The point is: if you're meeting someone, if you want someone to help you, if you want anything from someone - do your homework. If you don't make an effort, or aren't seen to have made an effort, why should they bother to help you?
This is especially true of people of whom many demands are made.
Make an effort - it's surprising how positively people will respond.
"Look I'm a really important and busy person. I don't have time to be nice. Keep it short because I have a ton of meetings."
The only thing I don't see is why I should desire a meeting with this guy in the first place. And whether or not his blog is good place to post instructions on how to properly meet him. What about the proper protocol when meeting me? What if his protocol and my protocol clash?
From the article: "Regardless of the outcome of a meeting, I view it as a success if I learn one thing."
This is a phrase I've heard more than once from individuals who lack the humility to appreciate that the meeting is also a success if they teach just one thing.
It has nothing to do with humility, but rather the value of your time. Obviously, there's value to teaching, but when you're an investor doing random short meetings, you're doing it to further your own business. If you help someone out along the way (by investing in them or otherwise), that's a nice addition but by no means the goal.
I read the article. I must of glossed over the line where he mentioned reading "Why VC's don't sign NDAs". His about page gives a much better idea of who he is: guy with money.
And that's about it. He's a guy who now has enough money to give to other people in risky ways. Other than that, he's pretty bland.
Actually he is a VC who has been very openly blogging about things that are tough to find information about. I have learned a ton from his posts over the years. Here is a typically good one packed with hard to find real-life info:
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2005/01/term-sheet-liquidati...
This dude creates a retarded duality...Be a guy like me, or a guy who degrades himself in front of guys like me to get money so that they can be guys like me. Well D-Bag millionaire, for every 1 person who wants to meet with you, there are 10,000 teenagers on 4chan who want to show the world a picture of you soliciting a 12 year old boy for sex to make themselves feel better. Be a nicer person, and that ratio improves by several orders of magnitude.
If our meeting isn’t going anywhere after ten minutes, you’ll notice a not so subtle shift as I move into "shit, I’ve got five more minutes left -- I better get something out of this meeting."
So, if the meeting isn't succeeding, he gets antsy and tries to make something out of it. That seems reasonably admirable to me.
As for the advice, I wish it could be communicated and applied generally. How many meetings have I sat through where the participants spent the prior hour or several browsing or socializing (open space environment)? They get into the meeting, and the organizer spends 45 minutes of the hour lecturing to them about the topic. If people had prepped, the meeting could be 15 minutes and end with an informed decision, instead of being prelude to a subsequent meeting wherein a decision may or may not be reached. Meeting organizers play their part in this; all too often the agenda is mailed out 5 minutes before the meeting. Like that's going to do any good. It's CYA and does not serve any purpose of genuine communication.
I'm hesitating to post this, as my tone sounds somewhat negative. But it's what I've observed, all too often.
I think it should be taken as a warning sign. In the best groups I've worked in, people know what's going on and the meeting quickly moves on to what needs to be done, or to sharing genuinely novel information -- usually newly acquired and so not yet disseminated. If you encounter a lot of the scenario described in the prior paragraph, start hunting for a new position. Even if your current position is stable, it is likely to hold you back.
Something that my high school chemistry teacher once said to me (and I hated him at the time, and did awful in his class, but learned TONS of life lessons from him) is that the best way to meet with a teacher is to do as much possible preparatory work ahead of time, in efforts not to waste his time. Preparatory work: specific list of questions you don't know answers to, for example.
People are almost always willing to help if you do your prep work.
I was taught something similar by one of my mentors. Always bring something to the table in any discussion (or more broadly, relationship). No one likes to be sucked dry.
I think high school chemistry is the closest the Western, public, pre-university curriculum comes to actual, empirical science. It's the only course I had in high school where we took doing experiments (and writing them up) seriously. Geology and psychology were purely lecture-based, and physics and biology were rooted more in demonstrations (because of a lack of resources, I suppose) than student participation. Chemistry teachers, therefore, are the most likely people in a high school to think in a rational, investigatory mindset.
