november 19, 2025

when you’re trying to communicate something to the world, or convince someone of something, you’re oftentimes “fighting against indifference.” will explore that below.

this concept is probably best explained in the context of applications. at afore, we had a program called afore alpha where founders could apply for funding (the standard deal was a $1m safe on a $10m cap). we took turns reviewing applications, and i personally reviewed over 10,000 applications over the course of two years. this is where i first realized the importance of “standing out” in a high-volume application-based setting.

high-volume - standing out

when you’re applying to things (a school, job, loan, vc funding, etc), it’s important to be memorable and spike in something. the application system is up because there is probably a constrained resource (spots available at a school, dollars, etc) and a lot of people that want it. it’s good to put together a generally “good” application, but as someone that has been on the other end (reviewing), it’s worth taking a step back and thinking - if someone only has a minute to read this application, what will they walk away remembering?

as mentioned earlier in leaning into strengths, it might be counter-intuitive to focus on one thing that spikes, instead of putting together a generally “well-rounded” application:

perhaps it’s that when growing up, preparing for college involves putting together a well-rounded lifestyle, or perhaps it’s simply viewed as bad to have weaknesses (and better to try and be a little bit good at everything). as children, oftentimes your parents want for you to excel in every subject at school, while also being a “normal” kid with a good social life, and also have extracurriculars / hobbies on the side, etc (being a good child, maintaining good health, etc). in childhood, being spiky is often valued less than being well-rounded.

but when you consider that college application reviewers will spend just a few minutes reviewing up to 100 applications per day, having a “good enough” or “well-rounded” application doesn’t make as much sense.

here, you’re fighting against indifference. out of the 100 applications today, perhaps 30 of them look “pretty good” just like yours - they follow the right cookie-cutter format, have one interesting tidbit in each part of the application, and are generally polished. but how does the reviewer narrow down from 30 applications, to a shortlist of 5 they are really excited about?

usually this involves either a really compelling (perhaps surprising) story, or a metric that stands out head-and-shoulders above the rest. stories are a great way to show, not tell, who you are (you could say “i work hard” or tell a story about sleeping over in your office to get a project done, the latter works better to convince someone of your point). lots of people will have polished stories, but maybe you have a really unconventional one, and that’s what catches the college essay reviewer’s eye.

in summary, whenever there is a high volume of applications that need to be reviewed, there will be many that are “good enough” (where the reviewer may be indifferent - not exceedingly positive, or exceedingly negative, on all of them). being in the final shortlist involves highlighting a spike or finding another creative way to stand out.

fitting into others’ priorities

another way to push past the indifference stage is to fit your goal (product, ask, etc) into someone else’s priorities list, to make them care

the way rob snyder phrases this is - “everyone has a trello board in their head.” basically they have a list of to-do’s, or projects they need to get done. and it can be very difficult to add another to-do to their list, that ends up making it to the top.

another way i think about of this, with an extreme metaphor - people sort incoming tasks into either “priority” or “backlog,” and there is no middle ground. a to-do is either very top-of-mind and urgent and needs to get done today, or it joins the rest of the to-do’s in the laundry list. there may be things that you consider “top of the backlog” but these are way closer to backlog than priority items.

if you assume this is true, when you’re trying to convince someone of something (getting them to join your team, give you funding, buy your product, etc), it helps if you can fit your item into their priority agenda, instead of adding another thing to their backlog that you hope they eventually will get to. rob would say - how do you get to the top of their trello board?

for example, if you know a customer’s priority is fundraising, you could position your crm software as a fundraising tool that can help them accomplish their goals. if you know a vc firm is looking to make a bet in a category, you could go to lengths to research the space and figure out how to communicate that you are the bet to make. if you know a person wants to start a company a few years down the line and you’re trying to hire them, you could position your founding engineer role as a great way to learn the skills required for building a startup.

in-person meetings

in-person meetings increase your odds of “standing out” or fighting against indifference, especially if you have good people skills. there are a bunch of reasons why which are probably obvious (conversations feel more natural and flow better, harder to multitask / get distracted, easier to read body language, they might do less in-person meetings than calls, etc).

people tend to remember the first and last parts of interactions. those stick better, everything in the middle fades. ebbinghaus (german psychologist who studied memory) called this the serial-position effect. so if your goal is to stand out, especially during an in-person interaction, you should focus on having the first and last impressions go pretty well.

it’s also true that people may not remember what you say, but they will remember how it makes them feel. this is true in advertising, social media (thinking specifically about viral twitter posts), and in-person meetings. so a good way to push past indifference is to think about the message you want to convey ahead of time or figure out which emotion you want to elicit, and make sure that comes across. people will remember if they felt shocked, at ease, excited, annoyed, etc.

we hosted a showcase for a bunch of afore’s portfolio companies recently. to prepare, we held practice sessions, where we did a full run-through of the showcase, and encouraged each presenting team to stay and watch the other presentations and give feedback. after everyone had presented, we read off the list of companies one-by-one and asked the group to blurt out the one thing they took away from each presentation. unsurprisingly, people generally shouted out the same thing (team 1: “founder’s research backgrounds,” team 2: “revenue growth,” team 3: “potential customer flew the team out to integrate the product for them,” team 4: “demo”). the takeaway here is that even during in-person interactions, there will probably be one thing that stands out, so you should craft your communication to make that one concept memorable (and make sure it’s thing you want people to take away in the first place).

long-term partners

once you have pushed past the indifference phase - you got the job, you secured funding, you got into college - excitement often fades naturally, as other things come up in your boss or customer’s life. people get busy and pursue new ideas and opportunities.

you can do your best to stay top-of-mind. you can frequently interact with people over email / text, you can build up a social media following and post constantly, you can host events to catch up with a lot of people at the same time.

but a great way to fight against indifference is to find long-term partners for whom excitement fades a lot slower. this could be due to their personality (they prefer building strong relationships with a small number of people, over building weak ones with a lot of people), or because of aligned incentives (they are invested in your long-term success). or, you could go heads-down and build something really interesting that gets people really excited / makes people care about for a long period of time.