The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten podcast.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about bragging versus being humble.

How you feel about an entrepreneur who brags about his successes or is humble about them is something that is very subjective in nature. However, there are certain situations where bragging or pumping yourself up might be the right thing to do and vice versa.

In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about why people feel differently about humble founders versus those who brag often, the big revelation he made, why what’s important is the motivation behind people’s actions, the utility of being confident and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic

00:28 Why this topic was chosen.

00:52 How people typically look at bragging versus humble.

04:35 Why the motivation behind what you do matters so much.

05:50 How you can never know the motive of people actions.

06:27 How people that are good at what they do, hardly have to say it.

07:00 How our attitudes towards people can affect how we look at them.

08:06 How MMA fighters pump themselves up before a fight.

09:00 The utility of being confident.

3 Key Points:

The things that people say about other people, say more about themselves than anybody elseIf you’re a billionaire and you drive a Honda Accord, it’s because you want to drive a Honda AccordI think we care too much about what other people do with their money.

[0:00:01]

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today on The Startup Chat, we're going to talk about bragging versus being humble, because we think that it's just an interesting topic that I think both Steli and I have some thoughts on and haven't gotten the chance to really think about. So y'all get to listen as we think about this topic between bragging and being humble. Bragging, it's an interesting word to me because I always think about these words and what's the connotation. The connotation is that you're bragging, it's a negative thing, it's something that nobody wants to hear, and if you do it, you're a bad person.

[0:00:42]

Steli Efti: Right.

[0:00:43]

Hiten Shah: Being humble comes across as oh, that person's humble. They're really successful and they don't really talk like they are, or they don't act like they are, or they drive a Honda Accord that's a 1996 Honda Accord, like the first car I drove. And that's it. And they have a billion dollars or whatever. It's almost like those things that people do that we label ... I'm going to get a little esoteric on it for a second, but those things that people label about other people say more about themselves than anybody else. It's almost like if you keep talking about the person with the Honda Accord that's worth a billion dollars or the fact that Warren Buffett supposedly lives in the same house he bought I don't know how many years ago, 60 years ago, 50 years ago.

[0:01:42]

Steli Efti: When he was 12, when he was 12. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[0:01:43]

Hiten Shah: And then you know, that's cool. You have an opinion of that, you share it, and then it makes for good content on a blog post on Business Insider or something like that. But I've read a Quora post breaking down Warren Buffett. He has other houses apparently. Not to blow the man up, but that's what I heard, that's what I read. It was just because I'm interested in Warren Buffett just like many other people, and Charlie Munger and all these folks, because they're just interesting, successful and share a lot of their wisdom. I just look at this and I'm like, I don't know how much of this is our impression of other people and our own opinion and our own lens, or it's actually truth about the other person and how they feel about themselves. Why does that billionaire drive a Honda Accord?