(Super) Long Post for Investors: S1E7 redflix
In season 1 episode 6 of redflix, I shared my experience of my day 1 at the NetSuite conference. In the pilot episode, I mentioned one shareholder who was able to get an early peak at the floor and the booth the day before the conference ever opened. Something to keep in mind for the future. Try the impossible. It usually works.
Prior to traveling to Vegas, I looked up online to see where the nFusz booth was located. Partially because I am nosy and partially so I could find them when at the show. If everyone remembers, they were going to share a booth with Concentrus who worked with nFusz to accelerate the integration of notifiCRM into NetSuite. What we now know is there were two parallel paths going on at the time.
Integrating notifiCRM v1.0 into NetSuite was the original agreement. Rewriting notifiCRM into a new major release v2.0 and THEN integrating that into NetSuite, that's just crazy talk but was called path 2. In the software development world, where everything that could go wrong, usually does and IT people are notoriously under estimators, I would have said v2.0 build out and then integration, was the 96-1 pony in the race. Guess what? That horse finished first.
Was Concentrus working on version 1 or 2, I don't know. Probably 2 as they were brought in later into the cycle. It was really nice of them to offer to share their booth. There was an investor that was looking into getting a booth or space for shareholders to staff and sell nFusz merchandize. I seem to remember there was none to be had. The way these tech conferences work is, the same players come back every year and the newbies hope to squeeze in some place. Often companies are shut out. If you think about it, Oracle has a lot of partner companies that would love to be on the floor. Not everyone makes the cut.
Newbie companies usually get sandwiched in the middle of an aisle somewhere and these aisle aren't terrible wide considering all the traffic is going on. It's kind of like going through Costco at peak time when they are handing out samples and no one ate lunch.
My Costco strategy is go hungry about 11 something ish, buy a boat load of stuff and leave full. Seems to work for their shareholders too. But even at Costco, you have to have a game plan. When you walk up for the free samples you have to eye the line and then the tray of snausages or whatever crap they are dishing out and start counting backwards and using some new math. "if that person takes two and the next 3 people take one, that leaves 0 for jimmy". That usually calls for plan B.
Tap on the shoulder to the person in front. "Have you tried these before? They are delicious!. Man I ate a bag full and the kids the second bag. Although my whole family did have the poops the next day, I'm not sure this wasn't it, but I am willing to give it another go".
Bingo, you just moved up one slot. Costco sample bashing at work! Now it's not like you cheated someone out of money, just a free snack. The beauty is, it's not like you have to spend the whole day at Costco whining about stuff to get a free sample. Imagine that? You have the afternoon free as a bird and you got a free sample! Holy Grail of getting something for nothing, right? Hmmm.
I went over to a wife's friend's house. Teacher club. First rule of teacher club. You don't talk about TC. Unfortunately for them. First rule of RS club supersedes that. There are no rules. There are no secrets. There are no agreements. No time for that. Only time for friends. Good thing TC had no secrets that night, but you always have to be on high alert
They put together a family band and played a bunch of hits through the night starting in the 50's, and continuing in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I hung around afterwards with a few people and said how much I enjoyed the music, but much, much more, how you all decided in the last year to all play together for the fun of it and without killing each other during practice sessions.
He had one more song and asked me if I wanted to hear it. He said it was silly. Yeah, you guest it. It was about Costco samples. It was the funniest song I've ever hear. He needs to record it and put it on youtube. I think he has other stuff posted there for fun, but this one was funny. Very funny.
OK, where was I? There is redspeed going off an another tangent again. Costco? Old Guy Rocking with his Friends and Fam? What does that have to do with nFusz? Come on Dude!
Could be Nothing. Everything. Somewhere inbetween?
My vote is Everything.
One of the best selling strategies is to give away samples. Costco get's it, musicians get it, Microsoft gets it, almost ever tech company on the planet get it. That's what nFusz has been doing.
So people can bitch and moan about rev all they want but anyone that knows how the tech industry works is to give as much as you can away for free. Dennis mentioned on CEO Money about a company Microsoft just bought and guess what, they are going to give it away for free. Totally insane right? Or just crazy like a fox.
Costco = Free Samples = Huge Success
nFusz = Free Samples = Huge Success
Those that B&M about revs are just showing how ignorant they are of how this all works.
Now on to part two of my tangent. Family. Rory has spoke many times of investors being co-owners. About family. About his employees. Yeah, it could be a big pile of words. It's the number reason why I went to Vegas. Is this real? It really can't be. It just can't be.
