The American Prison System’s War on Reading
19 by misiti3780 | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Monday, November 29, 2021
Sunday, November 28, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became the Norm Again
Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became the Norm Again
33 by BrendanThompson | 21 comments on Hacker News.
33 by BrendanThompson | 21 comments on Hacker News.
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Have you noticed difficulty tapping links on HN on iOS lately?
Ask HN: Have you noticed difficulty tapping links on HN on iOS lately?
17 by bluehex | 11 comments on Hacker News.
In the past couple of months I have noticed much more difficulty having my taps on links in Chrome iOS register. I'll tap the same link multiple times with no response whatsoever. When this happens scrolling the page a bit and retrying does seem to help. I would estimate that about a third of my initial taps fail to register. This is on the main article links as well as the harder to hit tiny links for comment, upvote, etc. I have no idea if this is an issue with recent updates to iOS, Chrome or this site. It has been quite frustrating. Has anyone else been experiencing this?
17 by bluehex | 11 comments on Hacker News.
In the past couple of months I have noticed much more difficulty having my taps on links in Chrome iOS register. I'll tap the same link multiple times with no response whatsoever. When this happens scrolling the page a bit and retrying does seem to help. I would estimate that about a third of my initial taps fail to register. This is on the main article links as well as the harder to hit tiny links for comment, upvote, etc. I have no idea if this is an issue with recent updates to iOS, Chrome or this site. It has been quite frustrating. Has anyone else been experiencing this?
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Know any non Librem5 PinePhone for Mobile Linux? Legacy devices too!
Ask HN: Know any non Librem5 PinePhone for Mobile Linux? Legacy devices too!
9 by GhettoComputers | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I have not seen any love for the Cosmo's mobile linux hardware. It has much better specs than the Pine and Librem offerings, has a headphone jack unlike the Fairphone 4, and seems criminally unmentioned. https://ift.tt/2EbJvuZ https://ift.tt/30OutUY Older Android devices supported by PostMarketOS are also never mentioned, such as these Xiaomi devices, with better specs and will be better devices for general usage, I see GNU/Linux on Android as the natural response to my generally seen Linux usage (longevity of hardware and software support for devices you already own, rather than buying new hardware to run linux). https://ift.tt/3lfv27s https://ift.tt/3nZpUWM https://ift.tt/3ldhKsk I've used Ubuntu Touch with supported devices through Hallium ase well. If any of your old devices support these or you want to talk about other Linux mobile hardware, please do, I think there is too much bias and assumptions that only those 2 are "Linux phones". https://ift.tt/2yLfi3v
9 by GhettoComputers | 2 comments on Hacker News.
I have not seen any love for the Cosmo's mobile linux hardware. It has much better specs than the Pine and Librem offerings, has a headphone jack unlike the Fairphone 4, and seems criminally unmentioned. https://ift.tt/2EbJvuZ https://ift.tt/30OutUY Older Android devices supported by PostMarketOS are also never mentioned, such as these Xiaomi devices, with better specs and will be better devices for general usage, I see GNU/Linux on Android as the natural response to my generally seen Linux usage (longevity of hardware and software support for devices you already own, rather than buying new hardware to run linux). https://ift.tt/3lfv27s https://ift.tt/3nZpUWM https://ift.tt/3ldhKsk I've used Ubuntu Touch with supported devices through Hallium ase well. If any of your old devices support these or you want to talk about other Linux mobile hardware, please do, I think there is too much bias and assumptions that only those 2 are "Linux phones". https://ift.tt/2yLfi3v
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What's the best way to secure your workstation?
Ask HN: What's the best way to secure your workstation?
16 by bccdee | 9 comments on Hacker News.
Here's a very plausible threat: Some developer with a left-pad package, some dependency-of-a-dependency, injects malware into their library. A developer (who is broadly trustworthy) updates their package's dependencies without auditing them properly, and the malware ends up in a VSCode plugin that you use. You open VSCode, your system is infected. We know this sort of malware is making its way onto package repositories [1]. We know people are falling for these attacks. How do we protect ourselves against this family of threats? [1]: https://ift.tt/3eIvIio We could trust nothing beyond our base system and our browser, and refuse to use any code we don't fully audit, but this would be an impossibly austere way to live. I expect most of us, when pressed, would admit that we're trusting much more code than we would like to. The alternative is sandboxing, using a lightweight option like firejail (which I use) or a totalizing system like QubesOS. But these systems are awkward to use, and have their own drawbacks. What's the bar for reasonable security, in your opinion? How do you secure your workstation without living like a monk?
