The Charm Hacker

Olivia Fox Cabane says she can make anyone more likable—for a price. But can charisma really be taught?

ON A RAINY EVENING in the spring of 2013, around 30 men and women gathered in an apartment high above the streets of San Francisco. They were dressed in business-casual and cocktail attire. Fading light from the wraparound windows painted the sparsely furnished room in hues of orange and pink. Sixteen stories below, a row of silver railway cars lined up at the city’s Caltrain station, looking like children’s toys against the backdrop of skyscrapers. Orange-and-black–clad baseball fans streamed from the station and headed to the nearby AT&T Park, but the cocktail party seemed oblivious to the night’s game. In place of sports trivia, their conversations were peppered with organizational affiliations.

Google. MIT. Stanford.

In the crowded kitchen, a 50-something man in thick, designer glasses recounted a birthday dinner he had thrown for his fiancée. “We must have drunk ten thousand dollars’ worth of wine,” he said.

He turned to a nearby guest, an acquaintance who had recently piloted a new type of mobile app, and asked how things were going.

“It’s okay,” the guest said. But, he added, someone had recently told him—