PopSockets CEO calls out Amazon's tactics before House committee - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/amazon-bullying-tactics-popsockets-hearing/ <comment><USER2> Amazon is extremely shady and it doesn't just hurt companies like PopSockets. Amazon has a counterfeits problem and it's bad for customers. It is totally obvious now that Amazon embraces cheap Chinese knockoffs, and I'm sick of having to send them back.

<comment><USER3> I was recently searching for 1TB flash drives. Currently, when I search for "1tb flash drive" on amazon.com, after ads and an Amazon's Choice banner, the top result is a listing for a $20 product: [https://www.amazon.com/Flash- Memory-Rotatable-Laptop-Compute...](https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Memory- Rotatable-Laptop-Computer/dp/B07NY9WR28/)

<comment><USER4> > an Amazon's Choice banner

For those who don't know: despite having a name that implies curation, Amazon does not choose "Amazon's Choice" at all. It simply indicates which product is most popular, based on reviews that are widely known to be faked. Yet another utterly deceptive dark pattern.

<comment><USER5> >based on reviews

That's incorrect. "Amazon's Choice" is based on sales. If you search "flash drives" the product that has the Amazon's Choice badge is the product that is bought most often by customers using that search term. It's one of the only organic things on the Amazon platform.

<comment><USER6> There was actually a discussion on HN a couple of months back [0] about what "Amazon's Choice" actually means. The consensus then was that it's not simply based on sales.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20098157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20098157)

<comment><USER5> This is very useful to me, thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure what he means by sourcing from the gray market? Does he mean that it's illegal to produce pop sockets because of copyright or patent infringement and Amazon is facilitating this? Or is he thinking that anyone who produces a competitive product is somehow wrong?

If the former, that truly is (or should be) illegal and I hope Amazon is punished dearly. If the latter, what a wimp. This is capitalism baby, and you need to buck up.

You think walmart doesn't use it's market dominance in retail to try to push prices down? How do you think we've got so much progress in our consumer markets. Understand, that Amazon is not profiting here when it pushes prices down. It's just trying to deliver a better service for it's customers and compete with other companies like Walmart.

In fact, Amazon's margins decrease when it pushes prices down.

That all said, I really have no idea what he means by gray market and willing to learn.

<comment><USER8> Grey market is buying a companies items (not counterfeit copies) outside of the official supply chain. For example, many goods are sold cheaper in other markets. So someone could buy the item there and bring them to a market where they are usually sold for more and be able to undercut the the official supplier's prices. This is perfectly legal thanks to the First Sale Doctrine. Companies don't like this though, because they don't make as much, so they brand these goods grey market to make them seem shady to consumers.

<comment><USER9> > Grey market is buying a companies items (not counterfeit copies) outside of > the official supply chain. For example, many goods are sold cheaper in other > markets. So someone could buy the item there and bring them to a market > where they are usually sold for more and be able to undercut the the > official supplier's prices. This is perfectly legal thanks to the First Sale > Doctrine.

You're mixing up a bunch of ideas. The traditional definition of "grey market" is buying an item oversees at a low cost and then importing it into the US. For example, the identical textbook usually sells for much more in the U.S. than it does in Asia. The supreme court has indeed ruled that the First Sale doctrine allows people to buy that book in Asia, then sell it back to someone in the U.S. for more.

However, the first sale doctrine only applies to copyright, not patents. It hasn't yet been decided as to patents.

More meaningfully though, the meaning of the term "grey market" has expanded. It used to refer to authorized items sold overseas, but now it more generally refers to items with questionable IP rights. When Amazon is using the term "grey market", they are referring to counterfeits and infringing products as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a wrinkle to this conversation, Amazons product and treatment of customers/vendors causes even more harm to the environment. People buy more things that they are unsatisfied with than ever before. There are more returns than ever before. There are likely millions more frivolous purchases and many thousands of tons of cardboard and non-recyclable plastics generated each year thanks to Amazon Prime.

<comment><USER11> "treatment of customers"

I know I'm an N of 1 but speaking purely as a customer Amazon has been nothing but awesome. And I know that's probably seen by many as maybe selfish and wrong, and I get that argument totally. But I can the stuff I want* pretty darn fast and pretty darn cheap and if it's not what I want it's easy to send back. I understand that might be short sighted with all the drawbacks, but I still keep ordering. The pluses outweigh the minuses. Am I being selfish?

* Not the stuff I need, but the stuff I want. I think that's an important point.I guess I go to Wegmans for the stuff I need.

<comment><USER12> They used to be pretty consumer-centric a decade ago, but personally I pretty much stopped buying on Amazon in the last couple of years.

Having to inspect the items for counterfeits, dealing with support if the item isn't functional (or slightly defective), getting messages from sellers to "make sure to write us a 5 star review", eventual consistency on the shopping cart price (eg. if the price of an item increases between adding it to the cart and checking out, there's no big red warning like "hey this item is 30% more expensive than when you put it in your cart three minutes ago, are you sure you want to check out at this new price"), awful delivery experiences, it's just not worth the hassle anymore IMO.

<comment><USER13> wow. Am I glad to be in a country that bans most of these tactics by regulation. I have two weeks to send back items, no questions asked. Price isn't allowed to change negatively between when I decide to put it in my basket and buy it.

and I have never had an email asking for a positive review.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not new behaviour out of Amazon. I mean... look at what happened with Diapers.com (Quidsi) and Zappos back in the earlier days. Amazon approaches most deals with "Play our game our way in our stadium or we'll ruin you. Oh, by the way, you have to pay rent on the stadium and if you make too much money we may just ruin you anyway."

One of the most compelling reasons to not use AWS is every time a company does something novel and has any business relationship with Amazon, they start a competing business. From that perspective, they're a huge IP risk. If they can't win at the competition they try to buy the company. If they can't buy the company, they use their deep coffers and dominant e-retail position to apply unethical (if not illegal) screws.

They're pretty much the modern equivalent of Standard Oil or U.S. Steel.

I don't really believe that it will happen, but I really hope that Congress gets off their butt and does something about it.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, AWS needs to be split out. But, alas, amazon can't afford to do that because those profits are funding the rest of the company. They are extremely vulnerable as a company here and is a strategic opportunity for other cloud vendors. Just push down cloud margins and Amazon will slowly be out priced.

Without having some kind of control over prices, you are not a very viable business. Amazon is in a very fragile position.

Honestly, I have no idea why government is getting involved here. Let the market eat them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> '"Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit product and was selling it alongside our own product," he noted.'

How do they know that Amazon sourced the counterfeit?

Amazon's own inventory may be commingled with those of third parties so, even if you receive a counterfeit, it may have nothing to do with Amazon's own sourcing. (Unless you consider the whole commingling approach to be part of Amazon's sourcing.)

<comment><USER16> Does branding "amazon basics" count as amazon sourcing? Because amazon basics are often counterfeits of the cheap items they pretend to be.

<comment><USER17> I don't think Amazon Basics counts as "counterfeit" for the purpose of this discussion.

<comment><USER16> Not all of them. They're branded as knockoffs. Basics are occasionally counterfeits of knockoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Popsockets is one of the biggest bullies in the marketplace. They've sued many, many sellers that were selling legitimate products trying to bully them off the market with various loopholes in the first sale doctrine.

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14939738/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14939738/popsockets-llc-v- wilcox/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16007022/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16007022/popsockets-llc-v- sussman/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15050057/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15050057/popsockets-llc-v-online- king-llc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15683859/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15683859/popsockets-llc-v- outlook-fba-corp/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15639919/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15639919/popsockets-llc-v- handler/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620695/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620695/popsockets-llc-v- gancfried/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620699/popsockets- llc...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620699/popsockets-llc-v-yef- trading-inc/)

The basic strategy is to include a bunch of FUD about how there's counterfeiters in general on Amazon, then try to lump legitimate sellers in with that. See the 79 page complaint from my last link, filed just last month. They have a template lawsuit that's dozens of pages long, and they just fill in the specific seller details. They have a bunch of screenshots of negative customer reviews, but those are from Amazon broadly and are not connected to the seller they're suing - they use the same negative reviews for all their lawsuits. (It looks like they have two negative feedback for popsocket sales traced to that account out of the many pages of negative reviews that isn't connected to an account.)

