There was a whole lot more I got from Seth and friends in the brief one day I spent with them, but this is the top ZOOM stuff I am injecting into my company.

3 Things I Learned from Seth:

1. Subscriptions are magic. It allows you to create and find products and services for your customers, not find customers for your products and services
2. Treat different people differently. Even on the Web
3. A prospect needs to hear your message at least 5 times to become a customer. Create a way that junior people can hear and see it for free

3 Things I Learned from the Participants:

1. Stories sell products–CDBaby.com
2. When you have built a great company and culture people will post and look for jobs THERE even if they can’t be directly a part of the family–www.joelonsoftware.com, www.fogcreek.com
3. Non-profits have trouble flipping the funnel without the unfortunateness of an emergency or crisis event. Maybe it would help if they had a tool for their contributors–www.squidoo.com

1 Thing I Distilled (from a remark by Seth on the dot.com bubble era and a couple of sidebar conversations):

“Design companies that can survive to success, not hope to IPO or sell before they run out of money”