Thank you, very interesting. Can you talk more about cold approaching respectfully? How did you overcome that feeling of being a creep in the beginning when you’re not calibrated yet on what works for you?
Creepiness is a judgment from others and their problem. You can do your best to improve on lessening it (aka always approach from the front because it’s best to be in view, at least 5m distance and a loud enough “excuse me” to draw their attention and to let them know you are about to say something. If they show any sign of having no time, disengage and quickly wish them a good day). All you need to do is: your best and be as respectful as possible. If you do that and you know you have strived to the utmost to be the best version of yourself then others have no moral ground to stand on IMO. Freedom of speech is what ultimately makes us all approachable, yes, you too
2. Create intentional social space for those around you.
#1 is what I would call "politeness" or "charm". There's a strictly traditional (conservative/Victorian, though I'm coming from a western perspective) way to do it, but every branch of counterculture has effectively created it's own version. I would count everything from chivalry to fashion here: anything that helps people make useful assumptions about you. As soon as you are having a comfortable conversation with someone, you are ready for #2.
#2 is more meaningful and more genuine, but it's also really difficult to do without starting with #1. Every person in every social interaction exists somewhere on a spectrum from anxious to confident. You can't directly change a person's position on the spectrum, but you can move the spectrum itself.
Lately, I've been watching the sketch comedy series, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. Robinson is a master at playing with that spectrum: He squeezes it together, making intensely awkward cringe moments for the characters; then at the most unexpected moment, he stretches the spectrum out with impossibly intimate social interactions where everyone in the scene is suddenly loving and respectful to each other, totally leaving behind the awkwardness they started with.
I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not since my reply went a bit sideways. I just felt it would benefit others more to hear my perspective.
Anyway, the social game is to just filter noise and find the signal you want.
When you look at all the self help books on this, they're all very scholastic and merely teach techniques that sour once they're well known. A famous one is repeating someone's name back to them. I can't think of a smellier tactic than that.
The goal of any social interaction is up to you. You don't have to be best friends with everyone. That's just a bonus when it happens. I suspect this is where the emotional drain occurs for a lot of people. You can't make people like you, but they're more likely to do so if you can make them think twice about disliking you.
Determine what appeals to someone, adjust your style accordingly, funnel them towards what you really want to talk about, make a decision about how strong the signal is and whether to move on.
I hope you see how this is kinda like gambling. This is how it can be very easy for someone to talk to 50 people and still be super pumped up to keep going. The upshot is that energy really attracts people. This energy... that's the charisma. You express it your own way and that's it. Keeping it going shouldn't be hard for anyone unless they had a murky goal to start with.
I've met people like this, and I don't think that is charisma.
I think a better description of charisma is enjoying people. The people I think have the most "charisma" are the ones that always seem glad to see whoever it is, and they seem be like this for everyone. Kind of like a (pet) dog: they seem to think every new person is going to be an absolutely wonderful experience. Whereas there are some people I enjoy and others that I don't or am neutral about. I'm more like a cat: well, I might enjoy you, but we'll see about that.
That reverses the definition as everybody understands it. Charisma is when people enjoy your presence, which is definitely helped by them feeling good for making you feel good.
Apple Maps is also the only app that shows the exact entrance and exit to take on public transport in the cities I’ve used it in (Vienna, London: esp. time-saving there with often exits numbered 1–5 without clear indication where they lead to), and the station layout with underground walkways overlayed on the map is also very accurate.
The only annoying UX gripe I have is that it doesn’t show the arrival time, you have to do your own mental math to add the route duration to the start time you’ve entered.
Did you have previous experience in the construction industry or why would someone hire an inexperienced desk worker for such a job? (not trying to be demeaning, just curious)
And how did you find/get the job?
It was in traffic control, there are different types of traffic control work, one type is lane closures which I did maybe 10% of the time. Another type is on large construction sites (not so much houses, more like large buildings), getting concrete trucks and the like in and out of the gated worksite safely. Which might require stopping traffic and pedestrians.
