So I'm a founder of a venture-backed tech startup. On paper I think this should tick the right boxes as far as status is concerned - make good money doing something that the general public romanticises and thinks is exciting. The problem I have though is twofold:

  1. That my startup is in an exceptionally uninteresting industry (contract administration for construction project management).
  2. I'm the technical co-founder. I'm an engineer at heart, a godawful salesman, and connecting with strangers isn't my forté.

The problem I have is that if she asks me what I do for work, I say I'm a startup founder. I usually segway that into a story about my journey dropping out of college to build startups instead. But the problem is that they always want to know what my startup actually does, and the answer visibly bores them every motherfucking time. I've tried just saying we're in construction and leave it at that but usually they think they want to know more details. They don't.

It's fundamentally the driest fucking shit on earth, and every millisecond I talk about it has the same effect on my chances of getting laid.

What's the right approach here?