Most every entrepreneur knows that the easiest way to grow the company is when an existing customer or contact tells another person about your product and why the use it or like it. Most messaging apps and social networks grow primarily because of the “invitations” that the early adopters send to others in their trusted network.

B2B companies tend to face a different challenge for most parts. Their best customers rarely want to speak to others about the benefits they obtain from using a product or its bottom-line impact.

The reasons are many – first, they might believe that they lose leverage over the provider for future negotiations, second, they do not want competitors to get access to the same solution and lose a differentiation or third, their company prevents them from sharing information about their tools, techniques, methods and processes.

The biggest challenge is for those startups that deal with large companies and sell to enterprises versus selling to small and medium businesses. They tend to rarely provide testimonials, be very closed about their actual usage of the product and tend never to let employees use work email to identify them when signing up for SaaS products so startups cant identify them.

Which is the primary reason why many SaaS products start by gaining customers among the smaller companies and other startups, even if their product is most valuable for larger organizations.

What should you do if you are faced with this situation? I had a chance to talk to 3 entrepreneurs who are all selling to larger companies and there are 3 techniques that seem to work. None of the entrepreneurs said they worked all the time or worked for all companies, and they all mentioned the techniques were hit or miss, but they were worth trying.

First, aligning to the company’s corporate message or correcting a perception helps a lot. In this case the PR team or person is your best friend at the large company. Many large companies are looking to either a) enter new markets, b) change their perception or c) get new products or services out to the market. The more messaging and press that reinforces their goal to get a new message, the more favorably they take to press and testimonials. Be warned though, that corporate PR departments are immensely risk-averse and rarely if ever will want to be the first to be seen as someone that endorses a product.

Second, getting it written in your contract (that they will provide testimonials and speak to the press about product usage) always helps. Most companies negotiate a discount or customer service and support requests in exchange for their participation and it tends to be worth it for most startups. Sometimes large companies wont allow the usage of their logo, so be aware of their policies and put the right words in your contract so both logo usage and testimonials are covered.

Finally developing a champion internally who you support by going above and beyond to be successful does help. Typically if this person gets promoted or does better at their job because of your product, they are more willing to be supportive. How can you help them? Provide them tools, presentations, worksheets and other collateral to be able to sell the work they did internally (when there are best practice sharing events) at their company.

All these are useful for testimonials, but how do you get customers who are reluctant to share what they do with your product with others in the industry or their potential competitors? I’ll try and cover that tomorrow.

There is a lengthy piece on the New York times on Amazon’s employee culture. It is largely negative on their push-to-the-max, dog-eat-dog world and stack rank nature of the company.

Having worked with, know of and learned from over a dozen employees at Amazon, I can tell that it attracts a certain kind of employee. It certainly is not as bad as the article indicates, but many over achievers love to work there.

While many ex-employees have talked about the “challenging” work environment, I have personally talked to ex Amazon employees who wish more companies were like Amazon after they left.

What are the parts that they like the best. Relentless push to do better when you believe you have hit the peak. There seems to be no real “peak”. It is a state of mind. Doing better is what we all strive for and Amazon’s culture pushes you beyond that.

The intense focus on numbers and customer metrics over going by the highest ranking person’s opinion. This happens in many companies, including the best run large technology firms. When the highest-ranking person enters the room, the conversations is about “their experiences”, “their interactions with customers” and their prioritization. Amazon’s not like that, is what people tell me. Data and analysis trumps opinions.

Disciplined experimentation is another area that most folks believe Amazon excels at. The willingness for people to be given the latitude to try multiple experiments over time prevents boredom.

Amazon’s culture may not be good for 80 or 90% of the folks who are seeking employment, and that’s okay since they dont need all the employees of the world to work for them. Just the ones that value work over everything else.

Now that I have explained the other perspective, I have an observation about the impact of Amazon’s inwards looking focus on the company and its customers on the local Seattle ecosystem for startups.

The impact is pretty significant. The number of ex-Amazon employees looking to start companies is far and few between.

There are a few, for sure, but most employees at Amazon work at a startup themselves (Amazon) and are either a) happy working there, b) are burnt out at the end and want an easier job at a larger company or c) dont ever have any time to engage with startups or have time for side projects.

What this means is that many ex Amazon employees make good employees at companies who are trying to reboot their culture, but not a good fit for starting companies.

Most startups would believe that have “made it” when they become a platform. That’s usually when other startups depend on their underlying technology as an infrastructure and include it in their product. Given that most startups are now developing API’s so other startups can leverage this, it is not unusual to see many new startups developing on another startups’ technology.

In the last few months that’s the pattern I am seeing with Uber. Emirates already offers its business and first class fliers the pickup and drop off service from their home or office to the airport and now there’s a company that is partnering with other airlines to provide an app that users Uber as the car service for the airline’s top customers.

I read yesterday about an Uber based escort service as well.

There are many other apps that have been in the works to create a service using Uber. Since they have opened their API, many use cases have emerged.

Open Table has been considering integrating its app with Uber so before and after your table reservation you can book an Uber to pick you and drop you back.

Same for Museum apps – they are looking to offer a full service to provide an ability to use Uber to give the patron a seamless experience.

There are many bar apps that also have integrated with Uber. After a drink or two, or if you checkin to a bar at a given time (using Swarm or Four Square for example), you will be automatically prompted to use an Uber to head back.

In a few cases, I have heard of Ticketmaster and other ticketing apps integrating with Uber for event based taxi rides.

There are many other use cases as well, but all this means more data for Uber.

Where are people taking rides to and from, when are they going, and why (which can be inferred in many, but not all cases).

To become a platform though, you first need a reliable service. Then the ability to evangelize the platform to developers, which means someone that can be at hackathons, build initial prototypes, troubleshoot for other developers and also help them find a way to monetize.

That’s the path Uber is going towards.

I had a chance to meet a team of developers who are building a bachelorette party app last week. The 3 cofounders (all women) were building an experience platform for the entire party. From inviting the friends of the bride to selecting the venue and onwards, they can help plan the entire party.

A key part of their platform is to bring all the “friends of the bride” together to the same venue. That’s where they are hoping to use the Uber API to integrate into their app.

The incentives offered by Uber are pretty good. They claimed they had met with the Uber team and they were told they could get 10% to 12% of the fare as a commission. Which I thought was pretty high, but it makes sense to Uber only if it believes the folks coming to the party wont already take an Uber to the party.

Welcome to Uber as a platform.