I don't know how many times I walked into a room with 20-50 people or to a dinner with a large crowd. My head is spinning and I get tunnel vision and just see what is in front of me. Oh lord find me a chair. Later on I regret not seeing everyone, saying Hi to everyone as I walk in and then during the event/night talking to everyone. I did it on Tuesday. I could have talked to all the nFusz employees. Thank goodness I got out of my chair and talked to at least 1/2 of them. As I was walking out of the restaurant Tuesday night my tunnel vision was expanding a micrometer. I saw Kristin sitting there. I interrupted the conversation she was having, shook her hand and said something like I just had to meet you, you are a rock star.
Note to stupid redspeed, talk to people earlier. No penalty for getting out of chair earlier.
I can tell you Rory is just the opposite of tunnel vision redspeed. He's sees everyone, he's aware of everything that's going on. He talks to everyone. He's not working the room. Far from it. He doesn't need to. He's enjoying life and appreciating everyone's perspective. None of the conversations I saw him in were ever about him. NONE. It was always about others. The only conversation I ever saw him talk about himself was the RV story and that was for us and not for him. In a world were everyone talks about themselves and such super, super trivial crap like what stock they flipped to make $100 bucks, this was refreshing.
Circling back to my Costco Sample band wife friend. Man you never saw a deeper love there of family. Trust me, when you are in your 20's, the last thing you want to do is sing with your Dad who is 70 for many of your neighbors. I saw this with each of the nFusz employees. The trust and love for the CEO. You rarely really see that these days. Rarely. Keep in mind Dennis, Denise, David and many others are moving 200 mph.
Hmmm seems like they lean towards hiring people who's first name starts with "D" or "K", Dennis, Denise, David,Kurt, Kristin, Kendal. Let's find more M, S and A employees for Mitch, Stephanie and Alan so we to even it out. Notice there are no other R as that is reserved!
Circling way back as to why I looked up where the nFusz booth was. So Maui texted me and asked if anyone wanted to meet him at the Netsuite conference as I mentioned in a previous episode. I texted him back and said I have a 20 minute walk and will meet him at the check in. We met. Man hug and went forward to find the nFusz booth. Maui was like, maybe it's over this way. The conference was so huge and I remember my look up before hand it gave me a feel for where we should wonder. A bit like playing the legend of zelda, but we found the booth.
Episodes are getting way, way longer. Still have a few more to write in season one and another day to cover. Just a different respective and the untold story. Do your own DD and don't invest on anything a storyteller says.
In season 1 episode 6 of redflix, I shared my experience of my day 1 at the NetSuite conference. In the pilot episode, I mentioned one shareholder who was able to get an early peak at the floor and the booth the day before the conference ever opened. Something to keep in mind for the future. Try the impossible. It usually works.
Prior to traveling to Vegas, I looked up online to see where the nFusz booth was located. Partially because I am nosy and partially so I could find them when at the show. If everyone remembers, they were going to share a booth with Concentrus who worked with nFusz to accelerate the integration of notifiCRM into NetSuite. What we now know is there were two parallel paths going on at the time.
Integrating notifiCRM v1.0 into NetSuite was the original agreement. Rewriting notifiCRM into a new major release v2.0 and THEN integrating that into NetSuite, that's just crazy talk but was called path 2. In the software development world, where everything that could go wrong, usually does and IT people are notoriously under estimators, I would have said v2.0 build out and then integration, was the 96-1 pony in the race. Guess what? That horse finished first.
Was Concentrus working on version 1 or 2, I don't know. Probably 2 as they were brought in later into the cycle. It was really nice of them to offer to share their booth. There was an investor that was looking into getting a booth or space for shareholders to staff and sell nFusz merchandize. I seem to remember there was none to be had. The way these tech conferences work is, the same players come back every year and the newbies hope to squeeze in some place. Often companies are shut out. If you think about it, Oracle has a lot of partner companies that would love to be on the floor. Not everyone makes the cut.
Newbie companies usually get sandwiched in the middle of an aisle somewhere and these aisle aren't terrible wide considering all the traffic is going on. It's kind of like going through Costco at peak time when they are handing out samples and no one ate lunch.
My Costco strategy is go hungry about 11 something ish, buy a boat load of stuff and leave full. Seems to work for their shareholders too. But even at Costco, you have to have a game plan. When you walk up for the free samples you have to eye the line and then the tray of snausages or whatever crap they are dishing out and start counting backwards and using some new math. "if that person takes two and the next 3 people take one, that leaves 0 for jimmy". That usually calls for plan B.
Tap on the shoulder to the person in front. "Have you tried these before? They are delicious!. Man I ate a bag full and the kids the second bag. Although my whole family did have the poops the next day, I'm not sure this wasn't it, but I am willing to give it another go".
