By Larry Chiang
Yes, engineers sell.
There is an entire industry of technical sales people. Typically, lesser schools like University of Illinois, produce sales engineers π
Well, my thesis at MIT was “do some sales even though you go to a top 2 engineering school”. Selling helps when you’re two to five CS major co-founders. Selling as an engineer helps when you’re a developer.
At Stanford’s #ENGR245 class, there was an required set of readings that had a conclusion: “You cannot outsource selling”
Its Professor Blanks ‘startup death spiral’
That’s the problem
This is the solution to startup death spiral: #cs183s
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
I send a tidal wave of value during my cold call. I am a engineering major who teaches #cs183s, like that ;-P twitter.com/shanegibson/stβ¦
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
9 Techniques For Closing a Deal via Voicemail | Gigaom #cs183s gigaom.com/2008/02/28/9-tβ¦
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This is a patternistic problem that has plagued technical founders since the beginning of time. Y=0 if you can’t sell.

It doesn’t matter if X = huge.
A lot of the time y=0…
Learn #cs183s so that Y won’t equal zero.