To be clear, they are not alleging counterfeits in the lawsuits. The claim is that the product doesn't carry the manufacturer warranty, and that sellers don't follow the right quality controls, both of which are very shaky claims legally (warranty restrictions are problematic under federal law, and there's no serious quality control concern on sealed electronics accessory products - it's the same product in the same warehouses, it doesn't magically become lower quality just because a different seller is selling it. There's a potential quality control concern with groceries or products requiring temperature controls, but it stretches credibility to argue that applies to sealed popsockets.) But a small seller can't afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to get a court decision affirming that. I know multiple sellers that have settled rather than fighting it. It's the path of least resistance.

Popsockets is not the only brand that's been using these abusive tactics. There's a string of lawsuits by Otterbox, Skullcandy, GNC, Murad, Standard Process, Noco, and others. Most of them are being pushed by a lawfirm called Vorys, which is associated with a large Amazon seller by the name of iServe/Pattern (one of the top 10 third party Amazon sellers, see [https://www.sellerratings.com/amazon/usa](https://www.sellerratings.com/amazon/usa), note Zappos and 6PM are Amazon-owned and Asurion, LLC is selling services, not products), that gets exclusive contracts with brands and then sues many of their competition that's undercutting them.

It's a scheme just begging for an anti-trust investigation.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, so is it immoral to sue someone who is blatantly copying your product and providing a much cheaper knock off with much poorer quality?

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Maybe it's just a bad idea to copy someone else's product unless you really plan on improving upon it.

I don't imagine pop socket has a limitless budget for lawsuits either. They may really think they are doing the right thing here.

I guess this is the gray market that he's talking about. All these companies that are just copying products and creating cheaper versions with worse quality.

And amazon is facilitating that. Interesting and certainly worth shouting about.

<comment><USER19> > Interesting, so is it immoral to sue someone who is blatantly copying your > product and providing a much cheaper knock off with much poorer quality?

That looks like a deliberate deflection. ikeboy specifically said that, while the lawsuit alleges inferior quality, that allegation is bogus. I would say that it _is_ immoral to sue someone alleging inferior quality when the quality is not, in fact, inferior.

<comment><USER18> Just wanted to clarify a bit of the legal terminology here. There's a loophole/exception to the first sale doctrine that says if the products are materially different, it can be considered trademark infringement even if the product was originally made by the brand.

In some jurisdictions, there's a "quality control" subcategory of "material difference". The quality controls must be non pretextual. The basic argument is that if the brands's products are subject to quality control procedures that the alleged infringer is not following, then the products are different enough that it can potentially create a likelihood of confusion between the two. Only a jury can actually decide if there's such a material difference in a particular case.

Now, quality control can be temperature controls, or it can be additional inspections before sale, and so on. It must be something where customers would care about the difference, so you can allege customer confusion.

In these cases and in most of the vorys cases I've seen, the quality controls appear very pretextual. If the product is sealed, authentic, and there's no damage to it, it's hard to see why any consumer would care about any of the alleged differences in quality control.

The cases I've seen where quality control was accepted by a court were typically imports, where there were actually different standards being used for the ones the brand was selling in the US. In my view, none of these would go anywhere if they made it to court. But that's very expensive - it's been at least several years that similar cases have been filed, I'm aware of over 100 so far across 30+ different brands, and as far as I know none have actually gone to a jury. Most settle well before that point, or are voluntarily dismissed.

<comment><USER19> > If the product is sealed, authentic, and there's no damage to it, it's hard > to see why any consumer would care about any of the alleged differences in > quality control.

If I understand you correctly, the only differences in quality control would be if there were quality control tests that these units failed _after they were sealed_. That seems... quite unlikely.

Alternately, there were quality control tests that these units failed, _but they sealed them in the standard packaging anyway._ That also seems unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Amazon, or Wal-Mart in the Sky, is truly an incredible company and business. But a good name is worth more than $. If they continue these negative business practices their brand equity will slowly continue to decrease over time. The general public is not yet as wary of their power as most HN readers but it won't be look until a new competitor (or preexisting) starts nipping away at their bottom line.

<comment><USER21> Wal-mart has a hideous reputation among the general public and that doesn't seem to stop them. Walmart grows YoY every quarter.

I'm not certain their reputation will change much so long as they can still ship a product to my house in one day for less money than at a physical store, and have effortless returns.

<comment><USER22> > Wal-mart has a hideous reputation among the general public

Does it actually? Or does it just have a hideous reputation among the upper classes because it is a thing of the lower classes (like country music and pickup trucks)?

<comment><USER23> According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Walmart has one of the lowest ratings.

[https://www.theacsi.org/?option=com_content&view=article&id=...](https://www.theacsi.org/?option=com_content&view=article&id=149&catid=14&Itemid=214&c=Wal- Mart&i=Supermarkets)

[https://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...](https://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149&catid=&Itemid=212&i=Department+and+Discount+Stores)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hey Congress, maybe focus more on the price of insulin rather than pop sockets.

<comment><USER25> It's not mutually exclusive, Congress (whether they exercise it or not is another question, but) has the capacity to do both.

<comment><USER26> Congress, nay, government in general, has neither the capacity nor the ability to affect the price of anything, in the long run.

Lest we increase prices through the introduction of more regulatory in efficiencies in what would have otherwise been a free market, our government should not interfere in matters of a private enterprise.

~ Adam Smith

(just kidding, but he would probably agree)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not unique to Amazon.

My company did a deal with a F50 retailer that you've shopped at. About a month ahead of the first deliverable which was agreed to in the statement of work, one of their VPs called me and screamed at me demanding a live demo or they would cancel any further payments on the contract. Oh and stay on the original delivery timeframe.

We were small enough that we couldn't afford to fight that in court and losing that client would have been the loss of our biggest deal and a huge negative signal.

So we made it work but it just proved to me that contracts without the ability to enforce them don't mean anything.

</comment><comment><USER28> > He asserted that Amazon representatives would tell him over the phone: "If > we don't get it, then we're going to source product from the gray market."

Record your phone calls with customers, just like they do.

<comment><USER29> Legal in 2 party consent states like California?

<comment><USER30> Just announce that the call "may" be recorded for "quality assurance purposes" just as California businesses do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I discovered that when you receive a random Amazon package sent to your home, it's a scam for the product.

From what I've read and been told by people, it's a seller from Amazon shipping you their product using a gift card. They create an account using your info (not sure how they get it, maybe public info web sites), ship you their product and pay for it with a gift card. They then create a review of the product you received as you. It's then considered a verified buyer of the product. So it's essentially buying reviews.

It's happened to a few of my friends.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm a bit skeptical of this for a few reasons. If Amazon is in breach of contract then why is PopSockets not taking them to court? What is the gray market in this case? Buying a product similar from a different company? That just seems like a smart business tactic, IMO

<comment><USER9> > I'm a bit skeptical of this for a few reasons. If Amazon is in breach of > contract then why is PopSockets not taking them to court? What is the gray > market in this case? Buying a product similar from a different company? That > just seems like a smart business tactic, IMO

The "gray market" indicate cheap knock-offs of new products.

For example, literally days after Tile released their bluetooth powered device locators, you could find cheaper knock-offs from China. These products may very well infringe Tile's patents and trademarks, but proving infringement in court takes years and costs millions of dollars. Even if you win, during that time many other knock-off manufacturers will pop up and you'll have to start all over. At that point your company will be dead. Intellectual property litigation is simply not strong enough to protect smaller companies.

So a threat to go to the gray market from Amazon, can effectively spell the doom for your company.

