Oh, who do you work for? > Myself. I started a market research company with my best friend a year ago.
Oh, like a start up? > Yeah, I guess you can call it that. We do some contract work on the side to pay for things.
Hows it going so far? > Pretty good! We've tried out some things that haven't worked out and we're trying out new things. What about you, what do you do?
- At this point, 99% of people feel as if they know everything about you. So the game, you the more intelligent entrepreneur with your max hax0r people skillz, is to find something interesting about them. If you manage to do that, then you might just have a new friend, and not just another business card.
Well put. From a recent NYTimes
"With the exception of his time at Oxford, Haden has spent his entire adult life as the guy everybody knows as soon as he walks into the room. His friends say Haden’s gift is that he leaves knowing everybody else’s stories.
“He has such compassion and humility,” said J. K. McKay, who caught Haden’s passes at Bishop Amat High in La Puente, Calif., east of Los Angeles, and at U.S.C., where they were coached by McKay’s father, John."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/sports/23haden.html?_r=1&#...
(I think in future I'll start saying "I run a contracting company in the intellectual property sector". "What kind of intellectual property?" "Stories about space nazis ...")
Thanks for the hours of entertainment I derived from reading the Laundry novels, by the way. I especially loved The Jennifer Morgue. Accelerando was awesome too. More!
1. Trying to be unconventional when answering this question is wrong. Most of the times you seem like a jerk.
2. Saying you're a co-founder in any way before saying what you actually do (skill) is wrong. It only serves the purpose of informing others how independent and successful you want to seem.
It's a relevant question.
If you don't have the energy or the motivation to really get into it, "I am a (financial|management|technology|legal|PR)? consultant" is an easy out.
To this seconds question I've tried to answer with "I make applications to help some companies" but they never understood what an application really is...
I agree; the words "startup", "entrepreneur", and "small business" are all freighted. Just say "company".
I am so going to start using that.
Maybe it's just me, but when a person asks what you do, and you say 'i'm a programmer/entrepreneur/doctor/whatever', you're only scratching the surface.
You're doctor? what type? You're an engineer? What sort of stuff do you do.
Would you ever meet an actor and not say 'would I have seen you in anything'?
If the person didn't care what you did, then hopefully they wouldn't have asked.
Give them the full answer, it's isn't like you're tweeting it!
At the same time, don't get into what sorts of hosted applications or stuff like that, just figure out what people are going to understand.
You wish! It's like asking "how are you?" Most people don't care; they're just being polite/making conversation.
Give the stock answer in an inviting tone. If they want more information they'll ask for it.
That's good enough.
Even people who understand nothing about the web understand that some people make money off it, so... It's a good enough answer.
"I'm a Computer guy"
No one actually cares about our jobs/titles. If you were interested in that, go be firefighter. There are vanishingly few people that even know there's a difference between sysadmin and development.
I just tell them that I'm a Network Administrator and when the inevitable question comes up, I tell them that I manage the equipment that computers use to talk to each other. If it goes beyond that, I simply tell them it's kind of like telecomm and try to move the conversation to something they're interested in. I rarely tell them that I do software development on the side, that just furthers the confusion.
I remember an article a while back (I wish I could find the link) about a software developer that had the same problem. "You write programs? Oh, great, can you get rid of these viruses?"
The people who ask these questions are usually trying to be friendly, is what I'm trying to say.
Some people switch off immediately, so you know you need to find something else to talk about. People who are techy, or work in IT themselves, will ask a follow-up question and that's when you can unleash all the details. :)
I find this is always the best answer, because trying to avoid conversations by saying "I have a startup", only results in the re-asking the "so, what do you do" question, to which I have to provide a real answer.
I guess in the end I've gotten around to saying some version of "I run some websites". Which, if there are followup questions usually evolves into questions about how you make money on websites. I tried variants of "web developer" and the like but then people think I design websites for other clients. I do very little programming these days so any version with "programming" doesn't seem to work. Never liked the term "blogger" and doesn't really fit what I do.
There's no silver bullet for this. There's no magical phrase that's going to get people unfamiliar with startups to understand or care about the nuances of your multi-faceted responsibilities in marketing, development, sales and the top-down strategic stuff.
So I just say I'm a dolphin trainer most of the time.
These guys should say, "I simplify monitoring web servers."
Which reminds me of a good xkcd comic about the question "what do you do?": http://xkcd.com/722/
Don't have an answer? Hack the question.
