It’s not hard.  Call your credit card company and have them add a US address to your account.  For example:

Hi.  I travel quite a bit to the US.  My phone carrier requires me to have a US credit card to set up an account.  Can you add a second address to my VISA?  The primary/mailing address will remain my Canadian address.  Thank you!

Then, just sign up on the Netflix US site*.

11 seasons of Law & Order SVU, you are mine.

*requires US VPN.  There are lots.

Applying to a startup is completely different than applying to a large company. You’ve probably keyword-stuffed your resume to get through the HR screening. At a startup, everything is about value.

1. Understand Your Value Proposition

At it’s most basic, a value proposition is the benefit (or value) someone gets from something they pay for. Like a company trying to sell you a new product, you need to understand your value proposition to a startup.

If I was applying to work at Select Start, my value proposition would be:

1. Designed, architected and developed 20+ iOS, Android and BlackBerry applications.
2. Practiced Lean Startup principles to take multiple products from idea to market and deliver a revenue run rate of over $2M annually.
3. Experience developing customers, testing ideas and validating markets prior to building a team and committing resources to a product.

What value can you bring to my startup today?

2. Tell a Story with Numbers

Great startups run lean and question everything. Every dollar out needs to equal more than one dollar in for the company to grow.

Using concrete numbers, tell a startup how you can add value. Explain how past experience may help a future startup:

Bootstrapped from $0 to $1M in revenue our first 18 months. Lead Select Start to our third year of 300% growth.

How does your value impact my top and bottom lines, products or customers?

3. Be A Generalist

There’s nothing more valuable to a startup than someone who understands the challenges every startup faces.  Do you:

1. Bring a broad array of skills outside of the role you were hired for?
2. Know how your decisions impact a company’s burn rate?
3. Understand how you can help create a sustainable competitive advantage?

Where else can you add value to a startup besides the role you were hired for?

4. Value Outside of a Startup

I Google everyone who applies to find out if they add value to the startup, engineering and design communities.

Make it easy for a startup to find your value. List your:

1. Personal website.
2. Social profiles like Twitter and Facebook.
3. Creative profiles like Github, Stack Overflow and Hacker News.

Where could a startup investigate the value you create?

5. Be Valuable To Others (Get Referred)

A rule of raising investment is to get a referral from someone who the angel or VC respects. The same is true of applying to a startup. Find a way to connect with the founders via a mutual friend. Your odds of being hired are infinitely better than submitting a resume to the pile.

Who will vouch for the value you create?

On the web, “Contact Us For A Quote” offends my sensibilities.  An all-to-common occurrence is to land on a website and say “Oh.  This looks great!  How much?”.  You end up spending the next 30 minutes searching for a price but finding countless “Talk to a Sales Representative” links.

SaaS to the rescue.  Most SaaS companies freely publish pricing on their website, sometimes in multiple tiers.  Hopefully there’s a price that works for everyone.

So what about enterprise software?  Adaptiv, our mobile healthcare software company, walks a fine line.  It’s enterprise software from a team with Web 2.0 DNA.  Should we publish our pricing, or is “talk to a sales representative” a better idea?

Let’s look at the benefits of each approach:

SaaS Sales

1. Reduces sales friction
2. Immediate conversion to beta or paying customers (shorten the sales cycle)
3. Reduction in expensive sales staff

Enterprise Sales

1. More price flexibility on a per-client basis
2. Less risk of leaving money on the table
3. Additional profit from SLAs, overages, etc
4. Hide pricing information from competitors

What do you think?  Should we publish pricing on our website and reduce sales friction, or have our sales staff work out the best deal for each customer?

A friend received a letter from a company recruiting for Amazon.  It’s a thing of beauty, really.  Let’s look at “your brain on recruiting”.

My name is [REDACTED]; I am a Partner with [REDACTED], a new firm that partners with early stage startups and leading companies that are at the forefront of disruptive technologies. We’ve helped build amazing technical teams at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon, Google, and Ning, and love the energy and passion of high growth companies that are working on software that changes the world. With [REDACTED], that’s all we work on.

