On: Summary of "Must Read" articles for starting entrepreneurs

[Umalu]

This is an impressive list of articles, and includes some of the best articles I have read on these topics. However, seeing so many of these articles in one place made me think two seditious thoughts: (1) Larry and Sergey didn't need a single one of these articles to start Google, and (2) if everyone else reads and acts according to these articles, you should probably do the opposite. Just as generals fight the last war, advice articles seems determined to duplicate the last success. If you want the next out-of-left-field success, you need to be where no one else is even thinking to look.

EDIT: Yes, I realize I've just added another advice article to the pile.

[true_religion → Umalu]

Here's a counter seditious thought ;-)

Everyone spotlights the biggest success stories (in your case Google) and tries to exrapolate what the average should do to be like them.

However, the average case won't be like the outliers regardless of what methodological is followed, and maximizing the profit for the average startup is likely wildly different from maximizing the profit of the outliers.

Secondly, Google acted like an average startup--seeking funding, seeking sale to Microsoft, Yahoo, et all---until they stumbled upon their disruptive technology: ads.

So unless your startup is likely to revolutionize the industry its good advice to follow proven techniques for profit making.

[Swizec → true_religion]

Failing that, you should know what others have done before you lest you repeat the same mistakes.

After fifty startups find out something doesn't work, should the fiftyfirst really try doing it?

[bmelton → Swizec]

Sometimes, I'd venture, that is exactly what makes the fifty first succesful.

There are guidelines to what you should do, and what you shouldn't do, but every case is different. Clearly, there are things that you aren't likely to ever want to do (rm -rf /), but there are plenty of instances in which a company didn't succeed doing x, and then a later company succeeded in doing exactly x. Whether it was due to a difference in the timing, or a difference in the market, or that something else within the company made x work differently for them than their predecessors, who knows.

Admittedly I'm just playing devil's advocate, but I feel like not enough focus is given to learning from these sorts of guides vs just blindly following them as a business plan.

[gnaritas → Umalu]

> If you want the next out-of-left-field success

Most people are quite happy with plain old success; you generally don't need new industries or novel techniques to do that.

[charlesju → Umalu]

Information is power. You can always choose to ignore poor advice, but if you don't read, you miss the opportunity to act on good advice.

[Jun8 → Umalu]

Exactly, you should modulate your base carrier domain knowledge with some random fluctuations to beat the herd.