Example:

I once worked in a startup building a new type of supercomputer. One of the markets we had picked
was the arcane field of production geology. Since I knew nothing about the field, I realized before I
could even hire a domain expert to manage this market, I needed to get educated in depth. I
traveled to all the petroleum geology trade shows and conferences, I spoke to customer after
customer to understand their needs. I spent days in the Houston petroleum engineering library. Just
when I thought I knew enough to fake it as a technical expert in this area, I convinced Chevrons La
Habra research center to allow me to offer their research group a two-hour course on the use of
graphics supercomputers in petroleum applications.
I promised it wouldnt be a sales pitch, just an update on what advances were occurring in
computing that were relevant to petroleum geologists. In front of an audience of 30 or so, I spoke
about the state of the art in computational reservoir simulation and what could be accomplished on
the new class of machines that were coming from companies like ours.
During the question-and-answer session my heart was in my throat, since my depth of knowledge,
like any good marketer, was no more than one level away from being a complete idiot. At the end of
the talk, the head of the research facility approached me and said, That was a great presentation.
Were glad your company hired real petroleum engineers to come speak to us. We hate it when the
sales and marketing types show up and try to get us to buy something.
For one of the few times in my life I was at a loss for words, and I was completely unprepared for
what came next. Heres my card. If you ever want to consider a career in Chevron research, wed be
happy to talk to you. Thats what I mean by understanding your potential customers and problems
in sufficient depth.

An email #1
Subj: iBinom at the edge of genome analytics
Dear Anthony,

My name is Alexandra and I represent an innovative company iBinom which has an expertise in cloud based genome analytics based on raw genome and exome
sequencing data. Our primary focus is to improve inherited disease diagnostics which is especially crucial topic in neonatology and pediatrics.
Our analytic service is simple and fast: a clinician may upload genomic data to our web-site https://www.ibinom.com/ and get a comprehensive medical report less
than in an hour. The report contains a list of mutations detected and scored by pathogenicity as well as data quality statistics. In the next months we are going to
introduce clinical symptoms support system in order to narrow down potentially causative mutations and add more value to genome annotation we provide with.
We seek for collaboration opportunities with professionals in medical genetics across the world and we are curious to know your opinion what challenges you see in
clinical applications of genome analysis for Mendilian disease diagnostics. We invite you to register at our web-site and to access our free-trial offer. We would be
happy to get your feedback about our service and kindly ask you to let register your colleagues working with genome data.
Our developer Anton is going to be in San Francisco early next week. If you could contribute some of your time to meet him, he would be pleased to discuss with you
current needs and opportunities in the field of genome analytics.

Thank you so much,

Kind Regards,
Alexandra

Business Development iBinom

www.ibinom.com
av@ibinom.com

Reaction
Sarah, Claritas:
I checked in with a group of colleagues who have been responsible for
evaluating options for our bioinformatics. Unfortunately, we have
already identified our bioinformatics/ analytics provider will be
announcing that within the next several weeks.
Thank you for being in touch. However, we will not be pursuing an
investigation of your solution.

An email #2
Subj: Boston Innovation Summit; iBinom intro
Our team performs NGS data analytics for inherited disease
diagnostics.
We study different NGS data analysis pipelines and annotation
tools based on public databases (HGMD, ClinVar, dbSNP etc)
and predictive analytics scores such as PolyPhen, SIFT etc.
We are very curious to learn about NGS diagnostic processes
in your lab and to share our experience in data analytics field.
What NGS projects do you usually work on, are there many of
them that relate to inherited pathologies?

Reaction
Sean Hill:
We study genetic causes of neurological disease, and focus on inherited
disorders from multiplex families, though we find de novo mutation in
simplex families. Our dataset currently consist of ~1500 individuals
from 600 families. Our analysis pipeline consist of aligning and variant
calling using GATK and annotating with annovar.
The annotated variants are stored in a mysql database and queried for
pathogenic variants. Like may other labs, our largest problem is
identifying causative mutations from the list of 3-10 (or more)
candidate variants that we usual find in a family. I would be interested
to see how your software can help interpret our data.