[tptacek]

This is all great. One thing I wanted to call out in particular is Thomas' take on investor verbal agreements. YC has a thing about this: it's called the Handshake Protocol.

The idea is: you and your investor agree on (1) an amount to be invested, and (2) a valuation or cap. Maybe you shake hands. Then, after the meeting, you memorialize the deal in an email. The deal is then socially binding: reneging on a Handshake Protocol deal is a big thing, gets noted in Bookface, whatever.

There's nothing magic or even interesting about the protocol; all it does is eliminate a form of ambiguity that professional investors are facile with and founders aren't. Investors are very good at saying "yes" and meaning "no"; they want the option to invest without the commit. If you don't put it to them directly, they'll take the option! The Handshake Protocol puts it to them directly: "are you committing?"

Most of the time, you're going to get a "no" answer to that, which is exactly what you want: clarity, so you can make decisions.

https://www.ycombinator.com/handshake

[xyzzy_plugh]

This is great, simple advice that is obvious in hindsight.

It works in all sorts of places too! Like negotiating a job offer or a raise or promotion or time-off. It also works outside of the workplace such as following up with social acquaintances ("hey let's play tennis sometime").

It excels at identifying the party unwilling to commit. And in my experience the sooner you figure that out the better.

[tptacek]

And "unwilling to commit" is fine! That's most people most of the time. The only problem is when there's ambiguity about the commitment.

[The-Old-Hacker]

We used to do this in the software documentation team I worked with for 9 years: we would discuss something verbally, then the person who'd called the discussion would summarise the conclusions in an email to team members. They could then edit the summary as needed. It really helped further down the line as a communal memory device.