There has to be a better first question than “What do you do?”

I went to two Timeleft dinners. Dinner with strangers sounded like exactly the kind of thing I’d enjoy.

Honestly, I was bored.

Both times, we ended up doing the familiar introductions. What do you do? Where do you work? And then the conversation started organising itself around those answers.

I get why we ask. It’s an easy question. Everyone has an answer ready. Especially in Bangalore, there’s a decent chance you’ll find a company, colleague or industry in common.

But I could almost feel the box forming around me as soon as I answered.

Tech guy. Software engineer. Founder.

All true. I’m passionate about tech and coding. I can spend hours talking about building software. But I also love painting, reading, board games, good food, nice wine and beer, and appreciating art.

Depending on how we meet, you might get to know one version of me and never discover the others.

I wanted to know what else was sitting at the table.

What does this person get unusually excited about? What’s a story they love telling? How do they think? What would we end up talking about if we already knew each other well enough to skip the introductions?

The frustrating thing is that I’m curious enough to want to ask all of it immediately.

Which is also a great way to make someone feel like they’re being interviewed.

Something to do together

I’ve tried getting around this through activities. Board games, for example, give everyone something to focus on. You’re making decisions, negotiating, laughing at something that just happened. There’s much less pressure to keep inventing conversation.

I love that.

But even during a really good game, I’d sometimes find myself wanting to know more about the person across from me. We could spend two hours enjoying ourselves and I’d still leave knowing very little about their life.

I found myself looking for new experiences too. A different place, a different activity, something to break the routine.

Novelty gets me out of the house. But when I think about the evenings that actually mattered to me, I usually remember something someone said. A story. A moment when we understood each other a little better.

That made me wonder how much thought we were putting into the conversation itself.

We choose the venue, the food, the activity, the guest list. Then we mostly hope everyone clicks.

Could we give that part a little more help?

Giving the conversation somewhere to go

That question eventually became a big part of SoMo.

I wanted to build an experience for six people where the conversation had some help getting started and somewhere interesting to go.

Six felt like a group small enough for everyone to participate, with enough people that you don’t have to carry half the conversation yourself. You can listen for a while. Someone else’s story might remind you of your own. You can join when you have something to say.

And games could do more than fill the time. They could give people reasons to tell stories, disagree, be playful and discover something about each other.

I didn’t want to seat six strangers and immediately ask them to share their deepest fears. I’d find that exhausting too.

Sometimes you need to have a stupid argument about something completely inconsequential before you feel comfortable saying anything that matters to you.

The progression matters. So does having room to stay light.

The question I keep coming back to while building these experiences is: does this help people become more curious about each other? Does it give someone a chance to show a side of themselves that a normal introduction would miss?

I can’t guarantee that everyone at a table will become friends. I wouldn’t believe anyone who promised me that.

But I do think we can put more care into how people meet. Especially when someone has given up a chunk of their weekend and travelled across Bangalore to be there.

I still want to know what you do for work. It’s part of your life, and maybe a part you really love.

I just don’t want us to spend the entire evening there and go home without discovering that we had something much more interesting to talk about.

Tarun Sasikumar is the founder of somo club.