How To Meet Anyone | Hacker News Reader

How To Meet Anyone

virool.com

85 pointsadebelov34 comments

I have to hand it to this guy, he has gotten his marketing company exposure on HN twice now in as many weeks, and his other accomplishments are quite notable. The thing that rubs me the wrong way about his articles is they always seem to be predicated on the notion that being really incredibly outgoing to the point of recklessness is the road to success. For example, this post should probably have been titled 'How to bum-rush the Russian Prime Minister and live to tell the tale'. The last one could have been 'How to screw over your competitors and an innocent event organizer to further your startup'.

He is very accomplished, but one wonders if there isn't a way to accomplish the same things without bending the rules so hard.

Reminds me of the joke:

"The Queen of England spoke to me!"

"Oh really?! What did she say?"

"Get out of my way you bum"

He's yet another Tim Ferris. Yes, you can further yourself by violating the rules of society around you and put furthering your own goals above anybody else's considerations.

We can argue all day if that's unethical or just "hacking the rules" - ultimately, it's a choice we all need to make on our own.

While there are ethics involved in deciding whether or not to do things like these, they're actually not choices we all can make on our own, because, like with Tim Ferriss's model, the advice doesn't scale. It will only work for a relatively-few people, and for a limited time, before barriers are constructed.

He's yet another Tim Ferris.

Or Victor Kozeny.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/...

After emigrating to the U.S. as a teenager, he was virtually penniless when he returned to Prague in 1990 at the age of 27. Yet in just four years, armed with only an economics degree from Harvard and a short stint working at the London fund manager Robert Fleming, Kozeny transformed himself into one of his country's most celebrated fund managers, with a personal fortune estimated at $200 million.

Whats with the hate for Tim Ferris. I'm not a fan boy, but you have to admire his desire to try new things and then write about them. He may not be the most agreeable person, but when you have an environment that becomes incredibly ridged its kinda nice to see people like him out there. Even if their findings may not meet everyone's needs.

Also, given the quality of the article in proportion to the speed at which this article was upvoted, I'm not totally sure it wasn't manipulated in some fashion. Decent advice but not worthy of being #1.

I also suspect a voting ring and was surprised as well that this was the #2 article on HN. I skimmed over the sub-heads and it is full of meaningless platitudes. "Be proactive" "Be outgoing" "Dream big" ?

i am the author of this post. seriously voting ring? guys, the title of the article was "How To Meet Steve Wozniak and President" - that alone drove a ton of clicks, when people found it useful, they upvoted it! I can tell you that in a matter of 2 hours, we got around 50 votes, I suspect no more than 6 of them came from people that I know.

If you look at the submitter's content, they comment very little, and they've posted almost exclusively spamming their blog posts and startup. It is a little bit suspicious.

Well, the company (Virool) is a company that makes your content go viral, so if this is true it's almost like credentials for their company... although shady...

I find it a somewhat interesting contrast between the video where the Kairos society is marketed with big goals like solving the world's problems (e.g., health care is mentioned) in innovative ways, but then the actual companies often seem much less, eh, ambitious.

I doubt it's a coordinated effort. Most YC companies will fly to front page regardless of content because other YC founders (that obviously hang out on HN) want to see them succeed.

The net effect is the same but the motive is more noble. You could call it "home court advantage."

It's hard to be too upset by this. If I see a friend's startup on HN, I'm much more likely to upvote.

I think if there is a better way he would have done it. Path of least resistance right? In this case he is a complete stranger and has no social proof so he does what he has to do. Much props to him. Startup is a bitch and this guy gets it done.

You're confusing 'better' with 'least resistance'. Lots of heads of state have met with the Russian president. They did much more work to get to their position, so this is not the path of least resistance. But they likely had a more productive dialog, and they didn't violate any cultural norms. As someone else pointed out, people can only get away with this as long as they're taking advantage of everyone who doesn't act this way. If everyone was blindly self-interested, nothing would be accomplished, and society would devolve. But a few self-interested people can leverage the normalcy of those around them to accomplish things easily.

I have to give him some respect for getting into YC, but based on everything I've seen, I'm not sure exactly what he 'gets done'. Mostly it seems like bragging and social hacking all the way down.

I understand what you mean. It is a social hack but given his situation (aka he is not head of state) I m not sure if there is much else he could have done.

I interviewed Kate Bush a long time ago. This may or may not impress you, but since she's a notorious recluse, it's quite impressive to anyone who is a Kate Bush fan.

Q. How did I do this? A. I made it my life's goal for a couple of years.

So, I'd agree with the OP that you can accomplish all sorts of crazy things if you are obsessive enough about it. In retrospect, however, I might have put those years to better use, and I'm not sure that all that obsession was particularly healthy. I.e., it didn't make me happy.

On the other hand, it's pretty cool to have interviewed Kate Bush, so no regrets.

Link to the interview?

I second this request. That is impressive!

Oh, at this point in my life the silly questions that I asked are just terribly embarrassing to me! I'm sure that you can locate it though, if you really care. The truth is out there!

I've had the pleasure to meet a couple President's and a VP of the United States, Governors, hit golf balls with a Hall of Fame running back, drink with Mark Cuban and more just because I saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. As an example, I found out the President was going to a bar near me for a surprise visit so I got there quickly and placed myself where I knew he'd have to pass. Managed to get a hand shake and exchange a few words. You'd be amazed at how easy it is to meet people if you have a can-do attitude and use a little bit of creativity.

You seem to have high standards for "meet"

I think you mean low standards.

meta: This is the second time in several weeks that we've seen a virool post at the top of HN with loads of votes within just an hour of its posting. It sure isn't suspicious that a company based around viral marketing just happens to have excellent luck getting their HN posts in the top spot on the front page.

If all of their marketing tactics are this transparent, I don't think I would be very inclined to do business with them.

Want to find anyone's e-mail? There's an app for that: http://linksy.me/find-email. Pretty useful.

As long as "anyone" has a Gravatar account with an easy to guess email address. I don't think you'll get Medvev's or Clinton's email in this way...

TL;DR Stalk them.

When I was living in North Carolina, I was reading 'The Mythical Man-Month' and decided to check the wiki page for Fred P. Brooks Jr. (the author). I was surprised to find that he actually worked for UNC Chapel Hill. I found a faculty email address and I was sitting in his living room the following week!

"- If you do come in close contact with someone you would like to meet, don’t be intimidated, approach them!"

This line pretty much sums up the entire article for me. It takes a "all about my wants" kind of approach. It never takes into account how the target of the meeting would feel. I for one, would be pissed if I was at a charity event and people came up to me asking about their own thing. Just doing what you want with blatant disregard to people's feelings is definitely a way to meet any person you want, but I just don't think the outcome would be the same as in this article.

So? What would you do about it?

It's a risk the "target" won't talk to you, but there is little downside. They might think you are a pushy jerk, but they aren't going to do anything. They will just immediately forget you.

If you don't talk them, then nothing will ever happen, guaranteed.

Haha, why does Steve Wozniak have the "Bad Boys Bail Bonds" lanyard my girlfriend does?

Reminds me a book "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi.

$$$$$

Very nice article, reminds me this from Tim Ferris:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/10/how-to-get-g...

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