Thanks man, you just became my therapist. Let me know where to send the $200.
Totally agree with you. One thing I actually like about China's laws — you can't become an influencer on something without a degree in it. Yeah, it kills a lot of people who'd have made it without one, but at least you don't get random nobodies being loudly wrong about things they've never studied. If you don't know the shit, don't talk about it. I learned 7 programming languages in school — C, C++, Java, C#, HTML and more. Still wouldn't walk up to a CTO and lecture him.
One thing I didn't mention in the post. The girl he was flirting with? I actually know her and her guy. She's the one who asked me to come meet this LP. Sitting there watching him flirt with her, tell her she should build alone and he'd back her, her passing him gum, him half on his phone — wasn't a great watch. She showed me his LinkedIn. Yale PhD in math, no funding mentioned, no background in entrepreneurship. Just wanting to flirt with her. I left.
He couldn't say anything to me directly. All the peacocking was for her and for the young game dev founder he was grilling. Then he turned to that founder and told him he doesn't need to raise funds, trying to pull him down just to look smart, and I lost it internally.
I've been in gaming 10 years. First 2 bootstrapped, building games for other companies. Got funding in year 4, through an accelerator, because the total annual VC money in India right now is roughly what Anthropic raised in the previous round.
So when he turned and told the guy "you don't need VC money, you're not ready," I jumped in to defend him.
At some point she told me he'd said something about my product too — that I don't need an ICP, that I shouldn't focus on one user. Our traction came from neurodivergent kids who loved the product. We teach real-life skills through games — originally aimed at young adults, but neurodivergent kids especially get a lot from it, because reading social cues, setting boundaries, body language, negotiation, all of that is harder for them, and games are a low-stakes way to practice. Meanwhile he was acting like some YC advisor or LP, showing off and telling everyone what to do.
I don't know why I'm this upset. Maybe my ego, maybe I just really wanted to shut him up in the moment and didn't. Just hated everything about him, his energy, all of it.
Thanks for listening, orionblastar. Made a real difference. :)
You are welcome. I've worked with people from India before, and they seem really smart. I studied Buddhism a bit and learned to let go of my ego, since it doesn't really exist. I once wanted to make a Buddhist Boot Camp to teach mindfulness and meditation to reduce stress. Maybe that is something you can do?
Feel free to bend my ear anytime, I'm a good listener.
That Fake LP needs to be mentored and taught by a real LP. A PhD in Math is fine, but computers and making human connections require more than just math.
Yes, honestly the whole Asia culture promotes aggressive learning and growth. Sure if you do make one add me in. Would happy to be a part of it. I am new here, if you want to ping me to connect further whenever you have the bootcamp happy to join in <3
I liked the idea that my character is going to die... Maybe some progress par would be nice and make some game juice likea chake effect when you do wrong and a reilf effect when I do right... for some of us where English is not the first langauge you can have a difficultly and some hinds in the middle of the game to give them a clue more like a last chance with some timer that can make the game interesting.. Like I might need just one or 2 words and it just gives me a hint about the word with a timer like an extra life of sorts. That's my first take on it
I started using Pencil for my UI designs and they just introduced animations and I was like they just kicked Figma and now this. Figma might just become another Blockbuster.
Spent years playing dota and honestly the most memorable thing wasnt any rampage or comeback. it was this one ranked game where our carry was flaming everyone, we were losing towers, team going quiet the way they do right before everyone gives up.
Our pos 5 just started calling plays. didnt argue, didnt mute, just "smoke in 30" and "ill ward their jungle, go." something about how calm he was made the carry stop typing and start playing. we won that game. nobody added each other after. just five strangers who pulled it together for 40 minutes and moved on.
Dota does this thing where it forces you to cooperate with someone whos actively hostile to you, in real time, with your mmr on the line. thats a very different kind of social experience than a peaceful lobby where everyone just decided to be nice.
The problem with most "AI study modes" is that they optimize for knowledge transfer. The harder problem is knowledge use, being able to actually apply something under pressure. Reading about how to handle a difficult conversation is not the same as practicing it. Knowing the BATNA framework or some other thing you learn from chatgpt doesn't mean you can use it when someone lowballs you and you have 10 seconds to respond.
Two questions: under what conditions would you only have 10 seconds to respond? And how would you develop yourself to be effective under this kind of pressure?
What: Interview, Date, Conflict resolution (more like holding back to respond), setting boundaries, negotiating, or when you feel threatened like when you were a kid if you were bullied…
How: Like any other skill practice if you were in that kind of situation and you were stuck and trying to do sudo runs as if it was real and getting the right muscle memory.
Building Questly — story-driven practice for real-world conversations which you play like a game. The core insight: people know what to do in hard situations. They freeze because they've never practiced the actual moment. Questly is the reps. https://questly.academy/
Working on Questly (https://questly.academy/) — an AI simulation platform for practicing difficult real-world conversations (negotiations, feedback, conflict). Think flight simulator, but for conversations people usually avoid. Built it after noticing how often people ‘prepare’ mentally but freeze in the actual moment.
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