Grow the Puzzle Around You

> The first was the quality that caused my YC cofounders to nickname me "The Social Radar." I was one of those kids that you just couldn’t get anything past. If something seemed off or out of character, I noticed and made inquiries. I was always trying to figure things out based on subtle social cues.

> When it came to investing, I had something that my cofounders didn’t have: I was the Social Radar. I couldn’t judge our applicants’ technical ability, or even most of the ideas. My cofounders were experts at those things. I looked at qualities of the applicants my cofounders couldn't see. Did they seem earnest? Were they determined? Were they flexible-minded? And most importantly, what was the relationship between the cofounders like? While my partners discussed the idea with the applicants, I usually sat observing silently. Afterward, they would turn to me and ask, "Should we fund them?"

Perhaps the unreplicable advantage of YC in its early years.

I've always been fascinated by this and would like to learn more about how to do this. However, I think it is really a function of how much experience you have talking to real people. For example, it is easier for me to retroactively analyze a social situation after it happens (like a date) than to proactively act and do the "right things" in the moment of the situation. I think it really comes down to how much true experience and pattern recognition you have. You can't analyze a situation correctly until you have been through it way too many times and can "step back" from yourself.

I think perhaps a small handful of my more socially adept friends are good at it but probably not at the level of JL.

I think part of the problem here is that most of the time, most of the people who are really good at this tend to have an intuitive approach, which makes it harder to formulate and teach, especially in a way that a less intuition-oriented person can understand and learn from. (Or at least that's my impression as a person in the latter category who has spent years trying to learn more about these things.)

Jeez, how painful to think that she has to explain her role regularly just because she is a woman. My wife and I are both software developers, and recently moved from Helsinki to Berlin, with two kids. If you could see the faces when we tell people how we moved here, "with _her_ job" :D First they look at her, like "does she look the part", and then looking at me, like "what does he really do?" It's actually fun, and more of "our thing" to watch those reactions than a pain, but in the bigger scheme of things what a waste that we are scared of all those wonderful women who could work with us, but don't.

She didn't say it was because she was a woman, in fact she explicitly says it was because she was the only non-technical cofounder.