As an aside, while this is a problem for small companies, larger companies can usually afford to wage these large IP litigation campaigns. A good example is Bosch which sells patented windshield wiper blades. There are numerous knock- offs from China, but Bosch goes to war with each and every one. Eventually, Bosch starts earning a reputation and the knock-offs slow down. But this takes many years of heavy investment in IP enforcement and never entirely goes away. It only makes sense at very large scales, no small company could take on this burden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I stopped buying anything expensive and simple to manufacture from Amazon. I now only use it for things where I want the no-name version anyway, like RGB LED strips and curtains. Essentially treat it like AliExpress with fast shipping.

</comment><comment><USER34> Everyone keeps talking about cheap Chinese clones but I don't know what they're talking about. Are you talking about generic products that have a Chinese sounding brand name?

</comment><comment><USER35> If congress wants to investigate Amazon's anti-trust stuff, they should spend some time looking at AWS.

</comment><comment><USER36> On one hand, I don't necessarily mind that established brands get sent down a peg. Especially when they sell an entirely commodified product and expect a retailer to help pad their "brand".

On the other hand - the Amazon shopping experience has sucked lately. Ever since they allowed foreign sellers, every product line is flooded with cheap options and you never know what kind of crap you get.

I honestly think their e-commerce may have peeked. They only allowed foreign sellers to keep up with growing competition, are dumping huge amounts of money into ads, and from personal experience of myself and those I know, Amazon Prime feels much less essential than it used to be.

<comment><USER24> > On one hand, I don't necessarily mind that established brands get sent down > a peg. Especially when they sell an entirely commodified product and expect > a retailer to help pad their "brand".

For any product that's basically extruded plastic, Amazon is literally Robin Hood taking brand equity and distributing it to the people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ok? If it wasnt for AMZN do you think popsockets would have scaled that quick? No. Would this CEO have even 1/4 his net worth? Not likely. Seriously if AMZN is such a pain in his side why doesnt he just drop them? Thats right, because THEY are the retailer, not him.

<comment><USER38> Highly doubtful, PopSockets are distributed in basically every brick & mortar shop in the US.

Also:

> "Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit > product and was selling it alongside our own product," he noted.

<comment><USER22> > > "Multiple times we discovered that Amazon itself had sourced counterfeit > product and was selling it alongside our own product," he noted.

If this is true, then the right venue to take this up is in a court of law.

<comment><USER4> Who's to say that they aren't? Seems like you could do that _and_ talk to the House when invited.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should the ultimate Founders Conference Look like - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on putting together the ultimate Founders Conference, focusing on how to start a startup, from finding co-founders to getting development going and avoiding the usual traps.
I prepared a one-page survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNKFH7N that you can fill out, or leave comments here.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to surveymonkey: <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNKFH7N>

</comment><comment><USER2> It should be a LAN party.</comment>


Balanced Will Release an API to Push Money to Debit Cards - <AUTHOR> http://blog.balancedpayments.com/push-to-cards/ <comment><USER2> From a European perspective, it seems utterly strange that Americans don't simply use wire transfers for something like this.

If someone wants to send me money, I just give them my bank account number (IBAN). Transfers are free within EU and the handful of outsider European countries.

Why are Americans afraid of giving out their bank account numbers? The only thing you can do with an IBAN is send money to it, and that's hardly malicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wire transfers are expensive here, $15~$30.

You can also withdraw money if you have the bank account information. A famous example is Don Knuth, who had to stop offering rewards checks: [http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html)

<comment><USER2> Wow. At that cost, I assume American banks must be using a combination of telegraphs and the Pony Express to settle their wire transfers.

"You see, sending money _across state lines_ is not easy. There needs to be insurance in case wild natives attack and steal the leather bag containing those money orders... It's only fair that we pass that cost on to the customer."

<comment><USER3> You're joking, but when I did a wire transfer it failed the first time and I had to call my bank and give them extra information over the phone, including the street address of the branch where the destination account lives. Considering how much labor went into it, I understand why they charged me $30.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but I have to ask as I did yesterday: Why was (YC S11) removed from the title? They were in Y Combinator Summer 2011 batch...

<comment><USER5> Especially given Stripe doesn't seem to get the same treatment. It's a little odd. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7106377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7106377)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Such an API already exists, you can get it directly from Visa: [https://developer.visa.com/vpp/](https://developer.visa.com/vpp/)

Note that, pushing money to anybody as a service also involves a lot of regulatory compliance issues in almost any country you would want to be able to do this in. In the US for example, facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing or transfers to a named person (even accidentally facilitating if you don't have enough controls in place) is a felony and you can go to jail. So make sure you are a licensed money transfer operator before attempting.

<comment><AUTHOR> As you noted, that would only work with Visa, ours works with all debit cards.

And we have really strict regulatory compliance, a laywer was something like our 5th hire. We do a lot with KYC and such, so those details are all handled for you, by us. All merchants on Balanced marketplaces get underwritten individually.

<comment><USER6> That's great to hear that you are on top of this. So many payment startups fail to think through or manage their compliance risk until they discover too late that it is a barrier to scaling or killer for their entire user experience. Compliance is one of the biggest challenges for creating new payment services.

You guys should also take a look at the Visa push-payment apis. In reality they are designed more for other API providers like yourselves to fold-in to their available push-payment options. Particularly handy for applications like marketing rebates, bill payment or expense reimbursements for payments already made on a card. Visa transfers do have a few advantages over straight ACH - you can push funds to a debit account, a credit card account or a reloadable prepaid account. Works across borders, in some countries works real time. Also a card number can be easier and less error-prone for consumers to enter than full bank routing info (as you probably know, handling rejects on ACH is a real pain). Downsides: only works on Visa cards, but you can mitigate that with traditional fallback options like ACH, instant-issuance prepaid, or mailing a check.

source: I don't have a stake in that service anymore, but I used to work on developing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you explain like I'm 5 why ACH debits won't work and Debit Cards will? It must have nothing to do with fees, so you're saying you assume too much risk because you'd only have 2 days to reverse the transaction? I don't know what that would be true - because you guys aren't compliant with Regulation E or something? You should have 60 days.

Edit - reading some of the comments perhaps it's about convenience - 4-5 day wait, I don't know my account number, etc.

<comment><USER8> Note: I work at Balanced

I think you mean ACH credits (payouts) and not ACH debits. The push to debits cards feature is less about the risk and all about the convenience.

The process of collecting bank account information from sellers/merchants has proven to be cumbersome for our customers for three reason: 1\. People rarely have their checkbook on hand 2\. People are less willing to provide that information (Whereas people are more comfortable giving out debit card information since they can always change the debit card number as an added security. It is also much easier to file a chargeback on a debit card transaction) 3\. Bank account information cannot be validated in real time thus, increasing payout delays cause by typos.

I may have completely missed the mark on your question, if so please correct me.

<comment><USER7> Not at all, I get it. This, and I'm just trying to give feedback, wasn't a very well written article for someone who doesn't already understand the problem. After I understood the problem, the post was much, much easier to understand.

If you'd like a method for processing ACH where those three things aren't a problem, gimme a holler - email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will be really cool. We use Balanced for our payments system, and have talked with a lot of our users about pay-outs. The top two problems with getting customers to cash out are the security of giving away their bank account info, and the time it takes to get your check book and input the account and routing info.

I'm curious about how this works though. I think Square Cash is doing something similar right? I've heard rumors about how it works where the company basically posts a refund to the card even if it had never been charged. Is that correct?

<comment><USER8> Balanced employee here.

>The top two problems with getting customers to cash out are the security of giving away their bank account info, and the time it takes to get your check book and input the account and routing info. Another benefit is that the debit card information is validated in real time, rather than waiting 4 business days for ACH credit to fail.

This is the main reason that customers have asked us to add this functionality since a debit card number is much more accessible and safer to hand out.

>I've heard rumors about how it works where the company basically posts a refund to the card even if it had never been charged. Is that correct?

That would be the hacky way to do it. We're planning to push money via the ATM rails which would make the transfer instantaneous.

<comment><USER9> "ATM rails?" Can you explain that a little more?

<comment><USER8> Sure, the transactions would travel along the same rails used when you walk up to an ATM and withdraw funds. When you input your debit card, the information is validated immediately, your balance is then depleted by the amount withdrawn. The push to debit card functionality will move funds along this network instead of the cumbersome ACH network, which take days to process requests and validate bank account information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Balanced.

