Getting it out of the way

Whether it is a romantic relationship or asking someone for money or just asking for help, it always helps if you were to just start by getting to the point

Over a decade ago, my wife had told me about a Catalan friend of hers who had an interesting philosophy in life:

________ is a guy who believes that one night stand is the only way to start a relationship. Once you have that out of the way, you can talk about each other and your feelings without being worried about whether that person would want to sleep with you or not.

Back then, I don’t know how much I had appreciated this. However, this is one of those thoughts that has stayed in my head “rent free” for over a decade, and seems to have become more profound as time goes along. The reason is that it doesn’t apply only to romantic relationships.

If you abstract this, the concept is that people always have an ulterior motive when they get in touch with someone, or talk to someone. The traditional view here is that you should not lead with that ulterior motive - for it can “bias” the relationship (relationship in a generic sense here - nothing romantic).

Instead, the traditional view states that you start the conversation in a non-committal fashion, settle down (like how you would bat in a Test match - I’m watching (ODI) cricket as I write this) and then get to the point.

However, once you factor in the second order effect, the logic completely flips on its head. For example, if I were to ping you out of the blue after a 20 year gap (I’ve done this to dozens of people this year - I’ll get to this in a bit), you will know that I haven’t pinged you out of the goodness of my heart or “just to keep in touch”.

You will know that there exists an ulterior motive in my ping. And until you know what that ulterior motive is, it is difficult for you to settle into the conversation - if you were me you’d be thinking “ok just get to the point. Why did you ping me out of the blue? We can talk these pleasantries later”.

In other words, the first part of the conversation, until you get to the point, will be rather pointless. Why not just eliminate it?

Just start with the point. Yes, it might seem abrupt, and a traditionalist might think of you as being “too direct”, but you are effectively saving time for all parties involved. If you are asking someone for help (if you were pinging after a long time, it’s likely that there is some way you want them to help), if they are able and willing to help you they are less likely to help purely because you asked them abruptly.

Software engineers have a version of this - it’s called “nohello”.

What I’m getting at is that - this philosophy of just getting to the point appears everywhere. If you’re looking to start a romantic relationship, get the sex out of the way (note - I haven’t tried this. I was married ~5 years when my wife first told me of this concept). If you need help from someone, ask for the help directly without random pleasantries. If you ping someone, don’t just say “hi” - state your point asap.

The reason I have been thinking about this topic so much of late is that I’ve been doing a version of this.

Like many of you might have already heard, my company has been in the process of raising a round of angel funding. Since we’re Delaware headquartered, it’s a pain for Indians to invest (that is for another day - the kind of hoops RBI makes you jump through just because people have “black money”), which means I’m looking for funding from people who have non-INR funds.

So I’ve had a pretty blatant process going since the beginning of 2025 - make a list of friends and acquaintances who have non-INR funds, and who might have the ability and willingness to invest in my startup. And then when I ping them, I just get straight to the point.

There is this old friend who has been described as a “life detector” by other old friends. Why? Because she “hits on anything that moves”.

Admittedly, I’ve become a bit of a life detector in these last two months. Whenever I talk to someone, I sniff if they might have non-INR funds, and the ability to invest in my company. And then I immediately swoop - asking directly if they want to invest. I’ve heard a lot of nos, but also a lot of yeses (as things stand, we’ve got more money than we set out to raise, and we’ll be closing our AngelList this week).

And the beautiful part of the whole process has been that even a lot of the nos have led to reconnections with people and productive conversations (even if they’re not been productive from an immediate investment perspective).

Have some people been thrown off because I’ve pinged them after ~20 years and suddenly asked them for money? I’m pretty sure the answer is a yes. But the process of just “getting it out of the way” early on in the conversation has made the process of reaching out to people and asking for investment far easier than I would have imagined 3 months ago.

Now to think about how a random conversation about one night stands has led to this process..