One final note to myself on startup advice

Originally published at hrishimittal.com.

The truth in a piece of startup advice is inversely proportional to how actionable it is for me.

In other words, the truer a piece of startup advice is, the less practically applicable it is to my situation.

Most startup advice, including from the best and most experienced people like Paul Graham, is only good in hindsight.

It has hardly ever offered any good decision-making abilities to me.

It seems mostly useful to investors, not me as a founder.

Even the best, most experienced and most successful founders often don’t understand what made them successful.

The biggest mistake they make is that they discount all the things they did in their early days. Those early experiences, even if sub-optimal in hindsight, are often what taught them the most valuable lessons. Even more importantly, they helped them build a reputation, relationships and a deep understanding of their domain and business.

But when it comes time to impart advice, they say “ignore all of that, and just skip to the good stuff!”. It’s like my drums teacher telling me to skip learning Beatles covers for my school band and going straight to jazz improvisation.

The most important part of the puzzle missing from all advice is my own context.

This is the piece I hold. I must not ignore it, not even in the face of a tech luminary advising me to do something that makes no sense for my situation.

One place I consistently see bad advice being dished out with great confidence is on the topic of “how to pick great startup ideas.” Everyone claims that their method is best, yet when I list lots of successful and failed startups, I quickly see that there is no magic formula. Good startup ideas come from all sorts of places.

The same is true of getting my first customers. There is no single “best way”, despite many people’s claims.

Since I have picked an idea and got my first customers, I don’t need to read or think about this any more anyway. So, as intellectually satisfying as it is, I must stop wasting time on it.

I need to become an expert on my customers and the problem I’m solving for them.

I should NOT become an expert on startups, because I don’t want to become an investor or consultant.

I must stop reading all startup literature. There lies danger. There lies failure.