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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

A common thread:

When someone starts this way, I break in and say as politely as I can, “What’s on your mind?”

From the Comments:

Question: do you in any way prepare people before they meet with you for the first time, with guidelines for how you like meetings to go?

Answer: It varies. I used to send out a "how to meet with me" note but there's now so much on the web that it should be easy for the person to prepare by just doing a quick search on Brad Feld Meeting"

This is pretty haughty and I see this type of junk a lot with the VC/Angel investors out there. They are implicitly saying, "clearly my time it too valuable to waste it with courtesy or respect." Yes, I see that he said "as politely as I can" however the whole idea that I need to google how to meet with someone ahead of time is insane. These people aren't holy figures.

Maybe a better option is to not schedule time with people that you don't plan on being courteous to.

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I dunno, I think Postel's law ("Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.") is about as relevant to interpersonal relationships as software design.

Maybe it's the Brit in me speaking, but I think it's fair to recognize and accept when someone is higher up the totem pole than you and to handle the etiquette properly, even if they're being brusque. A personalized "how to meet with me" rider sounds pretty ridiculous to me, but having an idea of the etiquette around how to meet with an investor in general sounds reasonable.

Spot on. There are tons of those guides available too, so people are taking that advice seriously.

"How to meet with me" could be less pretentious phrased as something like "the meeting style I try to aim for". It's more "let's try to do it like this" and less "here's how you have to act with me", IMO.

The Aussie in me says that if someone wants you to accept and recognize that they're better than you and give deference, they will be impossible to work with and are a poison you should avoid.

Different strokes for different folks, but I look for partners, not bosses.

You shouldn't need to google how to meet with a specific person ahead of time. But you should have an idea of how to meet with someone whose days are packed -- how to be courteous and respectful without taking a lot of time. Whether you're meeting with a VC, potential business partner, potential employee, or a client...

Don't be like http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/141219.html . Everybody's time is more valuable than that. Have an agenda, and a plan to discuss that agenda at a reasonable pace.

100% agree, everyone on each side should be respectful and understand how to interact. If the people that they are interacting with genuinely don't know how to do that because they are so amateur, then help them along - be a mentor.

If these VC and Angels really want to be taken as stalwart leaders and mentors they claim to be, they should be taking the time to help the people that they are investing time/money into learn how to interact in the fast paced/high stress world. If they want to act like asses then they can be treated like the rest of the finance world as the money hungry nihilists that they are.

I doubt most/all of that applies to Brad individually, but I have run into waay too many Angels and VCs who think they are demi-gods that have no time for people and then claim all day how they are the role models for tech startups, moral lighthouses etc...

That could be the case, but I don't think it's necessarily so.

If I go into a favorite restaurant when things are slow, I will happily chat with the staff. But if they're in their busy period, I am all business: I briskly give my order and otherwise work to minimize my time demand.

That is not them being haughty; it is them being busy. And it's me being respectful of that.

That is not them being haughty; it is them being busy. And it's me being respectful of that.

Sure it's not but it doesn't relate to what I was saying was Haughty - specifically sending someone a tip sheet on how to meet with you or expecting them to Google how to have a meeting with you.

To extend your example, it would be more akin to going to the Soup Nazi's restaurant [1] - albeit likely without the hostility.

[1]http://youtu.be/uVqBzP0xdKk?t=23s

I understand his sentiment, but I think there's something to be said for leaving a meeting open-ended beyond simple courtesy. When I was consulting, I found it was best for me to just let my clients talk as long as they wanted to, and rarely if ever interrupt. I learned a lot of really interesting things about peoples' professional and personal lives by taking this approach. While I appreciate that one can't do this all the time, I don't think that exploratory quality should be discounted, and I don't see how it would work if there's never any slack time in the schedule. I'd think it's even more important for a VC who wants to see through the pitch and get to the real story.

When I was consulting, I found it was best for me to just let my clients talk as long as they wanted to...

Your clients were paying for your meeting participation, right? In that case it's entirely appropriate to let them talk as much as they want. I think Feld is in a different position...

I'm lucky if I can get invitees to actually read the agenda before the meeting in order to be prepared.

Thinking of anyone having to google how to meet with me provided a great laugh...

Small talk is orthogonal to courtesy/respect.

The google expectation is haughty. Not the avoidance of talking about things unrelated to the meeting.

Hmmm....

When I'm meeting with someone about a job or contract, I do a bit of research (check on linkedin, look for a blog or twitter account, google to see what else pops up). I hope I'm not being overly reverential.

I imagine if I was meeting with someone to convince them to give me a significant chunk of money, I'd do more research.

BTW, this is the same guy who does (or used to do) random meetings with anyone who signed up on a wiki: http://www.feld.com/archives/2006/01/random-meetings.html

When I'm meeting with someone about a job or contract, I do a bit of research

As you should, that is courtesy on your end. If however you end up finding a stallman-esqe[1] rider, then it will be clear you are dealing with someone who will probably not respect your time.

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci...

Wow, that is an intense list of expectations.

Wow that is epic. I got to the bottom and saw there was a show trimmed parts notice making the list even longer.

And it's absolutely worth reading beyond that.

I LOLed at this bit:

"I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up."

Reminds me of a book I read to my two year old called "I want my hat back".

> [1] https://groups.google.com/a/mysociety.org/forum/#!msg/mysoci...
This should be its own HN thread.

I really can't stand when people get caught up in formalities. As far as I'm concerned, all meetings are time-wasting leisure activities where people revel in their ability to bullshit their accomplishments of the past week. We have piles of technology surrounding us and people still insist on meeting face-to-face to do reintroductions, round tables, and small talk. Sorry, but after the ten-thousandth time of introducing myself to you, "talking a little about myself", and hearing about whatever you were doing at work for the past week, it gets exhausting and infuriating thinking about how much time you're spending in meetings when you could be doing actual work.

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