Between 2003 - 2006, our team helped build out Amazon’s first revolutionary technology movement, which we now know to be Amazon Web Services, Personalization & Recommendation Systems, and the Kindle. We are partnering with Amazon once again to build the next generation of industry disruptors which will make a massive shift in digital media. Video is the next big movement, and Amazon is revolutionizing not only the ability to watch any video across any device, but also how movies are being made in the industry. At the heart of this movement is Amazon’s Video On Demand engineering team which is comprised of 6-8 small, agile teams working on issues around scalability, performance, security, UI development, quality, mobile, data analytics, all at Amazon scale. This is Amazon’s next bold bet, and we think this could be a fantastic opportunity for you, and that comes along only once in a lifetime.

This Amazon engineering team will be in the Montreal and Ottawa areas in late March to meet with Software Engineers who are interested in joining the team. What is a good time to connect this week to discuss this opportunity?

Thanks for your time, and look forward to speaking. 

1.  Establish Social Proof

We’ve helped build amazing technical teams at Apple, Microsoft, Netscape, Amazon, Google, and Ning, and love the energy and passion of high growth companies that are working on software that changes the world.

They’ve worked with great companies.  Chances are you love one of them, so you should love Amazon too.

2.  Establish Credibility Using “Sexy” Success

…our team helped build out Amazon’s first revolutionary technology movement, which we now know to be Amazon Web Services, Personalization & Recommendation Systems, and the Kindle.

This makes candidates associate with something from Amazon they know, respect or even love.

3.  Make It Personal

…we think this could be a fantastic opportunity for you…

Hundreds of people will get the same letter.  Each one of them will think Amazon is speaking directly to them.

4.  Make It (Artificially) Scarce

…and that comes along only once in a lifetime.

Forget that they said that Amazon has been creating revolutionary products for the last six years.  They want you to consider this a scarce opportunity.

5.  Make It Inevitable

What is a good time to connect this week to discuss this opportunity?

The letter makes it seem like the process is already in motion.  It’s easy to go with the flow.

Does this make you want to work for Amazon?

I’ve been spending the week in San Francisco with @aSadhankar and @Gahzi, immersing myself  in everything the Bay Area startup scene has to offer.  A critical part of running a startup is finding out how others do it.

So why is this place such a startup launch pad?  Three things became incredibly clear at the street level:

Startup “Spots”

Founders know where to find other founders.  When we got here, we knew to immediately hit Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto, Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, and the Epicenter Cafe in SOMA.  Sure enough, we were immediately surrounded by young founders pitching engineers to work with them and angels talking term sheets.  We thought we’d have to walk into a VC’s office to find it.  No way.  It’s out in the open for everyone to see, and people gravitate towards it.

Employees are the Brand

Employees are branded, and they wear their brand proudly.  Everyone has a t-shirt, zip-up or hoodie with their startup’s name on it.  They wear them to coffee shops, restaurants and even to class.  I found myself Googling startups I had never heard of, only to see a landing page hoping to grab my info.  This is viral marketing at it’s core, and I was incepted.

(edit:  As I write this, one of the Yobongo guys walks into Epicenter.)

Risk = Reward

In Ottawa, I’ve spent the last month convincing friends to leave their “career” jobs and try something a little more rewarding.  It’s been a struggle.  Even with competitive pay, amazing growth, a killer office and rewarding work, young engineers are reluctant to join a startup right out of university.

The opposite is Filip Mares, arguably one of the best students to come out of Carleton.  We ran into Filip by chance while sitting at the Coupa Cafe (see point #1).  It turns out he was picked up by Alphonso Labs, the creators of Pulse.  Filip took a risk, moved to SF and is now has an equity stake in a great company.  He’s clearly winning.  This place attracts a different breed of people; arguably the right ones.