16 by bccdee | 9 comments on Hacker News.
Here's a very plausible threat: Some developer with a left-pad package, some dependency-of-a-dependency, injects malware into their library. A developer (who is broadly trustworthy) updates their package's dependencies without auditing them properly, and the malware ends up in a VSCode plugin that you use. You open VSCode, your system is infected. We know this sort of malware is making its way onto package repositories [1]. We know people are falling for these attacks. How do we protect ourselves against this family of threats? [1]: https://ift.tt/3eIvIio We could trust nothing beyond our base system and our browser, and refuse to use any code we don't fully audit, but this would be an impossibly austere way to live. I expect most of us, when pressed, would admit that we're trusting much more code than we would like to. The alternative is sandboxing, using a lightweight option like firejail (which I use) or a totalizing system like QubesOS. But these systems are awkward to use, and have their own drawbacks. What's the bar for reasonable security, in your opinion? How do you secure your workstation without living like a monk?
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: EU devs who moved to the States for work, has it been worth it?
Ask HN: EU devs who moved to the States for work, has it been worth it?
63 by Winterflow3r | 42 comments on Hacker News.
For however you choose to define "worth".
63 by Winterflow3r | 42 comments on Hacker News.
For however you choose to define "worth".
Saturday, November 27, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: My friends Instagram was hacked and deep-fake videos posted in less than 6 hours
My friends Instagram was hacked and deep-fake videos posted in less than 6 hours
28 by k4runa | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Today has been wild. I am quite shocked at how quickly the whole thing happened and how difficult it is to report the hacked account to instagram and try recover the account. The docs seem to take you in a loop without ever being able to resolve the problem... My friends instagram account has only ~2,000 followers, so not even a huge amount, and her email and password was reset about 6pm to a gmail account, and by midnight the account had already posted deep-faked AI videos of her promoting cryptocurrency scams. The deepfake videos are very realistic too, if I hadn't know her better or know about the hacking it would be very easy to believe it was real... It's possible they deep-faked her videos ahead of time but it seems like something you'd only spend resources on only if you knew the attack was successful. And there doesn't seem to be that much news or content online about this happening or it seems very targeted... but for such an account with such a small following it seems like it must be quite widespread problem. Have you had this happen to someone you know personally and what do you think about how prepared we are to deal with scams this sophisticated or what effect they might have?
28 by k4runa | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Today has been wild. I am quite shocked at how quickly the whole thing happened and how difficult it is to report the hacked account to instagram and try recover the account. The docs seem to take you in a loop without ever being able to resolve the problem... My friends instagram account has only ~2,000 followers, so not even a huge amount, and her email and password was reset about 6pm to a gmail account, and by midnight the account had already posted deep-faked AI videos of her promoting cryptocurrency scams. The deepfake videos are very realistic too, if I hadn't know her better or know about the hacking it would be very easy to believe it was real... It's possible they deep-faked her videos ahead of time but it seems like something you'd only spend resources on only if you knew the attack was successful. And there doesn't seem to be that much news or content online about this happening or it seems very targeted... but for such an account with such a small following it seems like it must be quite widespread problem. Have you had this happen to someone you know personally and what do you think about how prepared we are to deal with scams this sophisticated or what effect they might have?
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
32 by akouri | 35 comments on Hacker News.
I have been searching for a solution to e-sign some lease agreements. It is something that I need to do maybe once a year and the only thing I need is a legally binding way to put signatures and timestamps on a PDF. I do not need any fancy features. I was doing research, and it seems like most document signature companies all charge monthly subscription fees! This does not work for me as I am not using the platform on a monthly basis. Are there free, open source alternatives to Docusign? If so, why do more companies not use them?
32 by akouri | 35 comments on Hacker News.
I have been searching for a solution to e-sign some lease agreements. It is something that I need to do maybe once a year and the only thing I need is a legally binding way to put signatures and timestamps on a PDF. I do not need any fancy features. I was doing research, and it seems like most document signature companies all charge monthly subscription fees! This does not work for me as I am not using the platform on a monthly basis. Are there free, open source alternatives to Docusign? If so, why do more companies not use them?
