
Startup advice and the clarity of experience - nikunjk
http://dcurt.is/there-is-no-solution-to-this-problem
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mlchild
I like Clayton Christensen's formulation:

“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the
question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right
off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to
open up the space for the answer to fit.”

[http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3225-what-are-
questions](http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3225-what-are-questions)

~~~
jpsim
What an insightful way to put it.

It's more than that, though. Learning business tips differs from learning
about a technical topic.

Business advice does usually state something obvious, but underlines its
importance. There are a million "obvious" things to do, and a lack of
resources to do them all.

Contrast that to learning something technical, where statements are more
likely to teach you something immediately upon hearing it, but offer much less
depth individually.

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stevenkovar
This resonates well with what Tawheed Kader (founder: Toutapp) wrote recently,
saying how things only started coming together for him after 3 years of
building his business. Great intuition develops from bruises and bloody
knuckles–time in the arena, as Dustin says.

[http://www.tawheedkader.com/2014/02/it-
takes-3-years/](http://www.tawheedkader.com/2014/02/it-takes-3-years/)

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vinceguidry
I see this effect in all areas of achievement. I call it the difference
between intellectual understanding and actual understanding and look for it
whenever I'm attempting to learn something new.

One example is programming. (Most) Everyone knows that TDD is good practice.
But every time TDD comes up in an HN thread, it's overloaded with people
saying the exact same thing. They know they should TDD but they don't.

It took careful and frequent watching of Gary Bernhardt's videos before I
could finally TDD. I would watch videos at night, then go to work the next day
and try to apply what I learned. I kept running into snags, and I'd have to go
back and watch the videos again to get a feel for the technique.

The techniques looked simple, easy even. But actual practice made a giant liar
out of the appearance. Proper testing is a tough, complex, pain in the ass to
learn. Every time you learn a new programming paradigm, you have to figure out
how it's tested. And you have to keep doing this for as long as you grow as a
programmer.

It's complexity of a sort that makes it very difficult to properly articulate.
When you do, the advice looks simple, boring. Yet the simple, boring advice
gets thrown out whenever you try to put it into actual practice, leaving you
with cowboy code.

The reason you see so few people who actually TDD is because very few people
end up putting their foot down, and digging deep into the "simple" advice to
make real progress on the goal of actually TDDing their software.

Entrepreneurship seems awfully similar.

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kirbyk
Did anyone notice Dustin's use of the words Obvious and Subtle? Considering
that Medium, a competitor to Dustin's Svtle is owned by Obivous Co. Dustin
always impresses me with his svbtleties.

~~~
mikeg8
Wow, that is impressive. Totally missed it the first time but would not be
surprised if it was intentional. Nice catch

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zmitri
I've found that cliched advice is often the best advice for this same reason.
It's cliché for a reason - a lot of people have found it to be useful.

Many people try to give insightful or unique advice, but often the simplest
advice is the best because it's hard to understand something until you've
actually experienced it.

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jjoe
So advice given by experienced startup founders won't resonate unless you've
already walked the path. I somewhat agree with the conclusion. But does this
mean we don't learn much from reading or listening to things we don't have
first hand experience with?

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k0mplex
You only learn what you already half know.

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strictfp
This is true for any advice. You have to tailor the message to the receiver.
Perhaps the speakers should consider their audience.

