Silicon Valley Meeting Etiquette
Not written by the Stanford Guide author. Written by and all credit to JL. This is great advice, and not following it can damage your reputation in a way that can be hard to recover.
The most important thing is both parties should respect the time of the other.
That means coming prepared, being on time. The basic shit. I’ll go into more details.
Understand in every meeting there is a ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ ranking person. Generally the person asking for the meeting is the ‘lower’ ranking.
Respect beginning and end times.
— That means showing up on time, if not before, especially if you are lower ranking.
— When time is up, it’s OK to go beyond, but only if you’re both ok with it. Something like “Hey, it’s 2 o’clock, but I’d love to keep chatting/I have a few more questions for you. Is that OK?”
If it’s a lunch meeting, get food/be ready beforehand. If you only have an hour with a person don’t waste 15 minutes (25%) standing in line.
Ask if you can take notes. They’ll always say yes, but it’s nice to ask. A leather bound notebook is best as anything with buttons has an implicit “I’m elsewhere.”
DO take notes on any followup etc.
If this is a first meeting:
— During scheduling, it may be easier to ask them to list their available times. Just general email etiquette.
— If you are lower ranking, offer up your phone number either in the confirmation email or when you get there.
— Same goes for what you’re wearing.
— Example, sent 5 minutes before meeting start time: “Hey X, just got to Y and have grabbed a table near the door. I’m wearing a green polo and jeans. My cell is Z if there are any issues. See you in a few!”
If you are running late, send an email or text BEFORE the start time.
Never be late. Definitely never be more than 5 minutes late. [Editor note: If you’re more than 5 minutes late, many people will start to instantly strongly dislike you, and this will be very hard to reverse.]
Set your own internal goals before the meeting about an ideal outcome. It may help to write them down in your notebook to have them as reference.
— If it’s just “get to know the person,” then you probably shouldn’t be having this meeting.
— Ask specific questions that they are uniquely suited to answer.
— Nothing bugs the shit out of me more than a googleable question.
— Some good examples (you can have several per meeting):
— Goal: “learn about their thought process in setting their milestones for their Seed round for their company. This person is particularly useful because their company is similar to my company in X way.”
— Goal: “I’d like your feedback on my deck because I am pitching X investor, who you successfully raised from so you would be most in tune with what they’re looking for”
Do your fucking homework
— Have you googled the person? checked their linkedin? Gotten as much background you can from the person who introduced you?
— Might be helpful to have a few bulletpoints at hand in your notebook/memory.
— Admit when you don’t know. Sometimes that can be a good conversation piece, actually. Hey, I actually have no idea about X. Can you tell me how you did it? (just as long as there’s no other way to find the answer but asking them [or if it just came up in the meeting and it’s useful for you to know in the conversation going forwards]).
Lay a good foundation when you sit down
— Remind them who introduced you (and why), high level purpose of meeting, and confirm stop time.
— Always prudent to ask if they’d like a 1 minute version of your background. [My addition: Once you do this, it’s fine/often good to ask them for a short version of their background also, even if you’ve already read about them online (which you should have).]
Have action items at the end of your meeting and follow up quickly — [perhaps within the same day, or by early the next day if it was in the evening.]
My additions:
- Follow general email etiquette. Don’t wait too long (>24 h) between replies if you want to meet with someone.
- If someone says they can do a meeting at 3pm, the meeting is only one once you say “confirmed, see you at 3pm” or something similar. And ideally, if there’s any ambiguity, you want them to confirm also (e.g. “does that still work?”)
- If you’re going to be more than 1 minute late, *always* text and email them to let them know your new ETA, as *soon* as you know there’s a >5% chance you’ll be late.
- if you ask for an introduction from someone, or accept one where you’re getting value from the introduction, you *really* should follow up to the original email within 12 h, max 24 h, and you should reply to any emails in the thread from the other person within 24 h.
- imo, it’s not a huge deal whether you decide to BCC the introducer or not. I often like staying on CC so I can follow along, but others prefer BCC.
- a good response to an introduction is something like — ‘thanks X for the introduction. great to meet you [name.] [add context if they don’t already have it, or put a brief one sentence reminder of the context] how’s [time/day] or [time/day] in [context (e.g. phone call, at your office, at my office, etc]? let me know other times that work well for you if those don’t work. thanks/looking forward to it/similar ending.’