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Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

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Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#11

Post by watwut »

doctor_eval wrote: post #10

Good advice is only actionable when it's also timely. "Hire slow and fire fast", for example, is not helpful advice for a founder who's still trying to get seed funding -- hiring is a problem they want to have. So the advice is good but they're not likely to remember it. You can't expect someone to squirrel away every bit of good advice, just waiting for a time when it's useful. I mean, there are plenty of times when…

I worked in a company that fired fast and it created a lot of insecurity. People were really wary of disagreeing with anyone remotely in more authority. They covered mistakes instead of fixing them and did everything to not look like they made a mistake.

Dont hold off firing that needs to be done, but fire has did not seemed to be too good strategy.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#12

Post by ransom1538 »

Building a successful startup is %90 luck and %10 hard work.

People seek advice from people that are successful. That is why receiving startup advice is so stupid. Being successful in the startup world is mainly luck with a sprinkle of grit. The analogy would be interviewing a lottery winner on how "they did it". The advice is worse than nothing at all. Here is the irony: Advice from people that fail at startups IS useful and actionable - but people don't like to listen to those people.

EG. Munchery. If they had started in 2020 during covid they would be a billion dollar company. They started in 2011 and failed terribly. Luck. IF they had been successful, and did launch in 2020, the advice from this CEO would be horrible. "Hire top talent, etc" Because* the only reason they did succeed was due to timing - and that advice wouldn't be seen or given.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#13

Post by zpeti »

ransom1538 wrote: post #12

Building a successful startup is %90 luck and %10 hard work. People seek advice from people that are successful. That is why receiving startup advice is so stupid. Being successful in the startup world is mainly luck with a sprinkle of grit. The analogy would be interviewing a lottery winner on how "they did it". The advice is worse than nothing at all. Here is the irony: Advice from people that fail at startups IS u…

We have some real scientific insight here.

I’m also sure you are a super successful entrepreneur and so definitely know it’s 90% luck.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#14

Post by adventured »

kristofferR wrote: post #7

And don't forget that founders are bombarded with what is proclaimed to be "good advice", including "Don't try, get a stable job instead" and a ton of directly conflicting advice. It quickly becomes incredibly hard to discern what is actually good advice for your situation to what is bad advice with good intentions, especially without the lived experience.

One of the most important lessons I learned early on as an entrepreneur is the concept of well-qualified advice.

When you're green, it's natural to seek advice from people you trust, people you think are smart, people with a lot of life and or business experience, family members, and so on. In most cases their advice is either going to be too general to be useful or they're going to have no knowledge and experience at what you're specifically working on, your domain, so their advice is far more likely to be dangerous.

Those people will want to help, people like to be asked for advice, it feels nice; I think most people like to hear themselves talk, it's a normal thing. Their intentions will be good. I also think it's common for people to not have a good grasp of where their expertise ends and where their weakly-supported opinions begin (something everyone is guilty of at times). If you ask for an opinion, input, advice, you're likely to get it, even if the person isn't very qualified to offer it. So it's important to be very selective about who you seek advice from, making sure that they're in a position to offer valuable insight to what exactly you are dealing with.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#15

Post by dagorenouf »

It seems to me that the value of advice is not to get people to change their behavior right now, but rather to plant a seed in their mind that will make it easier for them to grow in the future.

For example, before founding my startup, I read countless articles about the value of iterating fast. Yet I made the mistake! It seemed almost unavoidable.

However, because I had read that advice so many times and actually agreed with it, it made it way easier to correct course. As soon as I realized that I was making the mistake, I integrated all this previous advice very quickly.

Good advice does help, but it can only be integrated when one is ready for it.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#16

Post by doctor_eval »

watwut wrote: post #11
doctor_eval wrote: post #10

Good advice is only actionable when it's also timely. "Hire slow and fire fast", for example, is not helpful advice for a founder who's still trying to get seed funding -- hiring is a problem they want to have. So the advice is good but they're not likely to remember it. You can't expect someone to squirrel away every bit of good advice, just waiting for a time when it's useful. I mean, there are plenty of times when…

I worked in a company that fired fast and it created a lot of insecurity. People were really wary of disagreeing with anyone remotely in more authority. They covered mistakes instead of fixing them and did everything to not look like they made a mistake. Dont hold off firing that needs to be done, but fire has did not seemed to be too good strategy.

Yeah - to be clear I was referencing another post with that quip. Like most advice, it’s got some merit, but reality is much more complicated. Kinda the point of these posts really!

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#17

Post by syllogism »

Argh this bullshit is extremely frustrating. Apologies for the intemperate rant.

OF COURSE nobody can use advice like "hire slow, fire fast". They ignore this advice because it's fucking useless. I just...how could someone think this was magical wisdom? Where to even start with this?

How about this: consider a linear model, Y = W @ X + b. You're multiplying some weights by some input features, adding a bias vector. Advice like "hire slow, fire fast" is a bias vector at best. It's just telling you to correct in some direction. But it's the weights that matter!

Of course you'll never be able to make decisions if you ignore the particulars of each situation. And notice what's not in advice like "hire slow, fire fast"? Anything about the actual situation. So of course this is useless!

How do these people even function if this isn't obvious to them? Do they do this in their actual lives? Just charge around discarding all the features and making their decisions by simple rules? How do they even open their laptops to type up this crap?

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#19

Post by maps7 »

syllogism wrote: post #17

Argh this bullshit is extremely frustrating. Apologies for the intemperate rant. OF COURSE nobody can use advice like "hire slow, fire fast". They ignore this advice because it's fucking useless . I just...how could someone think this was magical wisdom? Where to even start with this? How about this: consider a linear model, Y = W @ X + b. You're multiplying some weights by some input features, adding a bias vector.…

Harsh but I understand what you mean. I see it on Twitter all the time. People tweet nuggets of useless 'advice' and other people lap it up. Those other people also tweet in this style. Sometimes I think I am looking at bots interacting.

Re: Why Most Founders Don’t Take Good Advice

#20

Post by _cs2017_ »

syllogism wrote: post #17

Argh this bullshit is extremely frustrating. Apologies for the intemperate rant. OF COURSE nobody can use advice like "hire slow, fire fast". They ignore this advice because it's fucking useless . I just...how could someone think this was magical wisdom? Where to even start with this? How about this: consider a linear model, Y = W @ X + b. You're multiplying some weights by some input features, adding a bias vector.…

"These people" fill in the ranks of priests, management consultants, and political activists. It matters not whether they themselves believe the bullshit they are producing; what matters is whether others believe them.

They make decent money by writing books or reports, giving speeches or sermons, and in the process they influence large numbers of clueless people, among whom there are also quite a few important decision makers.

So while you may be immune to their charms, you cannot simply dismiss them as irrelevant.

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