How To Influence Decision Makers

YC Fall 2024 Batch:

• Applications due by August 27th
• Batch begins September 29th in San Francisco
• Demo day will be in early December
• Special opportunity for founders wanting to start immediately
• As stated: "This is a special moment in history to start a startup"

Many critical career and business decisions happen in rooms where you're not present. This includes:

• Promotions, raises, and termination decisions
• Fundraising decisions after your pitch
• Product meetings and annual planning sessions
• Budget and headcount allocations
• Layoff decisions

The challenge is: How do you influence these decisions when you're not physically present in the room?

Beyond presenting coherent arguments and logical cases, your long-term personal brand significantly influences how decisions about you are made.

People form impressions based on:

• Your attitude and demeanor
• Your track record of effectiveness
• How you've interacted with them in the past

These impressions can be surprisingly sticky, similar to how one might get a nickname that lasts a lifetime based on a single incident.

When people make decisions that affect you, they're often subconsciously deciding whether they want to spend more time with you.

• A VC making a Series A investment will join your board
• A promotion might put you in executive meetings
• More responsibility means more interaction

The decision makers are essentially asking themselves: "Do I want to spend more time with this person?"

How your team members respond to you matters significantly in decision-making rooms.

Decision makers often consider:

• How do other team members react to this person?
• Would we want other people on the team to act like this person?
• Are we setting a positive example by supporting this person?

The subtle undercurrent of energy you bring to an organization can make or break decisions in your favor.

Understanding the specific culture and social norms of your organization is critical to influencing decisions effectively.

Many people learn the wrong lessons from media or advice and engage in inappropriate lobbying or political behaviors that backfire spectacularly.

This is particularly evident in how people try to get into YC with inappropriate tactics like overly aggressive emails which are immediately disqualifying.

A strong track record significantly increases your influence on decisions made about you.

The concept of "irreplaceability" is key - decision makers often run the thought experiment: "If this person disappeared tomorrow, how disrupted would we be?"

This is a critical test for both companies and individuals - the more irreplaceable you are, the more influence you'll have when important decisions are made.

Decision makers often try to assess whether you're primarily a giver or a taker within the organization.

They're asking:

• Is this person a mercenary just looking to extract value?
• Does this person genuinely care about our customers, their team, or our product?

While some might advise acting like a mercenary to get ahead, this approach is surprisingly transparent and often backfires in decision-making rooms.

When fundraising, founders who become obsessively attached to securing a specific investor often fail to achieve their goal.

This attachment creates a counterproductive energy that works against you. Being open to different possibilities and not fixating on specific outcomes tends to yield better results.

Experienced decision makers can easily detect desperation, which typically works against your interests.

This insight led YC to increase their standard funding amount from $125,000 to around $500,000, giving founders 1.5-2 years of runway and allowing them to approach investors with a more confident, "take it or leave it" attitude that correlates with effectiveness.

• Important decisions about your career and business often happen when you're not in the room.
• Beyond making logical arguments, your personal brand, energy, and how others feel about spending time with you greatly influence decisions.
• Understanding the cultural norms of your organization helps you avoid overstepping boundaries with inappropriate political tactics.
• Making yourself "irreplaceable" is one of the most powerful ways to influence decisions in your favor.
• Decision makers can detect whether you genuinely care about the organization or are just acting as a mercenary.
• Appearing desperate or overly attached to specific outcomes often leads to negative decisions.
• How you respond to decisions not going your way influences future decisions about you.