Pushing money to debit cards is cool, but my customers don't have a problem providing banking details. Especially since payouts are fast as is.

But international payouts, that would be huge!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :D

We're still working on the international story. I care about it a lot, regulations are hard. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it will be pretty cool to see how this plays out and what kinds of debit cards can be used (pre-paid, tied to checking/savings accounts, etc.). I'm even interested if something like this will make it easier to exchange cryptocurrencies remotely without going through a central exchange.

<comment><USER12> (co-founder of Balanced here)

Thanks! We're pretty interested in cryptocurrencies at Balanced [1]. Would love to have your support on this project:[https://balanced.crowdhoster.com/let-s-push-to-debit- cards/c...](https://balanced.crowdhoster.com/let-s-push-to-debit- cards/checkout/payment?amount=25&quantity=1&reward=3)

<comment><USER12> oops forgot this:

[1] [https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/423271986073063424](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/423271986073063424)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh this will definitely take a bite out of paypal.

Please be successful!

</comment><comment><USER14> Even if there is no harm in giving out your bank account number, your bank account number is longer then your debit card and harder to recount. I think this is a great idea and hope it pans out.</comment>


Show HN: Lost BTC wallet password? We might be able to help - <AUTHOR> https://uwsoftware.be/index.php/bitcoin-recovery-service/ <comment><USER2> When I set my first BTC wallet in 2011 I was basically illiterate in computer things. The wallet software told me to create a very hard password, which I did, I thought of a very long password, however memorable -- and I remember it to this day.

I thought my bitcoins were safe because I had remembered that long password (I have probably written it on paper somewhere also), just to discover, 2 years later, that it was worthless without the wallet file that hold my private key, which was washed down the toiled after a Windows breakdown followed by a full computer format (the default solution to all things Windows).

Why didn't the wallet software let me know I had to take care of that single file remains a mistery to me. Why did it put so much focus on the hardness of that password, that would only protect my wallet from my family and my dogs, is beyond my imagination.

\---

Ok, in fact I imagine the password was used to somehow encrypt my secret key so viruses of all kinds wouldn't be able to read it. I, despite being illiterate, understood more of computer things than anybody nearby and had at that time the only Windows computer without a virus in the whole town, probably, so maybe the software should have been clearer to me.

I would prefer to memorize or store my secret key in paper, thank you, than to keep a vulnerable file on my computer, or to memorize a worthless password.

<comment><USER3> Electrum lets you do this. You create a seed of about 10 words. Write them down and you can delete the wallet. I tested this. The issue in 10 years time might be that the original wallet source is lost so at least keep a copy of the exe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What prevents you from running away with the money? There isn't a contact page with real people on it, nor a registered business in the background, I suppose?

<comment><AUTHOR> We cannot walk away with the mony, because we never have access to the full funds. We let the users send a partial wallet only containing the bits needed to check if we have bruteforced the wallet. But without the actual private keys. So therefor we cannot scam our clients. There is a real registered company behind it. USW bvba. We exists already for 5 year HQ Brussels, mostly in creating software solutions. As we did have the knowledge about Bitcoins, we wanted to help lessen the sad stories of Bitcoins (e.g. we have lost our Bitcoins)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would require me to submit known passwords around the time i lost my wallet and details of the variations i use.

I'll need a week to reset every other password i use first.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. That is also something I tell the clients before they are providing the passwords. That they should make sure that all their passwords are changed. Even so, never reuse your password for Bitcoins as they are too valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool idea. HN readers are probably not your target audience, but I'm sure there are lots of non-tech-savvy bitcoin owners who could be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, but you never know. Also first pitching to tech savvy people. As we try to reduce the scammy part (not a lot of business really trying to recover the coins for the customer). Thus any advice is welcome ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a free tool to do this on your own without trusting anyone else:

[https://github.com/peterjkrey/bitcoin_recover](https://github.com/peterjkrey/bitcoin_recover)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely helpfull as other tools. But this recovers the secret key only if you didn't add a password to your wallet. Also we provide a service, because not everybody knows the inner workings of Bitcoin. Luckily we have a lot of these tools for tech savvy people. We also pledge to send Bitcoins to the third party tools that we use while recovering!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This very vaguely reminds me of the rainbowcrack services back in the day!

</comment><comment><USER9> "Thus we created mechanism of extracting the information we need from the wallet to verify the password, but without actually sending the full wallet. "

how this part works, can you explain?

<comment><AUTHOR> In you wallet, not all addresses have budget. But they are still encrypted. So we can check the decryption phase with parts of the wallet that have no coins.

<comment><USER9> Sorry but it doesn't make sense:

You are getting a percentage, 15%

\- how you will know how much BTC I have, only thing I am giving you is one empty address, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> That part is based on trust. Most clients are happy enough that we have recovered their funds and are also doing their end of the deal. If there are to much clients not doing their end, then we will have to scratch the partial wallet deal. But at the moment we didn't have any client rejecting the fee.

<comment><USER9> Wishing you good luck, sounds like totally legit, even trusting service, I will refer in the future for sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Distributed Apps Framework - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been working with Distributeds for a while .. ever since the RPC, the arrival of Java RMI , CORBA DCOM and now .NET. I dont know but for some reason I like working with .NET a lot more than I would have liked working with JAVA's RMI. I admit its been a while since I worked with RMI in java but I dont think it still matches up with the lease manager idea in .NET. anyone care to comment on that?</comment>


Normalization in Gradient`s Point of View - <AUTHOR> What effect does normalization layers have on the gradient? (Link: https://goo.gl/48ai3o) <comment><USER2> Unobfuscated URL (link shorteners are not allowed on HN): [https://towardsdatascience.com/normalization-in-gradient- s-p...](https://towardsdatascience.com/normalization-in-gradient-s-point-of- view-manual-back-prop-in-tf-2197dfa3497e)</comment>


IPv6 day: Turn Off IPv4 on 6 June 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2013/12/campaign-turn-off-ipv4-on-6-june-2014-for-one-day/

<comment><USER2> I had* an IPv6 tunnel for about a year and only a few months ago I turned off IPv4 to see how far we've come.

Practically everything broke. Nearly all websites I use on a daily basis didn't work. The frustrating thing is a lot of programs broke as well, usually because of a single weak link; e.g. Bitcoin failed to bootstrap, Bittorrent couldn't reach most trackers. etc... however I'd regularly see IPv6 traffic in Little Snitch so these programs did support IPv6, it's just whatever they use for bootstrapping didn't.

My experience was a lot of websites/programs have partial support but usually a key component isn't dual stacked which breaks the whole thing.

For instance, despite the fact my router has built-in IPv6 tunnelling, I can't manage the admin interface over IPv6.

* Me disabling my IPv6 tunnel wasn't related to this, it was extremely unstable; it dropped at-least once a week which was quite disruptive. If anyone can recommend a tunnel provider other than SixXS, I'll participate on the 6th.

<comment><USER3> _Me disabling my IPv6 tunnel wasn 't related to this, it was extremely unstable; it dropped at-least once a week which was quite disruptive. If anyone can recommend a tunnel provider other than SixXS, I'll participate on the 6th._

Pardon my french, but in 2014 there should be no fucking need for you to tunnel.

While IPv6-day in 2013 was about showing how IPv6 isn't "scary" and that enabling it wont cause havoc around the internets, like lots of site-admins irrationally feared, I think the main point this year is highlighting and shaming ISP which still haven't gotten their act together.

If you need to tunnel to "participate" in this years event, your ISP is the target. Go ask for native IPv6.

Edit: Other people in this thread seem to say otherwise. Anyway: How can you disable IPv4 when your tunnelled IPv6-connection relies on it?

<comment><USER2> My ISP (BT) has a full IPv6 implementation but it's not targeted at home users right now. I'll try contacting their customer support to ask about rollout plans but frankly, I don't think I'll get anywhere.

Personally, I think the point of IPv6 day was to provide people with something to access over IPv6. I got a tunnel after IPv6 day but I think I only used it on Google.

