Paul Buchheit at Startup School 08

I'd love to see the study broken out by people who are listening for confidence vs. content . I recall showing my mom Paul Buchheit's Startup School 08 talk: ▶ this video I thought it was great, and I remember listening very intently to parse out exactly what he was saying and figure out what he was saying. I showed it to my mom, and her first reaction was "Why are you listening to him? He seems kinda nebbishy." Notice how many pauses, umms, y'knows, and other filler words are in that speech. I ignored them because I already knew what he had accomplished; my assumption was that he knew what he was talking about, and so I should pay close attention. My mom, who knows nothing about tech and didn't start using GMail until 2012, came away with the impression that he was unconfident, rambling, and didn't really know what he was talking about. The advice to eliminate filler words may be a consequence of a world where people make snap judgments about the credibility of a person in seconds, and usually are not qualified to judge the content of the speech at all. Notice how the article says that this advice first caught on in the 20th century, right as mass communication and soundbite messages caught on. The studies they cite, however, all featured listeners from the same field as the speaker who already cared about the content.

Paul Buchheit said something similar at startup school years ago and I watch the video every once in a while to remind myself not to be similarly prescriptive when I meet new people. His key takeaway slide was a simple equation: Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice The full video has more info on how to get past the advice you hear and actually process feedback: ▶ this video

Love his answer to #7 on what advice he'd give to a new developer: "7. What advice would you give to a beginner server-side developer and what to an open-source author / contributor? Meh, advice-shmadvice. Who am I to give advice? What’s experience good for in our field? I used to know how to write a keyboard driver and floppy disc formatters with non-standard densities. I’d be all but obsolete today if I hadn’t learned continuously. Oh, so maybe this would be one piece of advice: learn how to learn, and stick with principles; mastering individual technologies will follow. Technology is a great servant but a terrible master. The best people in our métier are those who know how to quickly become experts in some particular field." Reminds me of Paul B's video from startup school: ▶ this video

If someone says "that's impossible", you can interpret it as: "According to my limited experience and very narrow understanding of reality, it's very unlikely." An oldie but goodie - ▶ this video

Viral and limitation don't go hand in hand. Paul Buchheit made this point realy well in his startup school talk couple of years ago: ▶ this video

Paul Bucheit said something similar on Startup School 2008 ( ▶ this video ): "You should aim for 100 happy users". And he mentions that being happy is quite hard to accomplish, as happy users will not put up with any unevenness they see. I find this more useful for startups that are still looking for a business model (mostly consumer oriented startups).

Paul Buchheit had a good quote at the 08 startup school. If someone says: "That's impossible." You should understand it as: "According to my very limited experience and narrow understanding of reality, that's very unlikely." Video: ▶ this video Slides: link