Jason Cohen: How to work out whether advice is helpful to you.

[marklittlewood]

http://blip.tv/file/4933967

[marklittlewood]

Jason Cohen's talk at Business of Software http://businessofsoftware.org/

How to filter advice from others. Brilliant advice, but don't take it as the absolute truth.

[Detrus]

This talk summarizes a big chunk of what people submit to HN.

The arguments about bootstrapped vs funded, lifestyle vs selling out, lean vs not, MVP vs GDP, internet celebrity worship - all covered pretty well in an hour.

[juddlyon]

I found the Dimensions of Advice particularly useful. It can found at the 45:20 mark.

[marcamillion]

Wow....I don't know why, but I always thought Jason was much older. Like 45 - 55.

But he looks/sounds much younger in this talk.

Btw, interesting presentation!

[zackattack]

Great Talk

Acid test: can I go out and personally retrieve 30 customers @ $49.95/month?

Hm...Do adwords campaigns count? I would love to hear more about this.

[gbelote → zackattack]

He wrote about this some on his blog: http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting-startup-ideas.html

I don't see why AdWords couldn't work if you built the right experiment. For example, a simple email-capturing landing page with a price tag doesn't touch on it as much as personally talking to people and finding 30 who will (not would, as Jason emphasizes) pay at that price. You can learn a lot from just talking to folks, and an AdWords campaign could help you get in touch with the right people.

[Valour]

I wish this were better written and better edited. I gave up after 2.5 min.

[edanm → Valour]

I think you should give it another chance. The first few minutes aren't very interesting, but once the actual talk starts it's great.

[revorad → Valour]

Initially I was also thinking Jason writes better than he speaks. But as edanm pointed out, the talk gets remarkably good very quickly. It's one of the best I've seen recently.