Construction jobs were and still are in demand. I did a course and assessment, it was a government requirement, it went for 3 days and cost about $1000. There is a bit of luck getting your first position. While there are lots of positions needed, most want experienced people.
I just applied to maybe 3 companies, got an interview which was basically showing up with all your PPE, radio, etc, to prove you have them and they tell you you might be tried out in a week or two. Basically they had an urgent requirement one day and all of their other traffic controllers were assigned or rejected the job so I got a go.
After 3 months I was driving a traffic control truck and either working by myself or running small crews. I loved it. Pretty much worked on different sites everyday.
It's not exactly rocket science but you do get better with experience. After a week you've pretty much got it down, and after 6 months you'd be considered experienced.
On construction sites, there might be a truck every 5 minutes but more common was hours of doing nothing but standing, but needing to keep alert for pedestrians and an unexpected truck arrival. Some people hated the boredom and didn't do a good job at keeping an eye on things, were on their phone, etc. I loved it. Different strokes for different folks.
I mostly got back to being capable of doing the math problems again. I had to retake one course and went on acing the final for it with a 98%, etc.
Years later I've largely recovered, but I still shy away from basic arithmetic in front of others. However, I was able to get back to where I can solve math problems and even find it fun on the rare occasion I get to.
In some ways I have a deeper intuitive understanding than I did as an undergraduate, despite my faculties not being quite as "quick". Actually I rarely need to solve an equation to get enough of the answer I need to solve many problems.
Hm I’m not sure this is a good example, it’s really just a dialect. Any German speaker can usually understand most of it when concentrating a bit. And Wikipedia seems to agree. [1]
The official written language is German, albeit a different standard than non-Swiss German. The difference is not that big, it's like between written American and British English. But I can assure you that most non-Swiss German speakers can't casually understand Swiss German dialects.
Edit: these dialect are commonly used in court, public offices, and often on TV. They have a vastly stronger role in public life than in other German-speaking countries.
That's dialects though. The same could be said for most regions in the UK from people living in the UK or abroad, e.g., a Scouse understanding a Glaswegian. This is similar in Italia across regions.
They are dialects. Swiss German isn't a language but a group of dialects, but they aren't closer to high German than Czech is to Polish.
I think my point stands that it's a distinct language from the official one. It definitely feels like that in practice where a lot swiss people feel like they have to wear their official hat when speaking regular German and they prefer to have casual beer conversation in English rather than high German.
Given that you helped on it, what do you think made it stand out? From just reading through it, to me personally it doesn’t sound super in-depth or convincing, but I’d like to learn what I’m missing.
When I asked some of my partners what it was about me/my application that got us in, this is what I heard:
1. We had revenue, meaning we weren't afraid to charge. Many first founders are afraid of charging, and there is step-wise more validation having $100/month than $0.
2. We had a product that my partners could actually download and use.
3. "You seemed young and hungry. And I like young and hungry." - Michael Seibel
Unfortunately, I don't have the video of how our actual interview went. I think that would've been very informative too.
Following on, how did your interview go and what do you think made you stand out there? (or if you write a blog post on that separately I’d be very interested)
1) He asked something about if I was going to find a co-founder or not. I think I said that we started getting traction pretty fast without one and I wasn't going to wait for a co-founder to appear -- cofounders are not something to force. I think this is how he observed that I was "young and hungry."
2) He asked about why I thought open-source was a key differentiator. I said it wasn't, it was just good marketing, and thought you can build the best product without being open-source. I think this turned out to be true. Some arguments for open-source are that it is better for extensibility, privacy, and community. Obsidian does a great job of these 3 things, arguably the best in the networked note-taking app category, despite being closed-source.
I remember both of these questions actually causing Michael and the other partners on the call to pause and think about what I said, because it wasn't necessarily what they expected. Expected answers to these questions might be: "I'm looking for a co-founder" and "Open-source is better because X/Y/Z" given that I had marketed Athens as "open-source Roam" for the first 1 year and throughout YC.
I thought I bombed the interview because I remember being pretty shocked and speechless when they gave me a call saying I got in.
