Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
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Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
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Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#2Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can feel. His words are counter-productive, destroy motivation and are just wrong in many regards (e.g. MVP, etc.).
Those who can, do -- those who can't, teach.
Why should we listen to him?
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#3Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…
Not going to discuss what he had to say, just the logic of your statement. Because those who can teach well, teach well. There's a reason why many superstar athletes turn out to be horrible coaches, but many non-superstars turn out to be amazing coaches. I imagine the same isn't impossible in the startup world. If one is a good teacher, why not listen to him, whether or not he's had personal success?
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#4Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…
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Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#5Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…
Why should we listen to him?
Because he spends a lot of time looking at new products and technologies. He really tries them out. He does fantastic interviews with founders, often asking quite good questions about the products.
He's built a huge network of people who consider him a credible source for new product recommendations. Getting featured by him can be huge for an early stage product.
Just because someone is a blogger, it doesn't make their advice useless.
Programming is not the only valuable thing in the world. Learn to respect other professions. You're not going to make it without them.
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#6Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…
Not going to discuss what he had to say, just the logic of your statement. Because those who can teach well, teach well. There's a reason why many superstar athletes turn out to be horrible coaches, but many non-superstars turn out to be amazing coaches. I imagine the same isn't impossible in the startup world. If one is a good teacher, why not listen to him, whether or not he's had personal success?
I think this idiom refers to something different: it's not about the "pedagogical" skills -- everybody who wants to teach or to transfer knowledge needs to be a good "pedagogue" or should have some basic skills. Those who do have much, much more experience than those who never did -- latter take their wisdom just from books and experiences from others. But if you want to be really good you have to do it yourself, you have to fail, you have to make mistakes to learn from them. Those who stay with teaching, never tried, never made mistakes and so on.
Look: if you want to get a lawyer who managing your transaction with a VC. Who would you take? A guy you did +50 transactions and know the entire village or somebody who took all his wisdom out of a book, let's say Venture Deals and is blogging like Scoble?
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#7I love how he has 7 key pieces of advice for startups to follow if they don't want to fail, and there is not a single mention of revenue, let alone profit, whatsoever.
But don't forget to integrate with Twitter or you'll look like a dummy!
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#8I love how he has 7 key pieces of advice for startups to follow if they don't want to fail, and there is not a single mention of revenue, let alone profit, whatsoever. But don't forget to integrate with Twitter or you'll look like a dummy!
If no one uses the damn thing, you won't even get a shot at making any revenue. That's what he's getting at.
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#9Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…
OT, just as a remark on that muscled but empty one-liner:
I noticed that people who can't teach what they are doing mostly suck at it.
Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately
#10Scoble is telling you what he wants to see before you show it to him and hope he writes about it, but that's literally miles away from where a startup first gets off the ground.
Before even talking to Scoble, a startup should have come up with the idea, have built a first version, launched as early as possible (but only after what you have is better/more useful than what is currently out there), found a core group of users that sticks around and uses the product, and iterated based on their feedback.
The fact is, this is likely to take at least a year, if not more. And only after you think you've achieved product-market fit should you be going after the press "big guns".
Don't take Scoble's post as advice on how to get a startup off the ground -- take it as advice on how far along you should be before you pitch him.