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It's easier to ask someone else to be specific, though, than it is to be specific oneself. Sometimes people have something real, but it's instinctive and they h
by gruseom 15y ago
It's easier to ask someone else to be specific, though, than it is to be specific oneself. Sometimes people have something real, but it's instinctive and they haven't yet sharpened or polished it. Under such conditions it's good to evoke it out of them rather than challenging them on lack of specificity.
That may not apply as much to an investor-founder conversation, because a founder should perhaps be expected to say what they mean unambiguously. But in normal conversation, I think it applies a lot.
Even in the founder situation, there are genuinely talented people who lack full articulacy as of yet. Distinguishing those from the clueless requires discernment, and maybe even kindness. I bet the earlier stage you go, the more of an issue this is.
- evincarofautumn 15y agoIt’s a matter of preference. I’d rather be challenged, even in everyday conversation, because I just enjoy debating and getting to the heart of an issue. The most helpful thing anyone’s done for my ideas has been to say “Shut up. Stop telling me I should care and just show me why I should care”. It’s like a good elevator pitch: tell what you’re doing, show why it matters. Good and bad ideas get corresponding reactions—“your idea is bad and you should feel bad” versus “shut up and take my money”, if you will. But if your idea is “frighteningly ambitious”, then they’ll probably just say “yeah, right” or “how‽” For example, I’m writing the legendary “sufficiently smart compiler”; with it, your program will run on many cores and computers as if they were one fast one. Yeah. Right. So yes, it’s a shame when talent goes unrecognised, but founders and funders need to meet each other halfway—somewhere around “fɔunders”, I guess. And there’s no reason you can’t be kind and firm at the same time.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]