 _How can you disable IPv4 when your tunnelled IPv6-connection relies on it?_

For me I was able to disable IPv4 as my router did the tunnelling for me, however I feel this article is primarily targeting those with native IPv6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some commenters seem to be missing the detail that the linked page proposes turning off IPv4 _on your personal devices_ , not on any shared infrastructure or public services, _for one day as an experiment to see how much functionality you lose_ (and maybe motivate you to contact other parties to ask them to improve their IPv6 support).

<comment><USER5> I'm afraid it doesn't really take an experiment to determine what will happen in my case, as my ISP (RoadRunner) doesn't support IPv6 at all (in my area?). So doing this would only result in a day without any internet…

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Because HN (the site itself) is constantly behind the times with regard to anything technological, I just double-checked it's IPv6 status and the results were as expected:

        $ dig AAAA news.ycombinator.com

        ; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3-Ubuntu <<>> AAAA news.ycombinator.com
        ;; global options: +cmd
        ;; Got answer:
        ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52093
        ;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

        ;; QUESTION SECTION:
        ;news.ycombinator.com.		IN	AAAA

        ;; Query time: 2 msec
        ;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1)
        ;; WHEN: Sun Jun 01 21:29:45 CEST 2014
        ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 38

        $ ping6 news.ycombinator.com
        unknown host

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will redirect all IPv4 to a static page on my site. It's a clear and simple message to the consumer: your ISP does not give you a modern and adequate service. This is costing me money, I have to pay for IPv4 addresses and I estimate the loss to be significantly higher than 1/365 of my costs. So it's only natural to reciprocate and deny service for 1/365 of a year.

The only people who should do this are webmasters. If network admins do it, they are breaking IPv6 exactly when it's the only means to get to my site. It's also critical that the services are still accessible but non-functional and give a clear reason for it: you are not receiving a proper Internet service. As opposed to a nondescript error message.

Savvy consumers can do it too, off course, but it would have an impact of exactly zero in the grand scheme of things, since deploying IPv6 will cost providers more than the lost 0.05% traffic for a day.

<comment><USER6> I mean no offense, but this is a bad idea. The OS X implementation of Happy Eyeballs[1] doesn't prefer IPv6 over IPv4, and will often choose IPv4 in a dual stack environment, even when there's perfectly good IPv6 connectivity[2]. The end result of this, of course, is that users are going to see a page bemoaning their ISP when they've done everything right.

Furthermore, I find the reasoning behind breaking your site for a day quite laughable. Do you spend any extra time developing the site for browsers and operating systems other than your preferred? If so, you should block them out for a period of time as well because, by your logic, it's costing you money.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Eyeballs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Eyeballs) [2]: [https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/hampered- eyeballs](https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/hampered-eyeballs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Any implementation that prefers IPv4 over IPv6 is broken by design, see RFC3484. While I do understand people will do whatever it takes to get things working in the face of incomplete and barely functional IPv6 roll out, that road can only lead to chaos; the only solution is to stick to the standards and fix the actual problems.

As for my "laughable reasoning", you aren't really comparing apples with apples. There clearly needs to be multiple types of devices with different capabilities and it's only natural to support your users. On the other hand there is no need for IPv4 on the internet, quite the contrary, almost all of the backbone infrastructure is dual stack for years and we have the solutions to support and isolate legacy IPv4 systems where that really makes sense. So it's not a technical problem, it's an economic and political problem: the people hurt most by IPv4 can't really do anything to force the rest of the internet to move forward.

But coming back to your argument: sure, standard compliant clients are preferable and I will absolutely drop support for clients that cost me more than they are worth. I can't afford to do that with IPv4 but I feel I need to send a message, for what it's worth. Sure, my site is small and I can afford it, maybe next year more people will do it and so on. Some day you will thank us :)

<comment><USER6> I would argue that it's a political and economic problem that certain devices exist without the capability to support the latest HTML5/CSS3/JS standards. I worry that your idealism will serve to only upset users, who will undoubtedly blame you, not their ISPs. It would be wonderful if every device conformed to the RFC, but much like certain browsers don't behave to spec, certain implementations of many other internet technologies suffer the same problem.

Of course, I am a proponent of IPv6 deployment (I doubt you'll find many people who are not), but I can't agree with your assertion that IPv4 has no place on the internet, it's practically impossible to force a transition merely by ignoring the world around you and trudging on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have Comcast in a major market and my CMTS still doesn't support IPv6. My alternatives are truly atrocious DSL from AT&T... and truly atrocious DSL from AT&T.

Consumer awareness isn't terribly useful combined with a lack of consumer choice.

<comment><USER8> At least you have Comcast, who is making an effort to implement v6 (even if you don't have it yet).

I have Optimum, who do not appear to be doing anything remotely related to IPv6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a Friday really?

Never make any major tech changes on a Friday, unless you want to spend the weekend fixing things.

Sure it _should_ be simple to turn on and off, but for some people it won't be.

Or even worse: Your boss says "You're right - get IPv6 working". And then you are only half done by closing on Friday, and again you are working all weekend.

For me IPv6 was as easy as clicking the button "Enable IPv6" in my router and everything just worked, I didn't have to configure a thing, but it won't be so easy for everyone.

<comment><USER10> yeah it's definitely more complex than just allowing IPv6 traffic by adding an AAAA record. For example, many applications will have tracking that expects typical IPv4 address format and will break in the presence of an IPv6 address. So even updating the routing layer won't be enough in all cases. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My router and all electronic devices at our house support IPv6, but it's irrelevant. The only two ISPs in my area only offer IPv4.

So no, please do not turn off IPv4. I would appreciate still being able to connect to the internet on the 6th of June.

<comment><USER12> You can install a tunnel - I used to use [http://tunnelbroker.net](http://tunnelbroker.net) before I got native ipv6. Its free (tunnels are limited to 5mbit though)

<comment><USER11> 5mbit is a mite low.

Also, how much latency does it add?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had earlier disabled ipv6 entirely on my computer as I was noticing with my ISP that ipv6 routes were subject to problems that the ipv4 routes weren't -- sites timing out more often when on ipv6 (which I knew via the handy IPvFox extension), and general slowness issues. All problems went away when disabling ipv6, and came back when re-enabling it.

Is there a reasonable technical explanation for this phenomenon? I'll turn ipv6 back on this Friday.

<comment><USER14> Yes - your ISP just has shitty IPv6 routing (ie. poor peering and transit agreements).

Happens on one of my lines as well ("experimental" IPv6 support that basically reaches only 1/3 of the internet).

Even Europe's largest hosting provider (OVH) has some IPv6 issues (their routers seem to ignore your existence if you do not keep spamming NDP NA packets).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We don't even have IPv4 (except over DS-Lite) :). So, I guess I don't have to switch off IPv4 on my devices to participate...

<comment><USER12> Does everything work? Last time I used a 6 only network (Fosdem) they warned that Android doesnt like 6 only, and I found some services that didnt work over 6to4 at all.

<comment><USER16> It's 464XLAT [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6877](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6877)

As far as I can tell it works extremely well, using android 4.2.2 / nexus 5. You get a real ipv6 address and, 192.0.0.4 for your ipv4 address. Applications think both ipv4 and ipv6 are available.

Edit: above information is based on using T-Mobile USA for internet connectivity

<comment><USER16> Sorry, android 4.4.2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As much as I'd like to participate, removing my IPv4 capacity would result in me having zero internet for the day. I've been asking for well over a year about IPv6 to my ISP and each time they've replied along the lines of 'Erm, well, we're thinking about it, kinda, maybe'.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not aware of any ISPs in Denmark that support IPv6. This sucks. I'm switching to the first ISP that will offer it. But as of right now, if I switch off IPv4 I go offline.

<comment><USER19> Gigabit does, but sadly Gigabit is present only at very few places.

Every year I email the major Danish ISPs, and every year I get the same answer: "Unfortunately we do not yet offer IPv6". I hope Gigabit will be availbale in my area soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Was already planning this :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Prediction: Eventually it will be too expensive or difficult to get IPv4 addresses. At that time, something backwards compatible will come out, and everyone will adopt it, because it will actually be better and necessary.

