
Don't give bullshit advice - jaf12duke
http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-give-bullshit-advice
======
jonmc12
I was in the Entrepreneurs Organization (<http://www.eonetwork.org/>) for a
few years, and the organization had a required protocol for advice sharing
called 'Gestault Protocol', loosely derived from principles in Gestault
Therapy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_therapy#Overview>).
Effectively, the protocol prohibited you from sharing opinions as advice, and
forced the sharing of specific experiences through personal stories.

This protocol becomes very useful in situations where other people have been
down the same road as you - things like business processes, development
processes, hiring, dealing with employees, raising money, investing money,
etc. However, it also provides a nice boundary for giving advice - only share
experiences, never share opinions. So, when I'm asked for advice, I listen
careful, and try to see if I have any relevant experiences to share, or I try
to think of who might be better suited to share experiences.

Further, when I am asking for advice, and someone lends an opinion that seems
interesting, I ask pointed questions about this persons experience to
determine how I will weight the input, and whether the experience indeed does
apply to my situation. So overall, I've found experience sharing to be a
relevant boundary for giving and receiving advice.

~~~
marcell
I reached a similar conclusion when I noticed two things that repeatedly
happen when giving advice:

1) People don't follw your advice. I don't mean this in a frustrated, "I know
more than others" manner, but just as a matter of fact: people want to solve
their own challenges, and they know more about their own challenges than you
do. When advice is given in the form of "Do this, it will work out for you,"
it's usually ignored, and often with good reason.

2) Advice is based on personal experiences. This is what the "Gestault
Protocol" sounds like, and it makes a lot of sense. Your personal experience
is the "primary source," in a sense, and your advice is an interpretation of
it. Why not let others draw their own conclusions and benefit in a richer way
from your experiences?

I've been following these two guidelines, and find it gives good results. Glad
to see others are doing similar things.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
The best advice I get usually is in the form of "these are the hidden dangers
you may not anticipate..." i suppose this is a special-case of the personal-
experience-sharing "advice" that the GP is talking about

------
owenmarshall
My experience has been to the contrary: I rarely find people willing to crush
entrepreneurs' ideas; instead, most people seem to be quite reluctant to tell
others that their ideas are, frankly, terrible. In the end, people waste money
on ideas that are untenable.

I once had a old friend bring his bajillion-dollar social networking idea to
me -- he liked snakes, and wanted to meet other people who liked snakes, so he
wanted to make Facebook but only for people that own snakes. And he'd charge
for it! And he'd make millions, because damn it, _people love snakes!_

I understand that almost every idea is derivative, and that I can't really
understand the pet-snake market, but should I really say "Gee, buddy, I don't
know..." when every brain cell is screaming "tell him to run far away from
this!"?

~~~
jaf12duke
Help him clarify his hypothesis--that people do indeed love snakes--and test
it really quickly. A good lean development process would prove it wrong
quickly.

~~~
zyfo
Even if people love snakes that doesn't mean they

a) want to spend time talking to other snake-owners

b) want to do it over the internet

c) can't do it already

d) will pay for it

~~~
billswift
Maybe not, but there are books and magazines regularly purchased about snakes
(and just about anything else you can imagine). The trick, if you could get it
to work at all, would be to get good content and build the social web around
that.

------
jdp23
While I agree with the headline I think his specific advice - not to give
people feedback on their ideas in the conceptual phase - is bullshit.

When somebody asks me what I think of their idea, I start by highlighting
several things I like about it, then discuss a couple of the challenges or
risks, and try to make suggestions about useful next steps. People almost
invariably find it valuable -- and often tell me later how much even this
short conversation helped them.

Conversely, I often ask people what they think of my early-stage concepts, and
their responses are almost always useful. Even if somebody just says "wow
that's a great idea!" without really thinking about it, I can continue the
conversation with "Cool, what do you like about it?"

> Your ability to predict the future is no better than his.

Really? It's not like I have a crystal ball, but after doing startups and
strategy for 25 years, I've seen quite a lot of patterns for success or
failure, and learned a bunch of techniques for making success more likely.
What's the matter with sharing that?

------
jonnathanson
I've heard plenty of terrible ideas, and I've also heard plenty of "great"
ideas that are doomed to failure because it's patently obvious that the person
presenting the idea is incapable of seeing it through to fruition. In either
case, I think it's my duty -- as a friend, a colleague, an adviser, or in
whatever capacity -- to be honest without being a dick. It can be a fine line.

