That Didn’t Need to Take an Hour
A common thread:When someone starts this way, I break in and say as politely as I can, “What’s on your mind?”From the Comments:Question: do you in any way prepare people before they meet with you for the first time, with guidelines for how you like meetings to go?Answer:
It varies. I used to send out a "how to meet with me" note but there's now so much on the web that it should be easy for the person to prepare by just doing a quick search on Brad Feld Meeting"This is pretty haughty and I see this type of junk a lot with the VC/Angel investors out there. They are implicitly saying, "clearly my time it too valuable to waste it with courtesy or respect." Yes, I see that he said "as politely as I can" however the whole idea that I need to google how to meet with someone ahead of time is insane. These people aren't holy figures.Maybe a better option is to not schedule time with people that you don't plan on being courteous to.