You may have heard about Slow Ventures' Etiquette Finishing School. It is a program for founders that happened last week, hoping to teach them about etiquette and how to conduct themselves. It's already gotten a lot of attention from the Y Combinator world. And so I want to bring on Sam Lessin, General Partner at Slow Ventures. Sam is also the husband of founder and editor-in-chief Jessica Lessin. I want to bring on Sam to talk more about it. Sam, welcome back to the show. It's great to see you.
Always great to be on the show.
So let's talk about Etiquette Finishing School. Did you grow up with this as a kid, a teenager, a founder? Where did you get the idea for this?
Well, look, I mean, the answer is hilariously yes. I did go to a terrible etiquette finishing school as a kid briefly. But look, there's a broader point here, which is, you know, if you think about the history of Silicon Valley and the places we've been, it was always cute to be the tech kid showing up with no manners and no etiquette and no respect for a community or culture because you had the magic technology, and people had a lot of excitement for that and excuse for that. And so there was a whole vibe of Silicon Valley, which is it's only about the product, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how you show up, it doesn't matter anything, just deliver the technology. You know, I think that's really changed recently, especially with AI. You know, tech is now taking people's jobs. People are worried about it. It's the front page of every newspaper in the world constantly. It's global policy debates. And the big shift there is it's no longer, in my mind, cute or very effective to show up in these communities as kind of an outsider with no respect. I actually think that if you're looking for partners, if you're looking to do business with governments, if you're looking for capital, there's actually like a very new culture that has to permeate, which is yes, you have the technology, yes, you show up with a product, but I think you also have to, and you know as a founder, how to show up with humility, how to show up with respect, how to show up and demonstrate that you're someone that other people can trust in a way that just hasn't been true historically. And so, look, the long story short in etiquette school is we're having this discussion. You have a lot of YC founders right now who are, by the way, younger than they've ever been or been in a long time, who don't have...
How old are they typically right now?
Oh, I don't... they're pretty... they're under 25, I believe. There's been a lot of reporting on this, how the average YC recently, with AI founders, is actually going down. Right. So it's not more experienced founders, it's not people coming out of industry, it's even younger people, and they don't have the skills to show up not only with venture capitalists but, you know, with partners, to recruit, etc. We said, look, YC is teaching them a lot, that's great, but there's a bunch of other skills that they could really use a crash course in. And so, you know, look, I think it's caused a lot of debate because the whole YC thing or a lot of the incubator thing is all that matters is, you know, product market fit. I think that is an old way of thinking. I think it's not that product market fit doesn't matter. It obviously does, and like you should iterate on that, but we're here and we kind of set up a school. We'll do more of them to help founders with all the other skills that really do matter in an era where trust is at a premium.
And so, what does YC think of this?
Well, Garry Tan hasn't been super excited about it, to say the least. You know, I think internally on their internal platform, he was pretty clear that he doesn't think people should attend and should only be focused on product market fit. It's just not something I agree with. That's fine. It's no disrespect for Garry or YC. It's just I do think that when I think about the people I want to back, I think it is people who make that effort and are willing to make that effort and learn how to kind of show up in different spaces, you know, with grace, with humility, and build trust with partners in a world where it's never mattered more for tech.
I have to say, I was half expecting you to show up in a suit today. I thought you were going to be wearing a tie given the...
I think this is the thing, is like people... obviously this is a fun idea. Obviously, it's a little irreverent and a little silly. You know, I love that stuff. You have to have that stuff to cut through in 2025. There's no way. That said, I do think there's a whole thing of like, what is etiquette? Etiquette is not, you know, in our school, what we're trying to teach people is not, you know, how to be an elitist, right? And it's not how to show up wearing a suit all the time. In fact, I'd actually argue that's culturally quite insensitive. What it is is understanding like how to read a room, how to enter that room with, you know, humility, how to kind of mirror the culture you're entering, whether it's banking or consulting or government or whatever it is, and show up on terms that put people at ease and build trust. Right. So I actually would argue that showing up in a suit is fun, but not actually the point of what we're teaching.
Right. Right. So, and let's get into the brass tacks of the program here. So, how many people showed up? And are you charging for this?
No, of course we're not charging for this. Please.
Okay. How many people... how many people were there? I don't know.
What truth would that be?
