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Because you should get to know someone. And people are not defined entirely by what they do. That'll come in time and you'll get to that topic.
by spencerfry 17y ago
Because you should get to know someone. And people are not defined entirely by what they do. That'll come in time and you'll get to that topic.
- swolchok 17y agoAnd people are not defined entirely by what they do. I would expect that entrepreneurs are one of the communities that is very likely to disagree with you.
- spencerfry 17y agoThat's what you might think at first. And that's exactly what I perceived to be the case. But as someone who frequents 2-3 networking (tech/startup related) events a week in NYC for the past three years, that's actually not true at all. We want to talk about things outside of our daily grind first i.e. our hobbies, where we like to eat, what we do in our off time, etc., and where/what we work on will work its way in with time. Why the rush? You're (hopefully) trying to make a friend not pitch a random stranger that will forget you the next day if all they hear about is your company. You don't have to believe me, but I went from knowing nobody in the NYC tech community three years ago to knowing everyone. My initial approach was going up to people and asking "Hey, I'm Spencer, what do you do?" and playing the whole back-and-forth like a recorded conversation. That gets you a routine glazed over eyed response. I then started getting to know people and them getting to know me and everything flipped and I've now made dozens of friends for life where we now get together outside of work, go to each other's birthdays, know each other's girlfriends/boyfriends, go on vacations together, etc. And this all changed when the conversation shifted to being more about the people than only what we did for a living.