How To Influence Decision Makers

I'm proud to announce the YC 2024 fall batch applications are due by August 27th. We're doing this because of overwhelming demand from Founders to start doing the batch immediately instead of waiting for winter '25. Our applications are now open. The batch begins on September 29th in San Francisco, and demo day will be in early December. We're excited to work with the founders that want to start now and do YC immediately with their startup.

The fact is this is a special moment in history to start a startup, and that's why I'd like to invite you to apply for the YC fall '24 batch. If you really want to influence the room that happens, you can't be a B player. You can't be like, "Well, they get some stuff done." Irreplaceable, yep, is really where it happens.

This is Dton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about how to influence people—the people who are in the room where it happens. So, to kind of set this up a little bit, we're stealing a little bit from Hamilton: the room where it happens. But there are many moments in your life where important decisions are made about you, and you are not there when the final decision is made.

Founders, employees, all the same. Some examples: promotions, raises, demotion. Do people get demoted anymore? I don't think so. I just... just... yeah, fired. Um, fundraises, right? That last meeting where they decide whether you get the money, you are not there. Yeah, you're not in the room. You're not in the room for product meetings, annual planning. If you're in big companies, oftentimes you're not in the room, and they decide, "Are you going to get your budget? Are you going to get your headcount?"

Often times you're not in the room. So, one thing we want to talk about is how you can influence that decision. Let's just assume you've made an amazing factual argument, right? Like, yeah, that's table stakes. We're assuming you've presented coherent arguments and everything you say makes sense. That's the logical table stakes. Yes, that's table stakes.

What are other things you can do to make sure that the people in that room make the decision that you want them to make? What do you think, D?

Well, I think to start with, um, you can control things like your attitude or demeanor. Yes, you can control your long-term track record of how people have worked with you. Again, they don't make a decision based on exactly the facts as you want them presented. There's usually this whole amount of context, yes, um, that you may or may not be able to control.

It's funny how, you know, sometimes there's memes about people—you know, one thing happens once. You know it's like how you get a nickname. You do one thing once when you're 18, and for the rest of your life, that's your nickname.

And so there might be, you know, some sort of personal brand you have—for better or worse. Yes, yes, that is remembered.

I think another one is—and this is tricky to describe—but oftentimes when people in that room are making a decision, in the back of their head they're making a decision whether they're going to be spending more or less time with you. Right? Yep. If someone's going to do your Series A, they're going to be on your board, they're going to spend a lot more time with you.

Yeah, if someone's giving you a promotion, maybe you're now in executive team meetings or maybe you're now in more meetings with them, more interaction, etc. And I think there's a very real question of whether they want to spend more time with you. [Laughter] That is what they're signing up for. Yeah, right?

And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be nice. You can be confident, but I do think, like, putting that in your frame of reference—like, everyone hopefully has been on a team where they have teammates where they like, "I loved being on a team with this person." And teammates are like, "That was indifferent."

When I see this going afray, it's the person who just feels slightly too negative. There's realistic—there's realistic, slightly paranoid, and then there's like always negative about everything. And hey, sometimes they're making amazing factual points, yep, but it's just like you can tip over that line a little bit.

You know, another one I think a little bit about is like how their team members react to them. Like secretly, oftentimes during that meeting, you're saying, "Do you want other people on the team to act like this person or not? Do we want to make a positive example out of this person?" And so you have to be thinking about that—like, am I acting in a way that if others acted around me, that's okay? Like, that makes the organization better.

Um, who else comes to mind for you?

I think sometimes people maybe learned the wrong lessons from movies or books or like life advice or life coaches where they think doing really weird, over-the-top lobbying or politics or like things like that is going to work. And like, you have to really understand the culture or morals or social norms of the place of the decision maker that you're interacting with.

Because there's no sure way to have decisions work against you when you're not in the room than you committed like a major faux pas. You basically did something that is like aggressively not helpful.

Michael and I experienced this a lot, with people doing weird things to try to get into YC. Yes, send us weird emails, and this is not helpful. No, we don't read an email from someone that's like this long, being like, "I just need 15 minutes" and blah blah blah blah blah. There's never a case where we're like, "Wow, this is a really good email, and I'm definitely going to take this seriously."

Well, I think you made an amazing point, which is like you have to know the environment you're in, right? Like, I think there are probably other organizations, large companies, where maybe politics and lobbying is like the only way you get seen.

Like, you know, I know in Facebook, people have to strategize about how they post to their like internal Facebook feed. So, it's kind of being able to read that environment because if you screw it up, it's always bad, right? Like, in every environment, if you go over the top, it's worse than nothing—way worse than nothing. If you just don't do it, you're ahead. Yes, you're playing with fire when you're lobbying, doing politics, and it's surprising how you can go over the line so fast, right? It's like inches matter in that game.

