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Learning to consult
Learning to live
Irina Nazarova
Evil Martians, AnyCable, SF Ruby
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Learning to consult
Learning to live
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Learning to live
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Learning to consult
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go-to agency for startups building
developer products
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customers
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What is life?
What is the
purpose of life?
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-so much randomness, chaos, chance
-does free will even exist?
-everything gets lost and forgotten?
-the jury is out…
-…
Human life a bad
abstraction!
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Human culture is a better
abstraction to analyze
the war of all against all cooperation
discovery
creation
continuation
…
culture 🧙
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What is human culture?
-knowledge (books, teachings)
-art
-way of life
How we transform ourselves and future generations
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It’s about how your existence
influences other people,
whether on purpose or not
It’s not about the memoir you write when you’re wise and old
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-how you invent your life
-things you focus on
-how you solve hard problems
-how you express feelings
-how you do the hardest things
this becomes
a part of the
culture
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If you learn to collaborate,
then with every interaction
you spread this knowledge
and skill further!
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The purpose of human culture is
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to learn to collaborate
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To consult is to collaborate
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The key to consulting:
resolve the information
asymmetry
Information Asymmetry:
Hidden Characteristics
Hidden Actions
Costly Information
Gathering
YOU CUSTOMER
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1. Understand value
2. Communicate value
3. Optimize value
Resolving information asymmetry
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how your work creates value inside customer org
Learn how the customer organization works
better than customer
Understand not what you can do, but what their
problems and goals are.
Understand
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-Test high-risk hypotheses
about the world
-Iterate to
fi
nd a product
that can be built to
capture a market
Understanding a startup
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-customer seems not
super happy
Example: misunderstanding
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Solution:
separate
product and
platform
engineering
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the value your work creates
what the goal is
what is achieved, outcomes
expectations
Flag changes to expectations immediately.
Communicate
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-we start on amazing high note:
everyone’s excited
-everything’s so good, no need to
communicate so much
-customer looses track of
progress
-we loose track of purpose, the
end goal
-BOOM
Example: miscommunicating
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the value that your work creates inside customer
org
Proactively explore and solve more and more
important customer problems
Trust and relationship is built
Optimize
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Example: optimizing
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Example: optimizing
How it started How it’s going
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Bring value upfront
start with sharing open source,
knowledge, experience, free
consultations etc.
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the value you create in cusomer’s organization
How to consult in 1
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UNDERSTAND COMMUNICATE OPTIMIZE
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-Understand
-Communicate
-Optimize
Example: Startups on Rails research
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1. Position: what you’re uniquely
great at
2. Deliver value (open source, blog,
free consultations)
3. Add social proofs
4. Place links to where people see
them
How to market
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No content
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Thank you!
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See you in San Francisco!
YOU ARE
INVITED!
November 19
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San Francisco
Ruby Conference
sfruby.com
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See you in San Francisco!
evilmartians.com
anycable.io
[email protected]
inazarova @ X, Bsky
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Adrian, Lucian, Jakob, Alex and Stefan