New top story on Hacker News: Tell HN: GitHub is down again
Tell HN: GitHub is down again
301 by pupdogg | 159 comments on Hacker News.
Yet somehow https://ift.tt/2rzqrAY is ALL GREEN! smh
301 by pupdogg | 159 comments on Hacker News.
Yet somehow https://ift.tt/2rzqrAY is ALL GREEN! smh
Friday, November 26, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
Ask HN: What are the best-designed things you've ever used?
25 by whitepoplar | 41 comments on Hacker News.
I'll go first. I think the Bialetti Brikka is exceptional: https://ift.tt/3raNZMj...
25 by whitepoplar | 41 comments on Hacker News.
I'll go first. I think the Bialetti Brikka is exceptional: https://ift.tt/3raNZMj...
Thursday, November 25, 2021
A Man 'Chewed' Gutkha During India-New Zealand Test and Twitter Spat Memes
As Shreyas Iyer along with Ravindra Jadeja fought back and stitched an impressive partnership, a man in the stands of Green Park stadium in Kanpur was spotted 'chewing' gutkha.
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Egypt Revives 3000-year-old 'Rams Road' Lined with Hundreds of Sphinx Statues
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi marched along the road at the start of the ceremony.
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A Crypto Group is Trying to Buy an NBA Team via Crowdfunding
Krause House DAO raised 200 Ethereum, or roughly Rs 6.4 crore, in just 15 minutes of announcing the plan to buy an NBA team.
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New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What are the early signs of singularity?
Ask HN: What are the early signs of singularity?
4 by itchyjunk | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Post singularity, people (?) might look back and attribute certain events as a major indicator of the impending singularity. But for someone without the hind sight, looking into the future, what types of indicator would you look for? Also assuming that even if singularity is achieved (?) at some locations, the effects would take times to spread. Say it's already reached at the opposite corner of the world. How long would it take for it to be apparent and what are some indicators? Also, happy thanksgiving.
4 by itchyjunk | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Post singularity, people (?) might look back and attribute certain events as a major indicator of the impending singularity. But for someone without the hind sight, looking into the future, what types of indicator would you look for? Also assuming that even if singularity is achieved (?) at some locations, the effects would take times to spread. Say it's already reached at the opposite corner of the world. How long would it take for it to be apparent and what are some indicators? Also, happy thanksgiving.
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: I’d like to hire a personal/executive assistant – any tips or advice?
Ask HN: I’d like to hire a personal/executive assistant – any tips or advice?
48 by jw1224 | 31 comments on Hacker News.
I’m a CEO with very limited free time/capacity. I would love to recruit someone to help out with “everything else” — that means personal tasks first and foremost, but involvement with the administrative/day-to-day tasks in my business too. Whilst I’ve recruited and managed plenty of “traditional” roles in the office, this area is new to me. Has anyone hired a PA/EA before, who can share any tips or advice? Thanks!
48 by jw1224 | 31 comments on Hacker News.
I’m a CEO with very limited free time/capacity. I would love to recruit someone to help out with “everything else” — that means personal tasks first and foremost, but involvement with the administrative/day-to-day tasks in my business too. Whilst I’ve recruited and managed plenty of “traditional” roles in the office, this area is new to me. Has anyone hired a PA/EA before, who can share any tips or advice? Thanks!
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Monday, November 22, 2021
Rare Humpback Whale Spotted in Shallow Waters of Karnataka Coast by Fishermen
The critically endangered Arabian Sea Humpback whale has been sighted by local fishermen off the coast near Bhatkal, a town located in the Uttara Kannada District of Karnataka.
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Sunday, November 21, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Graydon Hoare: What's next for language design? (2017)
Graydon Hoare: What's next for language design? (2017)
12 by isaacimagine | 0 comments on Hacker News.
12 by isaacimagine | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Saturday, November 20, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: What is your favourite gaming hardware/device?
Ask HN: What is your favourite gaming hardware/device?
5 by recvonline | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Title says it all. A bit of an explanation: I used to game a lot as a kid/teenager, and over the years it became less and less. Now with having my own family, time is rare but I sometimes "want the feeling back" I had as a kid and dive into a game. I basically look for a device I can feel connected to. I had the Nintendo Switch and good experiences with it. I am now looking for a device which would feel good "to have" and can play a few games. I am curious about your experiences. Do you enjoy gaming on an iPad? Are you a Switch person? Or do you have a dedicated gaming PC at home?