You know, I think another thing that matters a lot is track record. I find this happening in both ways. One, people tend to get more of what they want when they have a track record, and two, people tend to maybe over-ask when they don't have a track record.

How do you think about track record and kind of like perceived effectiveness? The concept that you and I have talked about sometimes of being irreplaceable? Yes, which is someone runs the thought experiment. This actually comes up a lot with product-market fit, which is if your company went away tomorrow, how sad would people be, and how hosed would their business be?

If your product went away, and so if you know, if Amazon Web Services goes away tomorrow, yes, that would be bad. Yes, I guess you could switch to another cloud provider, but your website's going down. Yeah, you're in trouble. Very bad.

Um, and so that's like a good asset test for companies; it's also for people. If this person disappeared tomorrow, if they were hit by a car, how hosed are you? I think this comes up in the hiring context and the people context more than people think. And I'll tell you the advice I give to founders—basically, I say to them straight up, 90 days after someone new starts, you should be putting a calendar event on your calendar, and that should ask yourself, "How would you feel if that person said today is my last day?"

Yep. And anything other than distraught means that that person didn't make themselves irreplaceable. Yep. And I think what's so tricky is that sometimes, like, if you really want to influence the room that happens, you can't be a B player. You can't be like, "Well, they get some stuff done." Like, irreplaceable, yep, is really where it happens.

I totally agree. Um, another one that I think is interesting is this concept of heart. I think that there are some people who on average take more from an organization than give, yep, and some people who on average give more than they take. And oftentimes, in the room where you're happens, you're trying to figure out where that person's heart is.

Like, is this a mercenary? If I give them something, are they going to try to figure out how to take more? Yep. Is that their whole motivation? Or do they care about our customers? Do they care about their, um, direct reports? Do they care about the product that we're building?

And I think sometimes, you know, unfortunately, you can be, once again, given advice: act like a mercenary. That's how you get ahead. But man, mercenaries are easy to sniff out. Yeah. And again, cultures are different, but I think a lot of folks believe that politics is the only way to get ahead.

Yeah, and it depends on how you define politics. Again, man, we could talk about that for like two hours, but it seems like more than younger folks have sort of a ham-fisted idea of what politics means, and they think that their job is to like do a lot of things.

And if you, again, it's a hair trigger—if you go over the line of doing things, oh man, you lost the decision makers completely. Yeah, right? Yes, in a very memorable way often. Oh yeah, it's like disqualifying.

And this brings me to like another point that I notice a lot with people. Um, you know, we advise a lot of founders that are going out to fundraise, and something that I've noticed is when founders become obsessed and attached to one particular investor—yes, saying yes to them and having it take over their minds, take over their thinking. Everything they want to talk about with me is how do I get this one investor to like me? If we get this person, we're going to win. Those people tend to get no's.

Yeah, and I think it's not an accident. There's something—it's like a Zen thing—where when you're overly attached to some particular thing happening in your life, it tends to not happen. Versus when you just...you're open to different possibilities and not attached to any one particular outcome, yes, things tend to manifest a little bit better.

I would say in addition to that Zen thing, when you're in a situation where you're making a lot of these decisions, you can tell whether someone's desperate. Y, like, you just—you have a lot of reps, and it's hard to hide desperation. And it's funny because we saw this so much in fundraising. This is one of the reasons why we changed the standard YC deal, yep, because you know back when we were getting companies $125,000 and the lead-up to demo day, on demo day, I think they felt desperate. Y, and like, man, it was hard to shield that.

You give someone a half a million dollars, they have a year and a half, two years of runway, same progress, same team—they go into that meeting with a completely different take-it-or-leave-it attitude. And man, investors rightly pattern match that attitude with being effective.

Yeah, I think, yeah. And so again, on all these—how do you influence the people in the room? If you seem like, "Hey, I'm fine. I'll figure it out whichever way this goes. You know, I have my own plan figured out, and I'm a happy camper," those people tend to be rewarded. Do, and the folks that are extremely anxious and frantic, and like trying every little thing, those folks tend to struggle.

Yeah, I don't have good pattern matches there. And maybe the last point I'll make on this—and you've talked about this a little bit in the past—this is a game that repeats itself. And so I would even argue how you respond to a decision not going your way is a huge factor in the next time you're trying to influence the room where decisions are being made.

And so don't go all in necessarily in situations that don't require it. And just how you respond to a decision not going your way will be—you'll be judged by that as well.

All right, man. Great chat. All right, thanks. [Music]