Bingo, you just moved up one slot. Costco sample bashing at work! Now it's not like you cheated someone out of money, just a free snack. The beauty is, it's not like you have to spend the whole day at Costco whining about stuff to get a free sample. Imagine that? You have the afternoon free as a bird and you got a free sample! Holy Grail of getting something for nothing, right? Hmmm.
I went over to a wife's friend's house. Teacher club. First rule of teacher club. You don't talk about TC. Unfortunately for them. First rule of RS club supersedes that. There are no rules. There are no secrets. There are no agreements. No time for that. Only time for friends. Good thing TC had no secrets that night, but you always have to be on high alert
They put together a family band and played a bunch of hits through the night starting in the 50's, and continuing in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I hung around afterwards with a few people and said how much I enjoyed the music, but much, much more, how you all decided in the last year to all play together for the fun of it and without killing each other during practice sessions.
He had one more song and asked me if I wanted to hear it. He said it was silly. Yeah, you guest it. It was about Costco samples. It was the funniest song I've ever hear. He needs to record it and put it on youtube. I think he has other stuff posted there for fun, but this one was funny. Very funny.
OK, where was I? There is redspeed going off an another tangent again. Costco? Old Guy Rocking with his Friends and Fam? What does that have to do with nFusz? Come on Dude!
Could be Nothing. Everything. Somewhere inbetween?
My vote is Everything.
One of the best selling strategies is to give away samples. Costco get's it, musicians get it, Microsoft gets it, almost ever tech company on the planet get it. That's what nFusz has been doing.
So people can bitch and moan about rev all they want but anyone that knows how the tech industry works is to give as much as you can away for free. Dennis mentioned on CEO Money about a company Microsoft just bought and guess what, they are going to give it away for free. Totally insane right? Or just crazy like a fox.
Costco = Free Samples = Huge Success
nFusz = Free Samples = Huge Success
Those that B&M about revs are just showing how ignorant they are of how this all works.
Now on to part two of my tangent. Family. Rory has spoke many times of investors being co-owners. About family. About his employees. Yeah, it could be a big pile of words. It's the number reason why I went to Vegas. Is this real? It really can't be. It just can't be.
I don't know how many times I walked into a room with 20-50 people or to a dinner with a large crowd. My head is spinning and I get tunnel vision and just see what is in front of me. Oh lord find me a chair. Later on I regret not seeing everyone, saying Hi to everyone as I walk in and then during the event/night talking to everyone. I did it on Tuesday. I could have talked to all the nFusz employees. Thank goodness I got out of my chair and talked to at least 1/2 of them. As I was walking out of the restaurant Tuesday night my tunnel vision was expanding a micrometer. I saw Kristin sitting there. I interrupted the conversation she was having, shook her hand and said something like I just had to meet you, you are a rock star.
Note to stupid redspeed, talk to people earlier. No penalty for getting out of chair earlier.
I can tell you Rory is just the opposite of tunnel vision redspeed. He's sees everyone, he's aware of everything that's going on. He talks to everyone. He's not working the room. Far from it. He doesn't need to. He's enjoying life and appreciating everyone's perspective. None of the conversations I saw him in were ever about him. NONE. It was always about others. The only conversation I ever saw him talk about himself was the RV story and that was for us and not for him. In a world were everyone talks about themselves and such super, super trivial crap like what stock they flipped to make $100 bucks, this was refreshing.
Circling back to my Costco Sample band wife friend. Man you never saw a deeper love there of family. Trust me, when you are in your 20's, the last thing you want to do is sing with your Dad who is 70 for many of your neighbors. I saw this with each of the nFusz employees. The trust and love for the CEO. You rarely really see that these days. Rarely. Keep in mind Dennis, Denise, David and many others are moving 200 mph.
Hmmm seems like they lean towards hiring people who's first name starts with "D" or "K", Dennis, Denise, David,Kurt, Kristin, Kendal. Let's find more M, S and A employees for Mitch, Stephanie and Alan so we to even it out. Notice there are no other R as that is reserved!
Circling way back as to why I looked up where the nFusz booth was. So Maui texted me and asked if anyone wanted to meet him at the Netsuite conference as I mentioned in a previous episode. I texted him back and said I have a 20 minute walk and will meet him at the check in. We met. Man hug and went forward to find the nFusz booth. Maui was like, maybe it's over this way. The conference was so huge and I remember my look up before hand it gave me a feel for where we should wonder. A bit like playing the legend of zelda, but we found the booth.
Episodes are getting way, way longer. Still have a few more to write in season one and another day to cover. Just a different respective and the untold story. Do your own DD and don't invest on anything a storyteller says.
6