5 by recvonline | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Title says it all. A bit of an explanation: I used to game a lot as a kid/teenager, and over the years it became less and less. Now with having my own family, time is rare but I sometimes "want the feeling back" I had as a kid and dive into a game. I basically look for a device I can feel connected to. I had the Nintendo Switch and good experiences with it. I am now looking for a device which would feel good "to have" and can play a few games. I am curious about your experiences. Do you enjoy gaming on an iPad? Are you a Switch person? Or do you have a dedicated gaming PC at home?
Friday, November 19, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
93 by cdahmedeh | 66 comments on Hacker News.
I was watching a video game documentary about the history of the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, a theme park management game that had both an easy learning curve but with incredibly sophisticated dynamics. What really impressed me however was the origins of the first two titles: written by one man in assembly language. At that point, I realized how mediocre and untalented I was. Nothing I’m doing in my life are anything that people will remember me for. Throughout my life, I’ve seen many awe inspiring projects done by extremely talented people, way more intelligent than I am, come to fruition. Over the years, I realized how shallow and dumb I really am. I’m uninteresting. Most of my career revolved around software development, something that I’ve done since I was 17 (now I'm 30) until a few years ago. I found myself writing entreprise software usually in the backend and that’s all I really knew except for some server administration and scripting sprinkled on top. Sat beside me were full-stack developers with expertise in DevOps as well. They knew how to do everything I could on top of so much else. As for me, I can barely write basic HTML pages. I meet with incredibly smart people with master’s degrees and PhDs knowing so much about their field of expertise while I’m a University drop-out. People who know world history so well while being able to talk about the hard problem of consciousness at the same time. YouTubers and Twitch streamers who are so talented at playing games and entertaining us along the way. There’s people who have paved the way for innovation and foresight that I don’t have at all. Those who make so much money due to their talents and bringing them to life in this world of ours. I’ve watched so many documentaries about all sorts of people from racing drivers, to game developers, comedians, data science experts, cybersecurity nuts, music producers, video editors, documentaries makers and so much more. These are all things that come to mind thinking that I’ll never be able to do any of that. I’m mostly a self-taught person teaching myself skills as I go along with my life. I generally don’t pick up much except for a few facts that I can repeat to others. I can barely do derivatives anymore in math or draw like I used to. My talents are shallow and honestly quite useless. Today, I don’t do much with my life other than binging on YouTube documentaries and reading Wikipedia articles not helping my case. My motivation for learning is shrinking slowly and would much rather stare out of the window while I’m not doing my obligatory 8 hours of daily work. Now, I’m an unimportant technical writer composing documents for developers and users. There’s no path for career growth if I stay in this specialty. My work doesn’t feel like it takes much talent and I was hired a few times without having any credentials in business writing. I’ve been told by previous managers that I’m always in “learning mode” and quite “creative” but I can’t convince myself that these traits are actually true. I feel untalented, empty and dumb. My dreams do exist but they starting to seem more and more superficial. There’s a lot of subjects and activities that I’m really interested of getting into but I can’t just dive into it. I blame it on the lack of time and laziness but I have strong time management skills and can conjure up much empty slots in my schedule. I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my medication has had an effect on this: I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline.
93 by cdahmedeh | 66 comments on Hacker News.