<comment><USER22> Or perhaps more likely, THAT will be the time that some organizations finally realize that they need to make the move to IPv6. Nothing like an added expense to drive behavior. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> But this time, we're serious. Unlike all the other times.

[0] [http://www.worldipv6launch.org/](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/) [1] [http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2012/01/world-...](http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2012/01/world- ipv6-launch-on-june-6-2012-to-bring-permanent-ipv6-deployment/)

<comment><USER24> When was it not serious?</comment></comment>


Guidelines for enquiries regarding the regulatory framework for ICOs [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.finma.ch/en/~/media/finma/dokumente/dokumentencenter/myfinma/1bewilligung/fintech/wegleitung-ico.pdf?la=en <comment><USER2> I like Switzerland's stance here. Progressive, and not condemning new ideas outright. I think it'll take them far.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a helpful table indicating whether a Payment, Utility, Asset, or Hybrid coin/token: is a security, qualifies under Swiss AML payment law.

The "Minimum information requirements for ICO enquiries" appendix seems like a good set of questions for evaluating ICOs. Are there other good questions to ask when considering whether to invest in a Payment, Utility, Asset, or Hybrid ICO?

Are US regulations different from these clear and helpful regulatory guidelines for ICOs in Switzerland?

<comment><USER4> > Are there other good questions to ask when considering whether to invest in > a Payment, Utility, Asset, or Hybrid ICO?

This paper doesn seem to cover that, only on how regulators should treat investments.

On investing in ICOs, the questions are the same as any other IPO. And, in most cases, just speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> After being forced by the US and other states to remove the bank secrecy laws (which empowered many to hide millions in Switzerland)this tiny country again tries to get ahead in finance and I am pleased to see that they are succeeding and putting themselves ahead of everyones else in the crypto space.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips/secrets for partnering with large businesses? - <AUTHOR> I know from past experience and from talking with a lot of people that it can be hard to get a response from larger businesses, and even harder to get around their customer service departments and speaking with a higher up.
Many startups have services that need participation from larger vendors in order for them to succeed (for example ShopKick). While working on a previous project a large majority of my emails and phone calls to larger companies that we wanted to partner with were ignored. So HN, what are some tips/secrets to getting a response when looking to partner with a company, and who should you be contacting at that company (the CEO's, the marketing department, etc).
Edit: It would also be great for any business owners who use HN to weigh in on this as well and let us know what works for you and what types of things you ignore when being contacted about partnerships and biz development. <comment><USER3> Well the only successful strategy is to have a pitch that solves some sort of pain point that they are already having.

One of the hardest things to do is pitch something where the potential partner doesn't see a problem. And by 'a problem' here I mean 'is causing pain at the moment.'

You can tell a company until you are blue in the face that you will get them more leads, cut their operational costs, or streamline the experience the customers have when they deal with them. But unless the company 'doesn't have enough leads', 'has a problem with current operational costs', or 'has customers complaining about their interaction', all you will get is a thank you for sharing and nary a call back.

The fact is that the larger a business is, the more averse to changing they are. The reasoning is pretty simple, most larger businesses both don't know all of the variables that are going into their costs and customer experience, and they _know_ they don't know all of the variables. Thus, if the system they are using is working for them (for their definition of working, not yours) then they won't change it. All they see is downside (change makes things worse), and little upside.

The only successful strategy that I have seen work with these folks is to find a way they can somehow canary your product with their own real data but without changing anything they currently have. That may take some extraordinary steps on your part to set up a completely parallel chain, but the payoff is that you can tell your future partner/customer, using their own data, how your change will help them and not hurt their existing system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Start your pitch to the producers not the management. If you're pitching a hospital talk to the doctors/nurses. Bankers for a bank, and associates for a law firm. Don't ask for management or the person in charge. I've dealt with a lot of organizations at a high level. Trying to jump in line and go straight for the CEO will get you lost in the noise. The bosses are already bombarded with requests promising everything.

You need at least one good producer to back you. These people are a lot easier to reach. They aren't usually sold too, and generally are closer to the pain points ("pain points" flow downhill). Once you have someone on the inside to vouch for the idea, then start moving up the chain.

<comment><USER5> _Take this advice_! The people that are actually suffering from the problems your business solves are (usually) not managers, CEO, or anyone at the top. It is the people in the middle or bottom. They are usually also so happy to have something that solves their problems, that they will act as an internal champion for you during the sales process.

It's cliche, but Art of the Start <http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the- start/> explains this tactic very well.

<comment><USER6> Internal champions are an absolute must-have!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel I have to contribute a sob story from my younger days, which is peripherally related, but may have some relevance. This was back when applications were largely desktop based.

1.) See gap in market where the existing software is limited in functionality and difficult to use

2.) Develop software where everyone who uses it thinks it's amazing, easy to use, intuitive etc.

3.) Discover that although everyone loves it, it's really hard to market against the entrenched incumbents

4.) We got a salesperson in who after seeing the product agreed to being paid on an if-and-when the product succeeds basis

5.) Started looking for synergies and partnerships to help market it. Our salesperson had a lot of industry contacts and he used them to find out who the best people were to talk to at various organisations. He also managed to get introductions to some people. Other companies he found out who to approach just by doing some basic research, calling the company and asking around etc.

6.) Found an appropriate partner with huge customer base who was interested in providing it to their users

7.) They show interest, get NDA, legal agreement etc. drawn up, start negotiating

8.) Spend months demoing product, negotiating, graduating into meetings with increasingly senior staff etc.

9.) The main person we were dealing with is replaced with someone else, things go very quiet for a while

10.) After much deliberating be told that they've decided that the product wouldn't provide sufficient benefit for their users so they've decided not to go ahead

11.) Watch them launch a grossly inferior clone of your product a year later and win sweeping accolades

12.) Lawyer tells you initial legal agreement isn't worth paper it's written on

Then we considered open sourcing the product, but it turned out to be a nightmare because we'd used so many 3rd party components that it would've require huge amounts of work to get to a point where we could do so and we'd poured too much time and effort into it already.

As you can see, plenty of mistakes were made. I learnt a _lot_ in the process though. I don't regret a moment of it.

<comment><USER8> if you don't mind, what exactly did your service do?

<comment><USER7> User friendly accounting automation for the personal/SME space, localized for our country. Pulled down transactions from banks, credit card and other sources and did as much work as possible for you, generated a lot of the necessary paperwork for tax and other compliance things etc. It did a lot of stuff around data analysis and memorization so that the user didn't have to do much work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At Topguest, we've signed many deals with big companies such as Hilton Worldwide, IHG, Virgin America, Wyndham, and others despite being in business under a year and not having prior experience in our industry. First, before you even start trying to get a meeting, these 2 things must both be true:

• You have a strong hypothesis of what Company X's specific pain point is, informed by research

• If your hypothesis is right, there is a >50% chance that your product can actually solve their pain point

If both of the above are not true, do not proceed. You will waste your time and theirs.

If both are true, you're in luck. The sequence I propose assumes that you are starting from scratch, just like we were. No flashy connections at the target Company, no warm intro, no impressive track record. This sequence will not result in a meeting every time, but in my experience it has had about a 75% success rate:

1\. All emails to the prospective partner should be sent by someone with a very impressive sounding title, ideally the CEO. This is annoying, since generally titles are cheesy and can be really problematic at startups. But unfortunately titles are important for business development. If nothing else, the email coming from the CEO could make BigCo Manager Y think "Oh well, even though this will likely be waste of 30 minutes, I will get to meet the CEO of Cool Startup Z which could possibly help me somehow in the future".

2\. Avoid agencies. Do not try to get to Company X through their advertising agency, social media consultant, hairdresser, or other service provider. Your goal is to get a meeting with a decision maker as fast as possible. Going through an Agency will both put your starting point far away from a decision maker, and at minimum will 2X your timeline.

