?, and they would say: Four months. And you are like “How have we not met yet?” It is a weird feeling for sure once you come across that stage.Martin: Al, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. It was a pleasure.Al: It was a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having me.Martin: Thanks, awesome!