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18. You Get No Respect There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect. In

by ardit33 17y ago

18. You Get No Respect There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect. In social settings, I found that I got a lot more respect when I said, "I worked on Microsoft Office" instead of "I work at a small startup you've never heard of called x." Partly this is because the rest of the world just doesn't get startups, and partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad: If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the time you'll find the person instinctively thinks the idea will be a flop and you're wasting your time (although they probably won't say this directly). Unfortunately this extends even to dating: It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women. I did know about that, but I'd forgotten. -- I totally agree with that. My previous job was in a startup, and when I told them "i worked on real-time location based mobile communication", and tried to explain what it was, it will usually go over the head. Now I tell I write the software of Kindle, and girls just dig it. I also heard apple people that work on iphone/ipod get a lot of attention in parties. My dating life has improved a lot. I was thinking why is this, but it might have to do with "everyone has a dream". As children we dream to be rich/famous artist/rockstar/soccer players, etc., but actually few people achieve this status. And girls, the good looking ones, during their lifes will get bombarded with "guys with dreams", and will see them more often to just fail, than go anywhere. So the dream/vision is just that, but normally doesn't pay the bills. Plus, the "dream of a startup", it is a very selfish one. While saying I "work for big corp/famous product", it makes you competent in their eyes, and as you achieved something tangible, and not just dreaming. Maybe I am overanalyizing it, but girls just like a provider, than somebody with a 'dream', but nothing to show for it yet, unless your startup made it, and you have something famous to show.

pclark 17y ago
those horizontal scroll bars are infuriating. when i tell people i work for my own company they're really impressed fwiw (in the uk) - I think tons of people can correlate with how terrible boring jobs are.
thesethings 17y ago
I'll respond to this from both sides, both as "the girl" and as "the person who gets no respect working for a startup." I am the opposite of your last sentence. A guy I like _has_ to have a dream/extreme passion. In fact, I prefer a-dream-and-broke, to no-dream-and-sweet-day-job. Either way I just like people who are focused and excited about stuff. That comes way before their job. (you hear that dudes in bands who sling coffee coz it lets you tour? i keed, i keed...) On the other side of the equation, when i talk about my own entrepreneurial stuff, reaction is all over the place. I think the main thing is that most people, guys and girls, have "a type" (i don't just mean looks, i mean style, subculture, humor, etc) And when when you approach people "cold," without knowing them through some other context (where you volunteer/go to school/hang out and drink coffee/see shows at), talking about your job is kind of this thing you're hoping will get them to change their type, or recontextualize you or something. But the thing is, before we utter the first words about our jobs, the chances that we'd click with that person are mostly determined by other stuff. So while it's very true that talking about our startups doesn't impress most people, it's really the low success rate of the "cold call" to blame :D
- kngspook 17y ago
  That's true for 99% of jobs/people. On the jobs front, there are some jobs that (I suspect) have a much higher "cold intro-ing" success rate. "CEO", "Senator", even "Board of Directors" are all probably going to get people interested in you, regardless of who they are. Except these people generally aren't hanging out in bars trying to met people. Secondly, any time you can get some sort of name recognition in there, I think you will greatly increase your rate of success. A tangential example is that my friends don't give a <expletive of choice> about what "Steve Jobs" has to say, but they're all very interested if I say "CEO of Apple" instead.
arh 17y ago
You're not overanalyzing it - you're making generalizations about women that are naive and, in my view, offensive.
- btilly 17y ago
  It seems to me that honest advice about what actually works in dating usually offends people. Go pick up virtually any book by and for pickup artists. (Or start with a website like http://www.seductiontuition.com/. http://www.seductiontuition.com/.) You will find it full of incredibly crass generalizations about women that are guaranteed to offend. But it works! Pickup artists aren't worried about being politically correct, they are interested in getting attractive women in bed. And they have found strategies with a high success rate. For the converse go pick up dating advice aimed at women like The Rules. (You can find much of it summarized at http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating-rules-for-women.htm. http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating-rules-for-women.htm.) It is full of nasty stereotypes about how to treat men that I find horrible and awful. But it works! The advice is popular because it has helped many women land relationships they are happy with. No matter how much I wouldn't like being treated that way, it clearly works on a lot of guys. Now let me be clear. I don't like either of those sets of advice any better than you appear to. Nor is either relevant to my life - I was lucky enough to fall in love young, and have now been married close to 20 years. However I accept that there is empirical evidence supporting those theories. And the lesson I take from that is that many people don't work like I'd like them to.
  - cousin_it 17y ago
    Wow, your second link (remove the period from the end) made me feel exactly the way women say they feel about PUA/game advice. Good stuff.
  - tomjen2 17y ago
    Thanks for those links. Hopefully I will now fall for some other traps.
- maxniederhofer 17y ago
  The best founder dating hack I've found: stop saying "I have a startup" and start saying "I run my own company." A short sentence, but there's confidence, power, wealth, passion (and a fair bit of pretentious bs) in there.
jlees 17y ago
I think it's proportional to the perceived fame/importance of your brand. My startup launched something locally this summer, associated with a particularly cool event. I get anything from the 'wow you run your own company' to 'wow you made that? I used it' and 'eh'. I don't think it's necessarily a matter of competence/achievement but simply being able to relate. If they've heard of our product then they don't need to spend fifteen minutes having technical buzzwords thrown at them, nor do I need to spend hours unravelling the misconceptions they form. It's just 'oh yeah, you did that? great' and onwards we go away from the fantastically boring topic of 'where do you work'. In circles where people don't find that topic boring (i.e. startup guys) the 'being impressed by working on $foo' doesn't hold anyway.

