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A lot of this advice is truly good. However, each of those “actions” requires you to learn what exactly that thing entails. It’s vague because it’s a gross summ

A lot of this advice is truly good. However, each of those “actions” requires you to learn what exactly that thing entails. It’s vague because it’s a gross summary, not because it is worthless. Building a company requires a lot of different things. It’s impossible to break it down into a single nitty gritty list where each item is actionable for someone starting fresh. Anything can be vague and non-actionable if you’ve never done it before. “Pick a cloud provider” can be just as vague as “Talk to prospective customers.” The article does offer a great pointer. The questions the author asks are exactly the things you should do if you want to figure out how to do those things. Keep asking those questions, researching and learning, doing, and asking new questions. Just keep doing that and all of a sudden those vague pieces of advice will be concrete and actionable initiatives. Once that happens, and someone asks you for advice, you will rattle off a list of foreign sounding concepts that the reader will find equally vague and I actionable. You’ll be talking from the perspective of experience.

janalsncm 3y ago
The author mentions that these pieces of advice are akin to telling prospective pilots that to fly a plane you need to choose a destination, take off, and land. Yes they are generally true, but not in a way which isn’t obvious. Similarly these “business gurus” are peddling ChatGPT 3.5 level advice and passing it off as insightful. > “Pick a cloud provider” can be just as vague as “Talk to prospective customers.” The point is that for people who have never done this before, it’s not useful because they have no idea where to start. And for people who have, it’s not useful because they would already know how to do it and when to do it.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I don't agree with this. There's value in highlighting areas of "unknown but valuable" so the people can think about how to fill in the blanks. EG - if I am not thinking about "cloud provider" but a trusted source tells me that's a really important thing, I can figure out how to move forward. EG - who do I know whose brain I can pick about "Cloud stuff?"

janalsncm 3y ago

The author mentions that these pieces of advice are akin to telling prospective pilots that to fly a plane you need to choose a destination, take off, and land. Yes they are generally true, but not in a way which isn’t obvious. Similarly these “business gurus” are peddling ChatGPT 3.5 level advice and passing it off as insightful. > “Pick a cloud provider” can be just as vague as “Talk to prospective customers.” The point is that for people who have never done this before, it’s not useful because they have no idea where to start. And for people who have, it’s not useful because they would already know how to do it and when to do it.

xyzelement 3y ago
I don't agree with this. There's value in highlighting areas of "unknown but valuable" so the people can think about how to fill in the blanks. EG - if I am not thinking about "cloud provider" but a trusted source tells me that's a really important thing, I can figure out how to move forward. EG - who do I know whose brain I can pick about "Cloud stuff?"