How to show up in any room with a low heart rate: Silicon Valley’s missing etiquette playbook | Sam Lessin
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Why does Sam think teaching etiquette to founders is essential?
I just feel like no one's being honest in teaching founders this. Be early. Don't order the most expensive thing on the menu for a video called an appropriate background. Don't smell like shit. Tell me why you decided to spend time teaching people proper etiquette. You have a lot of really young people they've been holed up in a room coding, and they show up encouraged by Silicon Valley to be in some ways abrasive on purpose. You wanna be able to show up in a way where people are like, okay, this is someone I can work with and trust. Skill for how to show up in a room with a low heart rate. You're at the Kleiner Perkins holiday party. You have all the venture capitalists in the world and all the CEOs.
You're at your first company. You're like, oh my God, this is my shot. But I need to convince this person of that and make this connection. It becomes very transactional. If you show up like a little energizer bunny, you're gonna scare vote off. You're gonna project totally the wrong vibe. This isn't your one shot. You'll have other opportunities. You kinda wanna show up. With the self-confidence and the calm of abundance. This is part of the story, this is not the entire story.
Today, my guest is Sam Lesson, partner at Slow Ventures, previous VPO product at Facebook, and two-time founder. This is an unconventional episode that may surprise you in how interesting and useful it is to your life. I asked Sam to come on the pod and talk about proper etiquette. You'll hear the backstory of how Sam got into this stuff, but this is turning into a big thing for him. He's teaching classes around the world. He published a book on proper etiquette. Etiquette, I love his framing for why etiquette matters, that the goal of learning good etiquette is to show up in a room with a low heart rate. And we cover all kinds of social interactions like introductions, small talk, meals, meetings, and basically all of the most important things you need to know when it comes to etiquette.
I personally found these tips really, really useful and I learned a lot from this conversation and from his book, Sam is also hilarious and so fun. And I hope you enjoyed this very unique episode. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 19 incredible products, including a year free of lovable replit, bold, gamma, and a dan linear devon post hoc, superhuman, descriptor, whisperflow, perplexity, warp grenola, magic pattern, drecache, IPRD, Mobbin, and Stripe Atlas. Head on over to Lenny's newsletter. Newsletter.com and click product pass.
With that, I bring you Sam Lesson after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by 10Web, the company that pioneered AI website building before ChatGPT. In the last three years, over 2 million websites have been generated with 10Web's vibe coding platform. 10Web's vibe coding platform is a powerful way to build websites. Think of it as lovable for WordPress, front-end and backend. Users can build any website at any complexity. E-commerce, portfolios, Information websites, blogs, and it comes with the WordPress admin panel and thousands of ready-to-use plugins. 10Web also offers website generation as an API as a service for SaaS companies, marketplaces, hosting providers, MSPs, and agencies.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Sam think teaching etiquette to founders is essential?
0:00–6:57
2
How can founders make a better first impression by being early and managing entry into a room?
6:57–14:17
3
What simple hygiene and scent rules should you follow for professional interactions?
14:17–21:53
4
Which dress‑code and dining etiquette tips help you show up with a low heart rate?
21:53–43:12
5
Why is humor a delicate tool for showing confidence in a room?
43:12–47:00
6
When should you use self‑deprecating humor versus making fun of others?
47:00–50:29
7
What are the best practices for scheduling meetings and handling reschedules?
50:29–54:46
8
How can you gracefully wind down a conversation or meeting?
54:46–1:26:31
Speakers
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