{"id":44248,"date":"2025-11-08T14:23:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T14:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/44248\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T14:23:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T14:23:27","slug":"sf-tech-founders-go-to-finishing-school-and-garry-tan-does-not-approve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/44248\/","title":{"rendered":"SF tech founders go to finishing school \u2014 and Garry Tan does not approve"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the most un-San Francisco scene imaginable: Thirty of the city\u2019s young founders arriving early in tailored suits and elegant black dresses, not a hoodie in sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under a glass chandelier, the mostly male founders mingled in a wood-paneled room straight out of an East Coast country club, eager to learn the art of a proper handshake and the classy way to do a caviar bump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a new world,\u201d Sam Lessin, general partner at Slow Ventures, told attendees in the decisively Old World setting. \u201cAll of a sudden, the Mark Zuckerberg of \u2018The Social Network\u2019 parody movie is actually pretty cultured and knows how to be in a bunch of different rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The founders were gathered at the Four Seasons in San Francisco\u2019s financial district for Slow Ventures\u2019 \u201cEtiquette Finishing School,\u201d a three-hour seminar to equip them with basic manners and refined tastes. Lessin, an investor who was an early employee at Facebook, decided he needed to do something about the hundreds of young founders in San Francisco who can\u2019t write an email or put together an appropriate fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a lot of young founders who dropped out of school at 12, and they spend all their time talking to Bob in accounting about what to build,\u201d Lessin said on the podcast (opens in new tab)<\/a> he hosts with his wife, The Information CEO Jessica Lessin, and fellow married investors Brit and Dave Morin. \u201cThey don\u2019t really understand anything about etiquette or how to interact in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lessin, who exudes eccentric professor energy, admits that the etiquette school started as kind of a joke. But he sent his deputy Jack Raines to Y Combinator\u2019s Demo Day in September to gauge interest and found that besides optimizing their supplement stack, the AI kids were actually interested in learning which wine to pair with seafood and how to make eye contact during a conversation.<\/p>\n

Not everyone was on board with the idea. Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, the same startup incubator where Lessin was farming for prospects, warned founders on an internal forum not to attend.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need finishing school. You need to build something great, make your users happy, and have craftsmanship. We\u2019re just here to make stuff. We\u2019re not here to impress anyone by how fancy our shit is,\u201d Tan wrote on X (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truly wealthy are wealthy in meaningful relationships and the outcome of actually making something people want, not bullshit appearances or impressing people or running power moves or playing zero sum dominance games,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, the class was free, and so was the wine. A few hundred founders applied for Etiquette Finishing School, and about 50 were accepted. Not everyone showed up.<\/p>\n

One founder, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was there to learn to be \u201cless feral.\u201d A meeting with a Japanese conglomerate made him realize he had no idea how to be a \u201cfunctioning adult in polite society.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AEach table was served a tin of caviar and basket of blinis for founders to get comfortable eating the delicacy. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

Marie Paoli, cofounder of the AI assistant startup Mellow, said she was about to start fundraising and hoped the session would help her sharpen her ability to charm investors. \u201cAnd there\u2019s caviar. I absolutely love caviar,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

When the room was called to order, the crowd took their seats at round tables draped in white linens. Each place was set with a gift bag containing a travel-size lint roller, mouthwash, and dental floss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his opening remarks, Lessin stressed that etiquette school wasn\u2019t about memorizing rules but about moving through the world with confidence. Then he demonstrated the perfect handshake.\u00a0Always look them in the eye. Strong, firm grip. Slight smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On cue, the fashion show started. Like a scene out of Silicon Valley \u201cZoolander,\u201d six models, outfitted in Brunello Cucinelli, Bottega Veneta, and Huishan Zhang, showcased looks for the office, brunch, board presentations, and cocktail parties.<\/p>\n

Many of the founders\u2019 mouths were agape when they were asked to consider ditching their Patagonia vests for a suede Cucinelli number that retails for nearly $5,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ALuxury retailer Wilkes Bashford staged a mini fashion show to demonstrate how founders should dress for various occasions. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

The rest of the afternoon could best be described as a crash course on being a human. There were sessions about public speaking, projecting charisma as a leader, and maintaining office decorum once you start hiring employees. During the lessons, servers delivered to each table three-tier stands stacked with beet tartare, compressed watermelon poke, and smoked salmon goug\u00e8res.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Between bites, founders jotted down a steady stream of advice in notebooks and on napkins. A few tips: If an invitation says black-tie optional, choose black tie; in conversation, ask more questions and talk less; and whatever you do, don\u2019t roll up to the Rosewood in a flashy car (gauche).\u00a0<\/p>\n

One speaker earnestly suggested good conversation starters, including \u201cWhat show are you currently streaming on Netflix?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s the last fiction book you read?\u201d The founder he asked simply could not remember.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout the event, Lessin doubled down on etiquette\u2019s importance in Silicon Valley. A few decades ago, he said, the region was a backwater where the sight of an unshowered techie wearing a rumpled T-shirt to work was slightly endearing. But those days are over.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow the codes,\u201d Lessin said. \u201cTech is no longer playful and cute. It\u2019s taking people\u2019s jobs and changing environments. Everyone\u2019s threatened by it, which means you need to be like, \u2018I\u2019m here and respectful,\u2019 as opposed to \u2018I\u2019m here and intentionally disrespectful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FourEach founder walked away with a goodie bag that included a $100 gift card to Wilkes Bashford. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard\"\"Before the caviar, founders enjoyed truffle mac-and-cheese bites, crab cakes, and Korean short-rib meatballs. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

The crowd nodded intently, before the closing session: a lesson about caviar and wine.<\/p>\n

Each table was brought a tin of caviar on ice and blinis. Geoffrey Chen of Caviar House & Prunier guided the founders in a posh accent through how to take a bump of the salt-cured sturgeon eggs. He advised them to use a mother-of-pearl spoon to avoid ruining the taste with metal and offered a rule to live by: Always order Champagne, never ros\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the pomp and circumstance, the founders \u2014 all of whom made steady eye contact and were perfectly polite \u2014 said the most valuable lessons were the bits of wisdom Lessin sprinkled throughout the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked what he said about taking a breath and lowering your blood pressure before you enter a room,\u201d Paoli said. \u201cI\u2019m definitely going to remember that when I\u2019m meeting with investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AFounders said the best part of etiquette school was hearing Sam Lessin\u2019s advice on how to stay composed and confident. | Source: Morgan Ellis\/The Standard<\/p>\n

\u201cThe highlight for me was what Sam said about having an abundance mindset. There\u2019s always more opportunities around the corner,\u201d said Maxim Sindall, a Toronto-based founder who had traveled to San Francisco to attend etiquette school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peretz Partensky, the founder of ImmuneBridge, said he\u2019d recommend future etiquette school events to his peers. (Yes, there will be more, and Lessin said he is considering writing a book called \u201cModern Etiquette in Silicon Valley\u201d). But the absurdity of the occasion wasn\u2019t lost on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should definitely be an episode of \u2018Silicon Valley,\u2019\u201d said Partensky. \u201cReboot the show!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the most un-San Francisco scene imaginable: Thirty of the city\u2019s young founders arriving early in tailored…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[29332,101,103,102,104,106,105,8170,995,29331],"class_list":{"0":"post-44248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-garry-tan","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news","15":"tag-startups","16":"tag-tech","17":"tag-y-combinator"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}