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Ask HN: How to tell your friend his idea sucks

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Re: Ask HN: How to tell your friend his idea sucks

#41
I have unofficially mentored a dozen entrepreneurs over almost half a decade and the only thing I can tell you is the exercise is a waste of your time.

The feedback driven growth model taught in your favourite b-school does not work on entrepreneurs. The best entrepreneurs are the lousiest on taking advice.

I did figure out what works after a long time, but it is completely counter-intuitive. You can do two things, and two things only:

1. Give the entrepreneur confidence. This is in some ways the exact opposite of honest feedback.

2. Once you have given him confidence, try to extend 'his' thought process based on your knowledge/experience. It is too hard to explain what I mean by this and I won't even try. I am unable to do this in most of the cases.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. "

Re: Ask HN: How to tell your friend his idea sucks

#42
post #21

You tell them, as a knowlegable person in industry X in order for your idea for be a success you'll need at least $10 mm in capital in order to provide funding for: A $1mm B $2mm C $500K D $6.5mm It's business he'll understand that you've analyzed and identified the obstacles and put together the budget to overcome these issues, I used to work in mining, many projects that will become successful require funding far i…

Heh, that's a really good point. Almost anything is doable with enough money.

Re: Ask HN: How to tell your friend his idea sucks

#44
Be honest and upfront tell him it sucks but back it up with your reasoning. If he can counter your reasoning it might be that you're in the wrong. Only one way to find out. Honestly if you can't call your friends ideas shit they probably aren't friends worth keeping around. (In my experience)

Re: Ask HN: How to tell your friend his idea sucks

#46
If you really think the idea won't work, ask him questions you think are critical for the idea to succeed. If he has all the answers--doesn't matter if they don't sound realistic to you--then leave him be. Most successful startup founders had plenty of people telling them the idea is stupid and will never work, but still succeeded. You may think it won't work based on your experience or knowledge but things change. For example a same idea can succeed or fail based on timing, execution, founder's network, etc.

Plus, failure is a part of the journey. Don't discourage someone from failing.

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