3\. Develop an unhealthy addiction to LinkedIn. Utilize the Advanced Search function to find people at Company X that can serve as entry points for your quest. Here are the characteristics you are looking for:

i. Have one type of common thread with you that you can use as an anchor. Same college, used to work at same company, played same sport in college, were at same conference X years ago, etc. Use Google to augment their LinkedIn profile to help identify a common thread. Note, LinkedIn connections in common does not = common thread. Generally I never use weak LinkedIn connections to get an intro because a. odds are that your in-common connection does not have influence with your prospect, so you'll just get jerked around, and b. I personally have far more respect for ambitious people that smartly reach out to me directly vs. having intermediaries I don't know well facilitate introductions.

ii. Are likely in a "Decision Making" role. Guess what? Very few jobs at big companies are actually "Decision Making" roles! It is hard to tell who can make decisions and who can't, and even titles can be very misleading. But generally, Vice President of X, or Sr. Director of Y have at least some decision making power.

iii. Work in the department who would most likely be purchasing (or testing) your product. Use your sleuthing powers to figure out what the right department is. If you have researched your market this should not be that hard. iv. Their online footprint indicates they are ambitious. Beyond LinkedIn, check Twitter, Quora, blogs, news articles, Facebook, etc. and make a judgment call on whether the person appears to be ambitious or not. Ambitious people become champions of new ideas and introduce them to organizations. Un-ambitious people do not.

4\. Obtain the email address of anyone you've identified at Company X who meets at least 2 of the 4 criteria above. We will call these people your "prospects." Do not message prospects over LinkedIn, that's amateur. If you can't find the email address of a prospect, find the email address for someone else at the company and insert your prospect's name into that format. Works every time.

5\. Email only the best person based on the Criteria from #3 above. Crafting this email is an art, and you must get it just right. There are many great blog posts on how to cold email people, I suggest reading them. For the purposes of this sequence, here is what I suggest:

i. The subject line must contain the single most impressive thing about your Company to Random person X. Not the most impressive thing to you or your team who know about all the goodies under the hood, but the must impressive thing to a random person from the street. If you have backing from 'top tier' investors or a star advisor that your prospect will have heard of, use in your subject line

ii. The first sentence of the email must establish your credibility. E.g. "I am the CEO of Startup Q, recently featured in The Wall Street Journal [link]. We are building X for Y"

iii. The next sentences must exploit your common thread, or subtly hint as to how you could help this person get ahead; preferably both. Here is an example: "I am also a graduate of Georgia Tech (Sci '08!), and am reaching out to you since our Product is delivering 200% ROI for Vaguely Competitive Company Z."

iv. The next sentences must illustrate that you get what is important to the Company and have an idea of how you could help. Here is an example: "I'm impressed by your efforts to grow Brand Z's Facebook fan base. I read about Initiative X in AdAge and it seems like you're at the cutting edge. That's why I believe a simple tool that lets Company X sell products to Facebook Fans could be useful and interesting for you.

v. Close the deal with a specific request for an "introductory conversation" and suggest a few dates.

6\. If this person gets back to you within 5 business days, awesome. Prepare a brief presentation, and try your hardest to have the meeting in person. Real connections between people are developed in person not over the phone. And the hardest part of selling is a developing a real connection with the prospect.

7\. Most likely, your first email attempt will not elicit a response after 5 business days. Do not despair! Rather: i. Move on to the other prospects you identified from LinkedIn, using the same email format as above. Email each of these people separately, at the same time. ii. Forward your initial email back to the initial prospect attaching a new and interesting relevant news article, a statement to the effect of "I know how busy you are", and a new request to meet with your updated availability

8\. If you have one person willing to meet with you by now, awesome. Proceed with step 6.

9\. Most likely, you'll still have no response. So follow up with each of the additional prospects you emailed in Step 7 with a similar follow up note.

10\. If still no luck about 15 business days from when you started, email your initial "best" prospect and "second best" prospect together in the same email. Say something to the effect of "touched base with each of you and wanted to follow up. Do either of you have availability to connect? We have made progress X, Y, Z since my initial note and I'd love to update you." Emailing both the people puts a competitive dynamic at play where neither person wants to look like a slacker to the other person, therefore making at least one of them more likely to write you back.

This sequence should help you get your initial meeting. But the real work starts after… From initial meeting to "sale" could take months… or years. Unfortunately my post is way too long as is, so will save the rest of my business development advice for another time ☺ Hope this helps a bit!

\--Geoff

<comment><AUTHOR> Great information Geoff thanks so much for posting this. Out of curiosity, is this the approach that you took to secure each of the partnerships that you have with the large companies? What was your success/fail rate like before you finally had some biters?

<comment><USER9> When we first started, I used this approach to contact execs at about 7 of the largest loyalty programs in the world. Of those 7, 4 are now Topguest clients. The lead times from initial contact to live integration have ranged from 3-8 months (patience and structural ability for the company to deal with long lead times is really key with enterprise sales)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Few tips:

This is based on experience working with large tech companies - not sure how similar this will be for your targets

\- Be ready not to hear back (looks like you already are)

\- Use linkedin. It will help you understand the org structure and who is between the people on the management page (CEO, etc) and who picks up the phone when you call their 1-800 number. The people you want to be talking to at first are probably somewhere in the middle. With a lot of companies you can start to guess what their pattern for email addresses is. If not InMail works occasionally

\- If you are reaching out to someone cold or semi-cold, try to connect what your company is doing with some hot button issue or topic in the industry (as they are likely already thinking of ways to work on this). Offer up something that would be interesting to them (e.g. info on how companies similar to them are approaching the problem - ideally something that they couldn't find out by surfing the web). This is often a way to start up a conversation and understand if there really are opportunities to work with the company

\- If you are working with their customers, partners, competitors (even peripherally) - leverage that. In the end you are going to have to show them how your product is going to drive more revenue, gain more market share, cut costs for them (or whatever your value prop is)

\- Make it easy for them to say yes i.e. be flexible. don't ask for them to drive 2 hrs to see you. offer up some some possible times for a call, etc

\- Sometimes it helps to start lower down on the chain. It will give you a lay of the land and maybe some introductions to the right people. Leverage your connections (friends, investors, etc) - its worth talking to anyone in the company rather than not talking to anyone.

\- Conferences can be a good place to try and corner people :)

\- If you really have no way of getting to someone in the company - <USER2> service reps will likely be a dead end. Sales people will be slightly more help, but mileage will vary. If the company has some sort of partner program try and join it. At the least it will get you connected to someone in the company

\- Its a process. You will likely talk to 10 people before you get to the right one

\- Timelines are always longer than you expect. Nothing is done until its done.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> I am very interested in seeing where this discussion goes. I don't have much to add per-se BUT I do, however, remember seeing this some time ago: [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to- get-g...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to-get-george- bush-or-the-ceo-of-google-on-the-phone/)

Perhaps you will find it a bit helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually read this post earlier today when searching for tips/ideas. I'm interested in stories of people from HN and what they did to get a response too, so I look forward to where this discussion goes. Thanks for posting the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> By a mile, the best way to get my attention is to send me business. I've got nearly infinite patience for people who have already "shown me the money".

If you're really a good biz dev partner this shouldn't be hard.

</comment><comment><USER13> Find a product manager in the business to champion you. There are many regional meet ups for product management professionals such as this - <http://www.svpma.org/>

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that has worked for us is following them around. I mean literally. Find out what conferences the CEO is speaking at and approach them after they get off the stage. Sounds scary-stalkerish but it works. Even if you just get their card and make a quick connection. I've done this before for FeeFighters and gotten many meetings/partnerships out of it.

The other thing is LinkedIn. A warm introduction counts for a lot. Build your network, you never know who might help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your outside the box thinking on this instead of sticking with the typical email/phone call.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone going to TiE Atlanta Entrepreneurial Summit this saturday? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious to see if any HN'ers are going and wanna meetup? I still haven't signed up and am debating if I should.<p>http://www.tesatlanta.com/summit_details.html <comment><USER2> I'm in Atlanta. Though this may be legit, it smells like a scam to me: "pay us money and we'll consider funding your business."

