I happened to notice this in a post on X: Slow Ventures ran a 4-hour etiquette class for founders. This is actually a brilliant idea. A non-trivial amount of founders (and VCs) could use some help in this department.
So I asked AI: what would a course syllabus for something like this look like? Below is the response (which I quite like!):
This is a genuinely good idea — etiquette as a business skill is perennially under-taught, especially for technical founders who may have gone deep on product/engineering but shallow on navigating rooms. Here’s how I’d structure a day-long or modular course built around the Slow Ventures premise.
Founder Etiquette — A Field Guide
4-hour intensive · 5 modules · lecture + role-play format
Morning Block — First Impressions
Module 1 · 45 min — The room before the meeting
Arrivals, introductions, and presence under observation
- Timing: the cost of early vs. late
- Handshakes, eye contact, the graceful exit from a name you missed
- Business card and phone etiquette
- How to work a room without appearing to work a room
Module 2 · 45 min — Table stakes: dining fluency
The business meal as performance and ritual
- Place settings, utensils, and the BMW rule
- Who orders first, who orders what
- Wine: fluency without performance
- Dietary restrictions — yours and theirs
- The check: the ritual, the timing, the dodge
- When and how to talk business at the table
Mid-Morning Block — Communication
Module 3 · 45 min — Communication that doesn’t leak desperation
Written and verbal signals investors actually read
- Email: subject lines, length, tone, and the follow-up cadence
- Reading the room on Slack/text vs. formal channels
- The thank-you note — when, how, why it still matters
- Saying no, disagreeing, and delivering bad news
- How to receive feedback without deflecting or over-agreeing
- The exit from a conversation: graceful, not abrupt
Afternoon Block — High-Stakes Scenarios
Module 4 · 45 min — Investor relations: the long game
Board rooms, pitch meetings, and the unwritten VC code
- Board meeting protocols — who speaks, in what order
- Managing up to your board without managing them
- The warm intro — how to ask, how to use, how to close the loop
- Confidence vs. bravado: what the room hears
- What to do when the meeting is going badly
- Conference behavior: panels, hallways, and the after-party
Module 5 · 60 min — The edges: cultural fluency and hard situations
Where etiquette meets judgment
- Cross-cultural norms: Japan, Middle East, Europe, India — the high-risk differentials
- Power dynamics: how to behave when you have more (or less)
- Navigating someone else’s social gaffe gracefully
- Gift-giving: what to give, what never to give
- The fine line between casual and sloppy in casual settings
- Live role-play: difficult scenarios, coached debrief
A few things I’d stress if actually running this:
Module 3 is where the real behavioral work happens for founders specifically. The desperation signal leaks through email more than anywhere else — the too-fast reply, the over-explanation, the follow-up that arrives four hours after the first message. That’s the stuff that’s hard to see in yourself.
One thing Slow Ventures probably got right: four hours is about the right ceiling. Any longer and you start to feel like you’re at finishing school, which kills the energy.
After reviewing this, I thought it might be useful to add two role playing scenarios to the course. Here’s what the AI recommended:
First, add this role play in after Module 2:
Role-play 1 · 20 min — The wrong bread plate
Recovering from a gaffe without losing the room
A founder is taken to lunch by a partner at a firm they’ve been trying to get in front of for six months. It’s going well — good rapport, the partner seems genuinely interested. Then the founder accidentally takes the partner’s bread roll, realizes it mid-bite, and has to navigate the next ten minutes without letting the gaffe collapse the energy in the room. Secondary layer: the check arrives and it’s ambiguous who’s hosting.
This tests everything from Modules 1 and 2 simultaneously — table fluency, recovery under embarrassment, reading whether to acknowledge the mistake or absorb it silently, and the check ritual. Low-stakes enough to be funny, high-stakes enough to feel real.
Next, add this role play after Modules 3, 4, and 5:
Role-play 2 · 30 min — The meeting that’s going sideways
Holding the room when the numbers missed
A founder is in a board meeting presenting quarterly numbers that missed. Midway through, one board member interrupts with a pointed question the founder doesn’t have a clean answer to. A second board member piles on. The founder has to hold the room — not deflect, not over-apologize, not go defensive — while also reading which of the two is genuinely concerned versus performing concern for the room. Cultural wrinkle: the more aggressive questioner comes from a context where directness reads as respect, not attack.
This pulls from Modules 3, 4, and 5 simultaneously. It’s the hardest scenario in the course and should feel that way. The coached debrief afterward is where most of the learning actually happens — ending here means it lands with weight, which is the right note to close on.
More commentary from the AI:
The dining module is the most load-bearing. A remarkable amount of professional signaling happens at the table and most people don’t realize they’re broadcasting anything. The BMW rule alone (bread-meal-water, left to right, so you don’t eat someone else’s roll) is the kind of thing nobody tells you until you’ve already grabbed the wrong bread plate in front of a Series B lead. The live role-play after Module 2 brings this to life.
The live role-play in Module 5 is what separates a good version of this class from a mediocre one. You can lecture about graceful exits from bad meetings all day. Watching someone flail through one in real time, then getting coached on the spot, is what actually moves the needle.
You must be logged in to post a comment.