Seattle 2.0 Blog

February 1, 2008

    Don't get advice from people that never did it!

    As simple as that. Start today by seeking advice from people that did it on the past, preferably from people that succeeded at least once and failed at least once. I'm not saying to ignore everybody else, but somebody that climbed Everest is much better qualified to tell you how to climb a mountain than somebody that sells climbing gear.

    Be very skeptical of any VC telling you how to build a company if s/he never did it. Be even skeptical of entrepreneurs that are building their first company now (they haven't had a successful or failed exit yet), or entrepreneurs that had a single hit, although any entrepreneur advice is better than a non-entrepreneur advice on how to build a startup.

    And... I just told you to ignore this advice as well.

Comments (3) for "The best advice you'll ever ...

Get advise from anyone and anywhere you can and read any book and blog posts that you can find, but when you get ready to start, throw away all the books and forget all the advices, because going forward you are on your own. May God/Buddha have mercy on your soul. Good luck. --Denny-- The following is a summary of my advise which hopefully can help but again it just one person's experience which might or might not have anything to do with yours. http://www.startupforless.org By Denny K Miu - 2/2/2008 1:32 AM

If I may, allow me to point anyone who is a founder to read the "Founders Dilemma" article by Noam Wasserman in the February 2008 HBR. Enlightening and so true. http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_subscriber=true&ml_action=get-article&ml_issueid=BR0802&articleID=R0802G&pageNumber=1 By Pascal Stolz - 2/2/2008 9:41 AM

the above link was not working for me ..this works: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?articleID=R0802G&ml_action=get-article&print=true&ml_issueid=BR0802 By nishant - 2/3/2008 6:56 AM