by ardit33 17y ago

pclark 17y ago

those horizontal scroll bars are infuriating. when i tell people i work for my own company they're really impressed fwiw (in the uk) - I think tons of people can correlate with how terrible boring jobs are.

thesethings 17y ago

I'll respond to this from both sides, both as "the girl" and as "the person who gets no respect working for a startup." I am the opposite of your last sentence. A guy I like _has_ to have a dream/extreme passion. In fact, I prefer a-dream-and-broke, to no-dream-and-sweet-day-job. Either way I just like people who are focused and excited about stuff. That comes way before their job. (you hear that dudes in bands who sling coffee coz it lets you tour? i keed, i keed...) On the other side of the equation, when i talk about my own entrepreneurial stuff, reaction is all over the place. I think the main thing is that most people, guys and girls, have "a type" (i don't just mean looks, i mean style, subculture, humor, etc) And when when you approach people "cold," without knowing them through some other context (where you volunteer/go to school/hang out and drink coffee/see shows at), talking about your job is kind of this thing you're hoping will get them to change their type, or recontextualize you or something. But the thing is, before we utter the first words about our jobs, the chances that we'd click with that person are mostly determined by other stuff. So while it's very true that talking about our startups doesn't impress most people, it's really the low success rate of the "cold call" to blame :D

kngspook 17y ago
That's true for 99% of jobs/people. On the jobs front, there are some jobs that (I suspect) have a much higher "cold intro-ing" success rate. "CEO", "Senator", even "Board of Directors" are all probably going to get people interested in you, regardless of who they are. Except these people generally aren't hanging out in bars trying to met people. Secondly, any time you can get some sort of name recognition in there, I think you will greatly increase your rate of success. A tangential example is that my friends don't give a <expletive of choice> about what "Steve Jobs" has to say, but they're all very interested if I say "CEO of Apple" instead.

arh 17y ago

You're not overanalyzing it - you're making generalizations about women that are naive and, in my view, offensive.

btilly 17y ago
It seems to me that honest advice about what actually works in dating usually offends people. Go pick up virtually any book by and for pickup artists. (Or start with a website like http://www.seductiontuition.com/. http://www.seductiontuition.com/.) You will find it full of incredibly crass generalizations about women that are guaranteed to offend. But it works! Pickup artists aren't worried about being politically correct, they are interested in getting attractive women in bed. And they have found strategies with a high success rate. For the converse go pick up dating advice aimed at women like The Rules. (You can find much of it summarized at http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating-rules-for-women.htm. http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating-rules-for-women.htm.) It is full of nasty stereotypes about how to treat men that I find horrible and awful. But it works! The advice is popular because it has helped many women land relationships they are happy with. No matter how much I wouldn't like being treated that way, it clearly works on a lot of guys. Now let me be clear. I don't like either of those sets of advice any better than you appear to. Nor is either relevant to my life - I was lucky enough to fall in love young, and have now been married close to 20 years. However I accept that there is empirical evidence supporting those theories. And the lesson I take from that is that many people don't work like I'd like them to.
- cousin_it 17y ago
  Wow, your second link (remove the period from the end) made me feel exactly the way women say they feel about PUA/game advice. Good stuff.
- tomjen2 17y ago
  Thanks for those links. Hopefully I will now fall for some other traps.
maxniederhofer 17y ago
The best founder dating hack I've found: stop saying "I have a startup" and start saying "I run my own company." A short sentence, but there's confidence, power, wealth, passion (and a fair bit of pretentious bs) in there.

jlees 17y ago

I think it's proportional to the perceived fame/importance of your brand. My startup launched something locally this summer, associated with a particularly cool event. I get anything from the 'wow you run your own company' to 'wow you made that? I used it' and 'eh'. I don't think it's necessarily a matter of competence/achievement but simply being able to relate. If they've heard of our product then they don't need to spend fifteen minutes having technical buzzwords thrown at them, nor do I need to spend hours unravelling the misconceptions they form. It's just 'oh yeah, you did that? great' and onwards we go away from the fantastically boring topic of 'where do you work'. In circles where people don't find that topic boring (i.e. startup guys) the 'being impressed by working on $foo' doesn't hold anyway.