The Trap of Speculative Meetings

The worst offender is the speculative meeting: 'let's grab coffee,' no agenda, might lead to something. For someone on the manager's schedule this is nearly free. One slot, low stakes, maybe upside.

For a maker it's brutal. The same casual ask costs half a day of real work, and there's no polite way to say so. Declining reads as an insult. Accepting quietly bleeds you.

New companies feel this hardest, because early on you meet investors and potential partners speculatively by necessity. PG's advice is at least to know what's happening: you're paying with the expensive currency, and the other side thinks it's cheap.