"Hi I'm from YOURCOMPANY and I saw you wrote/spoke on/commented about RELEVANTTOPICORTHEME and thought you may be interested in learning more about YOURCOMPANY. I'd love to set up a demo to show you how it can help you with PROBLEM. What day is better for you, Tuesday or Wednesday?"
Hard to argue with this post. It really breaks out the "everyone can start a company" myth into something I've been trying to explain for a while.
The analogy I've been working with is comparing startups to the mid 2000s Poker boom - once the internet made it easier for anyone to play competitive poker, more and more people started doing it. Once one "regular guy" - Chris Moneymaker - won the WSOP and ESPN televised the hell out of it, poker rooms were flooded.
But who did you see still sitting back there taking in this new money? The same old guys who had been grinding out livings on the card table for years. The same guys you see regularly placing in the top 20 at WSOP events around the occasional flash in the pan newbies who get a hot streak.
LinkedIn is the obvious answer.
SellerCrowd may not be a bad idea if you don't mind anonymous sources
Conferences are easy finds for sales people in the exhibit halls.
The level of elitism in the Ruby and by extension Rails communities never ceases to amaze me. Having attended several ruby and rails conferences over the last few years, the belief that Ruby is the language of "good programmers" is so prevalent as to be off putting.
I actually agree with much of this. Having attempted to "re-learn" to code since my time in college I got several lessons in before hitting a wall where the on-site messaging failed to be helpful anymore. I loved the concept, and was more than able to find help with Google and friends, but to keep things on-site and cohesive, they'll have to improve some of that.
PS- I know that most developers google answers as much as they write things
Speaking as a salesperson this article has a few things that I find difficult to agree with:
1) Sales vs BizDev - As described in the article the sales people he's looking for are great for one off transactions, not for building a real client base that will refer and keep coming back. Remember how you like to be sold, for bigger things most people want to know and trust the person they are buying from.
2) Domain Knowledge - which is easy to teach, sales or what you do? Hire a good salesman and teach them your business
The idea is sound and I've seen a number of startups go the wrong way with it, but those two stood out to me.
It's all about having the right campaigns and optimizing for conversion. It isn't easy, but it is certainly doable for most people. Adwords is like golf - it's a simple game to play but the being good requires a mastery of nuance and fine details that takes lots of experience.
The problem that Apple is avoiding though is having a bad experience because you have an outdated OS - this occurs on the desktop with OSX as well. Because older OS won't handle newer software gracefully they just "Force" the upgrade. Not saying I agree with it, but that's the assumed policy.