I was watching a video game documentary about the history of the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, a theme park management game that had both an easy learning curve but with incredibly sophisticated dynamics. What really impressed me however was the origins of the first two titles: written by one man in assembly language. At that point, I realized how mediocre and untalented I was. Nothing I’m doing in my life are anything that people will remember me for. Throughout my life, I’ve seen many awe inspiring projects done by extremely talented people, way more intelligent than I am, come to fruition. Over the years, I realized how shallow and dumb I really am. I’m uninteresting. Most of my career revolved around software development, something that I’ve done since I was 17 (now I'm 30) until a few years ago. I found myself writing entreprise software usually in the backend and that’s all I really knew except for some server administration and scripting sprinkled on top. Sat beside me were full-stack developers with expertise in DevOps as well. They knew how to do everything I could on top of so much else. As for me, I can barely write basic HTML pages. I meet with incredibly smart people with master’s degrees and PhDs knowing so much about their field of expertise while I’m a University drop-out. People who know world history so well while being able to talk about the hard problem of consciousness at the same time. YouTubers and Twitch streamers who are so talented at playing games and entertaining us along the way. There’s people who have paved the way for innovation and foresight that I don’t have at all. Those who make so much money due to their talents and bringing them to life in this world of ours. I’ve watched so many documentaries about all sorts of people from racing drivers, to game developers, comedians, data science experts, cybersecurity nuts, music producers, video editors, documentaries makers and so much more. These are all things that come to mind thinking that I’ll never be able to do any of that. I’m mostly a self-taught person teaching myself skills as I go along with my life. I generally don’t pick up much except for a few facts that I can repeat to others. I can barely do derivatives anymore in math or draw like I used to. My talents are shallow and honestly quite useless. Today, I don’t do much with my life other than binging on YouTube documentaries and reading Wikipedia articles not helping my case. My motivation for learning is shrinking slowly and would much rather stare out of the window while I’m not doing my obligatory 8 hours of daily work. Now, I’m an unimportant technical writer composing documents for developers and users. There’s no path for career growth if I stay in this specialty. My work doesn’t feel like it takes much talent and I was hired a few times without having any credentials in business writing. I’ve been told by previous managers that I’m always in “learning mode” and quite “creative” but I can’t convince myself that these traits are actually true. I feel untalented, empty and dumb. My dreams do exist but they starting to seem more and more superficial. There’s a lot of subjects and activities that I’m really interested of getting into but I can’t just dive into it. I blame it on the lack of time and laziness but I have strong time management skills and can conjure up much empty slots in my schedule. I sometimes wonder if my mental condition or my medication has had an effect on this: I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline.
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?
Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?
81 by gautamcgoel | 112 comments on Hacker News.
As we all know, there is a trend in the automotive industry towards ever more digital "features" in cars. Many of these software systems pose privacy risks; many others simply don't work as intended, leading to frustration and trips to the dealership. For those of us who are "old-school" and prefer their cars without fancy digital gimmicks, which cars would you recommend?
81 by gautamcgoel | 112 comments on Hacker News.
As we all know, there is a trend in the automotive industry towards ever more digital "features" in cars. Many of these software systems pose privacy risks; many others simply don't work as intended, leading to frustration and trips to the dealership. For those of us who are "old-school" and prefer their cars without fancy digital gimmicks, which cars would you recommend?
Thursday, November 18, 2021
New top story on Hacker News: Launch HN: Accord (YC W20) – Repeatable sales and onboarding for B2B startups
Launch HN: Accord (YC W20) – Repeatable sales and onboarding for B2B startups
18 by rossrich | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN! I’m Ross, and alongside my brother / co-founder Ryan, we’re building Accord ( https://inaccord.com ) with the goal of making B2B sales suck less for buyers and sellers. Yep, sales... sometimes a dirty word in the startup community, but read on—it’s not what you think! I helped Stripe’s sales org go from a couple of us trying to find potential users, to scaling a 450-person global revenue machine. That rollercoaster of a learning curve turned all my ideas about sales on their head. At first I assumed that success in sales was based on someone’s ability to be a smooth talker, applying ad-hoc tricks, improvising each deal. Thousands of conversations and hundreds of deals at Stripe taught me the opposite: the key to personal success in winning deals, as well as the success of the entire sales org, is in building repeatable processes and iterating on them each day. What works best is not a cowboy operation with people winging it—it’s orderly, iterative, and actually more reminiscent of building great products. Jumping ahead a bit: the idea behind Accord is to take all those lessons and build them into a platform that sellers and buyers can immediately use, so you don’t have to learn the hard way like we did. A well-oiled B2B sales machine is surprisingly well-suited for software, so we built that software. We let you easily create a repeatable, collaborative sales process (even if you don’t have a background in sales), and that is really what helps you hit your revenue goals. Ok, so back to the wild world of startup sales and why I decided to leave Stripe after 4 amazing years. Well, similar to a lot of you, I truly felt the bar for B2B sales today sucked and wanted to use the tough lessons learned to level-up the experience, making sales more collaborative, transparent, and genuinely helpful. Every startup needs to sell, but very few do a decent job at it, and I think this is because many founders feel like they need to be born with amazing interpersonal skills. In reality, sales is more of a science than an art, and is much more accessible than founders think. For example: Customers don’t want to talk to sales reps. One of our wildest learnings is that 95% of the buying process is NOT spent with a seller. You get only 5% of the entire process to engage, so you’d better get it right. How? By partnering with customers to actually solve their problems. Not only that, but the average B2B sale involves 14+ people, and that’s only on the buyer’s side! You can imagine the inefficiency and crossed signals here. Even if you have the above all figured out, you need a system to reinforce this collaborative, buyer-first approach. You need to structure your sales the way you can structure engineering (Github), design (Figma), product (Jira). No matter what you try, you’re never going to see a real transformation in sales until you bring the buyer into the process. Accord provides a radically collaborative workspace that makes you look like seasoned sellers. We give you collaborative, customer-facing workspaces to drive alignment throughout the process; templated sales & onboarding playbooks; a Resource Hub for managing key deal documents, images, etc.; Engagement Insights (see how prospects are interacting with your process); Contextual Conversations— commenting system contextually attached to particular key parts in the sales process; integration with Slack & Salesforce plus integrations through Zapier - like Hubspot; and Smart Notifications(keep stakeholders informed by sending the right message or reminder at the right time). If you’re curious to try it out we offer free trials ( https://ift.tt/3CvjJhp ) and free sales consulting sessions from our founding team (Seed/Series A startups + Stripe, Shopify, Google Cloud). We'd love to hear if this resonates with your experience as either a seller or buyer of tech!