People are always going to be seeking validation, and I think you have to
accept that as given. Some measure of "Do you approve of what I'm doing?" is
always going to be baked into these sorts of conversations. Some folks ask it
outright; others merely dance around it or imply it. Either way, politely
acknowledge it and then move onto the practical advice.

To that end, I think practical advice _can_ be given. The trick is, as the
author suggests, not giving unverifiable advice on the viability of the
concept, but rather, teasing out how well the presenter has thought things
through. It's a Socratic form of "advice." It's not about poking holes for the
sake of poking holes, but about challenging the person to think about all
sides and ramifications of the problem he or she is trying to address.

Some of the best advice I've ever received on startups came in the form of
what, at the time, I'd considered "pushback" from would-be investors, friends,
or mentors. It took some healthy distance from the ideation/pitch phase in
order to receive the wisdom for what it really was. At the time, man oh man, I
hated hearing it. But in retrospect, I am glad I did. Some very smart people
saved me from some very stupid moves, and I owe them my eternal gratitude.

------
raganwald
I am with the author 100%. The apocryphal VC batting average is 20%: That
means that a VC firm with a full-time, professional team evaluating deals and
has four failures for every success is considered capable. A VC who has just
three failures for every successful investment would be considered good, and
if they could do that based on a single pitch, they would be considered God-
like.

I am not a VC firm, I'm just one guy. I don't perform due diligence. I don't
pick winners for a living. So if you ask me, what's your chance of success,
what am I going to say? Even if I like your idea, and even if I was good
enough to manage $200,000,000 of other people's money investing in winners,
I'd only be right one time in four or five.

So I also tell people that I have no fucking idea.

~~~
jbellis
Upvoted, but if I am not mistaken those statistics are for false positives (VC
thought idea would work, but it didn't.) What we're concerned about here are
false negatives (VC thought idea wouldn't work, but it did).

I could be wrong, but I would bet the true negative:false negative ratio for a
good VC is (1) very, very high and (2) higher than Joe Average who doesn't do
this for a living.

Sure, nobody has a perfect crystal ball (famously,
<http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx>) but that doesn't mean
there's no value in getting input from someone whose job is to get it right
more often than your roommate. I'd even go so far as to say that any really
great idea should go through a chorus of "that will never work"s as a kind of
conditioning process.

~~~
qq66
You're totally wrong about the (true negative|false negative) ratio. Most
early-stage businesses that pitch VCs get turned down by more than half the
VCs they approach (this is changing as angel rounds are getting businesses to
traction). The phenomenon of "hot deals" is very rare.

So for every VC investment into a Facebook, Zappos, Zynga, etc. there are
multiple VCs who turn it down, pushing this ratio under 1.

~~~
shasta
You're not substituting the right numbers into that formula. The numerator
includes all bad (will fail) startup ideas that get rejected.

~~~
qq66
Yep, my bad :-\

------
edanm
Great article. I was very worried at the beginning, because honest feedback is
incredibly important. But I agree with most of the conclusions - attacking an
idea directly is the _worst_ way you can go about helping an entrepreneur.

I know that these days, when I hear someone pitch an idea, what I do is this:

1\. Try to figure out an MVP to get out of it.

2\. Convince the entrepreneur that an MVP is the _right_ way to go (depending
on the person/idea, this may be tricky).

3\. Talk about how to get the MVP made the most cheaply. If the entire idea
can be tested by throwing up a quick WordPress-powered website, get them to do
it.

I will tell people what I generally like about the idea, but the truth is,
after so many failures of my own (failed startups and failed predictions), I
really don't think I can wholly trust my intuition about what ideas are good.
And I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in that. But those other ideas, about MVPs
and customer development, etc, are things that I've just learned from my time
in the "business", so it's the best knowledge to impart.

------
btrask
Once in a while non-technical friends come to me and ask me to help them
implement ideas they've come up with. Often enough, I think the idea is bad
for one reason or another.

That puts me in an awkward situation. I don't want to work on an idea that I
don't like, so I have to explain my concerns, whether or not they're
objectively justified (or "bullshit").

