

Zen & the art of startup advice - dalton
http://daltoncaldwell.com/zen-the-art-of-startup-advice

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joshu
In my role as angel investor I talk to a LOT of entrepreneurs who think that
having great advisors are necessary because of all the valuable advice.
Unfortunately, I'm with Dalton - advice isn't all that useful.

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dmk23
I see the biggest problem with "startup advice" is the bias or an outright
conflict of interest from most of these "advisors". They are usually trying to
sell you something and anything they say has to be heavily discounted on that
basis alone.

Incubators/accelerators are going to tell you that (surprise!) going through
an incubator/accelerator is the best path to success (forget that most
successes happen without incubators).

Angels are going to tell you they are the best source of seed capital (even
though many won't do much beside writing one check).

VCs are going to tell you that you cannot scale without them (I am sure
Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, etc really regret not being VC-funded).

Retired executives will tell you to do exactly what made them successful
without bothering to check if that applies to your situation.

People who failed at something will try to convince you that you are going to
fail at attacking the same field (never mind a totally different approach).

Engineers heavily invested in that open source project or the other will say
that you are stupid not to use it.

Caveat Emptor! Beware geeks/investors bearing advice!

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Alex3917
To quote Terence McKenna, "You have to take seriously the notion that
understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only
understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own
understanding."

We're never going to learn the absolute truth from reading startup advice, but
even if absolute truth did exist it wouldn't do us any good. If nothing else,
embracing uncertainty at least lets us learn what we're supposed to be paying
attention to.

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munyukim
Startup advice is not meant be the ultimate guide to decision making , but to
widen our knowledge and thought process.

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billpatrianakos
I think we all knew this already. But now now does this article count as
startup advice? If so, do we not take it seriously either? In all seriousness
though, we should take startup advice with a grain of salt but at the same
time realize that while most of it is contradictory that doesn't mean it's all
worthless. The trick is to pick out what applies to your particular situation.
If there are two conflicting pieces of advice that apply then you just go with
your gut. Only you know what's best for your situation. It's always useful to
learn what others think or have gone through. So yeah, it's all a bunch of
feel-good contradictory stuff but it still has its worth. You can compare it
to self-help which is often worthless but even then at least self-help gets
you moving toward bettering your situation just like startup advice. Startup
advice is like a very useful worthless thing. Yeah, it's both of those things
at once.

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taligent
The other issue I have with all this "advice" being dished out is that it
often comes from people who simply aren't that successful.

And I don't mean you have to be the next Facebook but at the very least you
need to be at a point where your startup is no longer a startup.

~~~
BerislavLopac
I beg to disagree -- someone's ability to transfer knowledge and wisdom
doesn't have to follow any external signs of success; it's a completely
separate skill. Just as your English teacher doesn't have to James Joyce or
even have a single publication to their name, quality startup advice doesn't
have to some from someone successful with startups. Unfortunately, just like
with your English classes, the real validation of your teacher is not possible
until sometimes even years after the fact.

