But can you imagine starting a marriage never having heard any advice or even seen a marriage in person? You were raised by wolves, but one day you came to the

But can you imagine starting a marriage never having heard any advice or even seen a marriage in person? You were raised by wolves, but one day you came to the village, met a girl, and now a guy in a robe says you're married. How much trial and error will it take to become a good husband? You should go acquire some wisdom by asking people. Many startup founders are basically in that situation for a dozen kinds of relationships. They've never hired, never closed a sale, never rented an office, never tried to collect a late payment, never fired someone, never raised VC money, never hired a marketing firm... Those things aren't rocket science and you can certainly learn to do any of them, but noob mistakes are expensive and you don't have a big cushion of time and money. So it's good to have someone to talk your plans over with first. A lot of advice does come down to "That's a standard problem, and here's a standard way to solve it that works fine." That's fundamentally conservative advice, but startups seem to do best if they innovate only on the few things that make them unique and just do the standard thing for everything else.