Last time it happened (a couple weeks ago), I tried to give some suggestions
for an alternative solution. He took it personally and asked point-blank if I
would help him or not. Overall, it didn't go over well.

~~~
thwarted
The best answer here, which is honest, straightforward, and has the least
chance of being inflamatory is something like "Sorry, I don't have time to
help you with any of your ideas, I'm already working a bunch of my own ideas"
(although, I might stick the word "shitty" before both instances of "ideas",
depending on the audience, to communicate my position on Sturgeon's Law).

------
freshfunk
Perhaps I'm extrapolating too much but if the guy is asking you specifically,
"Do you think it's a good idea?" then either he's very early in his idea, he
hasn't thought through why HE thinks it's a good idea or he doesn't have the
confidence that his idea is good.

If it's the first two options, then he needs to put more time into developing
the idea to gain the confidence that it's a good idea. If it's the final one,
then perhaps it's not worth pursuing the idea or he's not in the right
position (confidence) to do so.

Of course, it's always smart to solicit advice on an idea such as the
potential challenges, risks, strategies etc.

------
hxf148
I think it's hard to get great honest constructive reactions from people you
don't know let alone the people you do know who just want to support you.

With a startup (<http://infostripe.com>) outside the insider circles of the
west coast (or even the US) it has been extremely difficult for us to get any
professional response from the tech punditry so far.

I think you face three battles in this industry. Creating something new,
better or great, having someone on the inside pass a little acknowledgement to
you early and getting (and accepting) good honest (negative) feedback.

The lack of which can in turn lead you down the path of asking if something is
any good after you have already built it.

If you've gotten so far as to build your vision don't give up because every
visitor or user does not get it or need it. Is your product at all useful to
anyone, it's it reasonably priced? If it is then market it to those people,
continue seek out industry leaders and the everyman opinion and don't give up
in the face of the internet's vapid attention span too easily.

If you haven't built it yet. Then consider getting to work on a prototype
before spending months trying to convince anyone it's a good idea.

------
BradGutting
If someone thinks it's a good idea, they'll invest money into it. Rough
parallel, but always remember: it's not a principle unless it costs you
something.

I'm not sure that execution always trumps ideas, but I'm pretty sure that no
"great" idea is static and any idea requires more than just potential energy
to turn into anything--plus, I'd be way more interested in the personality and
abilities of the person presenting the concept than what the concept itself.
Chances are if they have sufficient confidence and endurance to plow through
the inevitable challenges, they won't ask your opinion.

Simplified (not necessarily) simple concepts tend to work the best. Sounds
obvious, but you can't always complicate to profit.

Years ago, before taking my first job, someone told me that the keys to
success were pretty simple: persistence, commitment, and patience. I thought I
had the first two wrapped up neatly, and would eventually find that "patience"
thing. Turns out, I had NO idea what persistence meant and didn't understand
the first (or second, or third) thing about commitment.

You don't learn about those things by having a few good ideas. You learn about
them by doing things, over and over again.

------
zaidf
Reminds me of all the times when I share an idea to hear the other guy say
"wow, great idea!" to which I go "wait, really? how do you know!?".

I've replaced the binary means of judging my ideas with one that allows for
more shades of gray. I rarely give any specific idea more than 15-25% chance
of gaining traction.

------
shazow
I always wonder whether you're better off trying to talk an entrepreneur out
of it, try to talk them deeper into it, or just try to be neutral yet
supportive.

On the one hand, good entrepreneurs are supposed to be relentless and ones
that are likely to give up should give up earlier rather than later.

On the other hand, we've all heard stories of that brink that many
entrepreneurs blindly stumbled onto, missed going off the cliff of failure
purely by chance, and came out as huge winners. Substance or not, perhaps my
words could be the ones that could make the difference from falling off the
edge?

These are the games that PG plays on a regular basis at great scale, with his
own money no less. Any thoughts on what the best strategy is, and why?

------
rmason
If you really want to help someone you need to go a little deeper than your
initial gut reaction. I've heard 'can't miss' ideas that had me excited days
afterward that were executed by a stellar team but still failed.

Research the idea and you will likely find one or several people who had
already tried the idea. Ask the enterepreneur to research them, get in touch
and figure out why they failed. Ask them to explain how they will avoid their
predecessors mistakes.

Unfortunately that doesn't always work. Sometimes an 'A' team can fail when
something was just too early. A 'B' team can knock it out of the park a few
years later when the timing is better.

------
tritogeneia
How does one get non-bullshit advice?

I understand that nobody wants to be "brutally" honest. And, being only human,
on some level I'd prefer to hear that I'm awesome. But it's more important to
know if I'm doing something stupid. So is it better to prompt the advice-giver
with my own concerns, like "I'm worried that my inexperience at X is going to
be a problem"? How do you get people to be straight with you?

------
6ren
A great illustration of "ideas don't matter, execution is everything".

And, execution actually involves many, many small ideas. Ed Catmull said this
of movies - ideas make a movie great, but it's all of them, not just one.

Jaqueramaphan is a sympathetic but tragic portrayal of ideas without execution
( _A Fire Upon the Deep_ ).

------
KedarMhaswade
No vice is as bad as advice :-)