18 by rossrich | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Hello HN! I’m Ross, and alongside my brother / co-founder Ryan, we’re building Accord ( https://inaccord.com ) with the goal of making B2B sales suck less for buyers and sellers. Yep, sales... sometimes a dirty word in the startup community, but read on—it’s not what you think! I helped Stripe’s sales org go from a couple of us trying to find potential users, to scaling a 450-person global revenue machine. That rollercoaster of a learning curve turned all my ideas about sales on their head. At first I assumed that success in sales was based on someone’s ability to be a smooth talker, applying ad-hoc tricks, improvising each deal. Thousands of conversations and hundreds of deals at Stripe taught me the opposite: the key to personal success in winning deals, as well as the success of the entire sales org, is in building repeatable processes and iterating on them each day. What works best is not a cowboy operation with people winging it—it’s orderly, iterative, and actually more reminiscent of building great products. Jumping ahead a bit: the idea behind Accord is to take all those lessons and build them into a platform that sellers and buyers can immediately use, so you don’t have to learn the hard way like we did. A well-oiled B2B sales machine is surprisingly well-suited for software, so we built that software. We let you easily create a repeatable, collaborative sales process (even if you don’t have a background in sales), and that is really what helps you hit your revenue goals. Ok, so back to the wild world of startup sales and why I decided to leave Stripe after 4 amazing years. Well, similar to a lot of you, I truly felt the bar for B2B sales today sucked and wanted to use the tough lessons learned to level-up the experience, making sales more collaborative, transparent, and genuinely helpful. Every startup needs to sell, but very few do a decent job at it, and I think this is because many founders feel like they need to be born with amazing interpersonal skills. In reality, sales is more of a science than an art, and is much more accessible than founders think. For example: Customers don’t want to talk to sales reps. One of our wildest learnings is that 95% of the buying process is NOT spent with a seller. You get only 5% of the entire process to engage, so you’d better get it right. How? By partnering with customers to actually solve their problems. Not only that, but the average B2B sale involves 14+ people, and that’s only on the buyer’s side! You can imagine the inefficiency and crossed signals here. Even if you have the above all figured out, you need a system to reinforce this collaborative, buyer-first approach. You need to structure your sales the way you can structure engineering (Github), design (Figma), product (Jira). No matter what you try, you’re never going to see a real transformation in sales until you bring the buyer into the process. Accord provides a radically collaborative workspace that makes you look like seasoned sellers. We give you collaborative, customer-facing workspaces to drive alignment throughout the process; templated sales & onboarding playbooks; a Resource Hub for managing key deal documents, images, etc.; Engagement Insights (see how prospects are interacting with your process); Contextual Conversations— commenting system contextually attached to particular key parts in the sales process; integration with Slack & Salesforce plus integrations through Zapier - like Hubspot; and Smart Notifications(keep stakeholders informed by sending the right message or reminder at the right time). If you’re curious to try it out we offer free trials ( https://ift.tt/3CvjJhp ) and free sales consulting sessions from our founding team (Seed/Series A startups + Stripe, Shopify, Google Cloud). We'd love to hear if this resonates with your experience as either a seller or buyer of tech!
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
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