Since you're a blogger, you may be able to get a "press pass", though.</comment>


Modern community building - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/05/26.html

<comment><USER2> This is more of a job listing than an actual "blog" "post" per se.

<comment><USER3> Kawasaki I know, but who are Godin, Ries and Trout? Pretty sure "trout" at least will be an unproductive google search.

<comment><USER4> Godin is Seth Godin, who writes about online marketing and product development here:

<http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/>

Many of his articles are immediately applicable to your start up, and in my opinion, are extraordinarily valuable.

Eric Ries writes about agile development and small start up culture/strategy here:

<http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/>

I have not read many of his articles, but my understanding is that he is making quite a name for himself as a start up guru.

Trout escapes me as well, I have not heard of him.

<comment><USER5> I guess Jack Trout is meant, an author of some marketing books: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Trout>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> #1 Skill for successful community building: Hustle. If you can combine hustle (and bury any feelings of shyness) with some level of domain expertise, then you have a good chance of fanning an ember into a small flame. I've noticed this as I build and cultivate interest in UXForum.com. I relentlessly reach out directly to industry folks by email/skype/IM/phone/in-person to talk about what I'm building, how it will provide value to them and to generally sell them on the vision. You have to love doing it and you have to enjoy people.</comment>


Show HN: Generate SVG patterns (without D3) - <AUTHOR> http://jannisr.de/svg-patterns/ <comment><USER2> My first question was: why without D3, but to be honest it's pretty good and simple :) you don't always need all D3 just for _some_ features. Nice work.

PS: the link for your github repo is kinda tricky to find at first :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > My first question was: why without D3, but to be honest it's pretty good and > simple :) you don't always need all D3 just for _some_ features.

Even for bigger projects, I prefer not to use D3. Coming from a data journalism / data science background this may make sense, but from a web programming perspective, D3 has a pretty weird way of create DOM nodes etc.

I prefer a straightforward solution: a function that gets data and returns dom/virtual-dom.

> PS: the link for your github repo is kinda tricky to find at first :)

Will do something about it, thanks.</comment></comment>


Odd Behavior And Creativity May Go Hand-in-hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050907101907.htm

<comment><USER2> "Brugger hypothesized that schizotypes should make novel associations faster because they are better at accessing both hemispheres – a prediction that was verified in a subsequent study. His theory can also explain research which shows that a disproportional number of schizotypes and schizophrenics are neither right nor left hand dominant, but instead use both hands for a variety of tasks, suggesting that they recruit both sides of their brains for a variety of tasks more so than the average person."

At last, I know why I take pen and fork in the left hand but throw and do a variety of other tasks with the right hand! I'm also pretty positive I'm a "schizotype" as they say.

</comment><comment><USER3> In other news, exceptions are rare.

</comment><comment><USER4> So what constitutes odd behavior?

<comment><USER5> If you have to ask, you might be creative. Congratulations!

<comment><USER6> It's curious how you thought his question was odd, while I found it creative / insightful, and in the terms of the article, it doesn't matter whether it was one or the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I guess I'm creative. Neato.

<comment><USER8> We have discovered we are creative too.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Nirvana Pilot Yume – A Modern Take on Skyroads - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com/app/716680/Nirvana_Pilot_Yume/ <comment><USER2> Hi, developer here. We've been working on this since August, but the idea dates back a few years. We really loved the early nineties game Skyroads and played it extensively at the time, and it was a sign for us to discover that it was made in Estonia, the very same place where we established our team in 2013. Nirvana Pilot Yume is also an experiment of mixing two different genres: space races and visual novels with a '80s anime style. To complete the recipe and exhalt those retro atmospheres, a synthwave soundtrack by the hungarian band Retröxx. Looking forward to get feedback and suggestions!

Website: [https://nirvanapilotyume.dev9k.com/](https://nirvanapilotyume.dev9k.com/)

<comment><USER3> Awesome graphics! Can't wait to try it out! :)

<comment><USER2> Thank you jaakk, much appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a game devloped by dev9k, inspired by the DOS cult game Skyroads. I gave it a try yesterday, really enjoyed the soundtrack and the gameplay. The story driven aspect is a bit slow for my taste though.

</comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me of the 90s arcade games. I spent tons of coins on those evil machines... And I'll spend some good time on this masterpiece too :)</comment>


The Fundamental Problem with Non-iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.techjunkie.com/problem-with-non-iphones/

<comment><USER2> This reads like a parody of all these types of blog posts.

I mean: "The iPhone plainly put is the perfect phone size. It feels right, this is not something Steve Jobs would have gotten wrong."

Totally made me chuckle. Upvoted for the brilliant parody value alone.

<comment><USER3> It gets even better if the rumors about a 4.1" iPhone come true...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The issues he touched on have been discussed ad nauseum. However, the sad thing is that after 4 years Android is still suffering from the mistakes of the carriers and handset makers. Bloatware continues to be an issue for many supposed flagship devices. Sure, this can be remedied by rooting, but the average consumer isn't going to root their phone. Not everybody is a geek and can use the term ROM in a casual conversation. Also, the slowness of software updates really is maddening. It's silly for a 6 month old phone to not receive the latest software or have to wait a very long time to get it. I understand the fact that new versions of Android often require certain hardware specs that older devices don't offer. I just think it's a tough pill to swallow that the phone you walk out of the mobile store with might become an after though to the OEM and Google within a few months. The clear solution is to get a Nexus phone. At least then you know you have Google looking out for your best interests. Hopefully the Motorola acquisition helps Google solve some of these issues. It's in everybody's best interest to have strong competition in the mobile space.

</comment><comment><USER5> Size is a matter of preference, not a fundamental problem. I have an HTC Sensation. It's bigger than the iPhone and fits my hand perfectly. the iPhone feels like a little kids toy by comparison. I like the bigger screen, but I'm a bigger guy so it's obviously not for everyone.

Names? Please. If you are choosing your phone based on its name you're a lost cause.

Resale value: a fair point, depending on the model. It's also fair to say that you'll generally pay more for the iPhone up front. There are far too many Android models to make the blanket statement that iPhones have more resale value than all Android phones.

Carriers: Bloatware is an annoyance, but at least with Android phones you can do something about it. You have options: Switch carriers. Root and self- install the latest OS (or one of several mods).

None of these points constitute fundamental problems with non iPhones. It's all a matter of preference. If you're the sort of user who doesn't care about being locked-in then sure iPhone is great. If you're a tweaker, if you like having control over your devices, if you like to self manage your OS then Android is for you.

</comment><comment><USER6> "You mean forced updates and taken up memory to keep these applications on my phone that I have no desire to have? Great." This happens with the iPhone, too. Stocks? Compass? Newsstand? Does anyone actually use those?

</comment><comment><USER7> The iPhone 4S's weight has certainly put me off having one. Despite liking near everything else about it, walking around with it in my pocket, it's a noticeable, heavy, lump.

<comment><USER8> I quite like the weight actually, it reminds me that I haven't left it behind somewhere.

<comment><USER7> _I quite like the weight actually, it reminds me that I haven't left it behind somewhere._

Heh, that's a good point, and one I hadn't considered :)

My wife remarked that the heaviness made her think of good quality; something I consider the reverse to have been true of for quite a few years now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds similar to me. I had android phone, it was one of the first and it was slowly. Every day I wanted to break it several times, then I bought iphone. Now there are no touch cell phones in the world, except iphone, for me.

I realize this can be changed, since Steve died.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Out of a lineup, I couldn't tell you the name of the most recent compared to the name of the oldest"

This is going to sound silly later this year when Apple starts calling all their iPhones "the new iPhone".

</comment><comment><USER11> We have a Facebook group for the posting of First World Problems. I invite the author to join us there.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a fan of Apple BUT iPhone is perfect :)

<comment><USER13> Just yesterday I took the same photo with the latest Nokia Lumia and an iPhone 4. Let's just say that Lumia's photo-camera performance was very sub-par compared to the iPhone, which was launched more than one year ago.</comment></comment>