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All he says here is: "Just do what feels right." Great companies and great software are built by great (and careful) thinkers - not people who make off-the-cuf

by javert 17y ago

All he says here is: "Just do what feels right." Great companies and great software are built by great (and careful) thinkers - not people who make off-the-cuff decisions based on their emotions. I think this post gives bad advice.

psyklic 17y ago
The point is that you may not do it well the first time -- but by doing it you will gain experience and know how to improve to make your next go a success. You don't need to be a great (and careful) thinker -- you just need to get expertise at the domain you're doing something in .. and you get that expertise by just doing it!
markessien 17y ago
You're partly right, he's partly right. You're right in that planning carefully and executing properly are important. He's right in that you do not know what to plan for if you do not test the waters. I think the best approach is to get started, discover how things work, then plan carefully on how to proceed based on what input you get.
- pingswept 17y ago
  Getting started and so forth, as you suggest, is a good idea. But unless I have some way to know whether I am currently planning too much or executing too soon, I don't know whether to follow his advice or not. If I knew that generally potential entrepreneurs are too timid, than leaping ahead would be great, if trivial, advice. But that's not clear at all. We can't know how many people are merely thinking about starting companies but held back by timidity, because thoughts and planning are largely invisible. There are certainly plenty of companies that get founded by headstrong entrepreneurs that end in ruin. Maybe I'd find the article useful if the advice were restricted to low-risk startups (and a web startup is a good example of that). For something like a hardware startup, I think "just do it" is close to the worst advice you could receive. (Maybe "don't worry about manufacturing " would be worse.)

by javert 17y ago

psyklic 17y ago

The point is that you may not do it well the first time -- but by doing it you will gain experience and know how to improve to make your next go a success. You don't need to be a great (and careful) thinker -- you just need to get expertise at the domain you're doing something in .. and you get that expertise by just doing it!

markessien 17y ago

You're partly right, he's partly right. You're right in that planning carefully and executing properly are important. He's right in that you do not know what to plan for if you do not test the waters. I think the best approach is to get started, discover how things work, then plan carefully on how to proceed based on what input you get.

pingswept 17y ago
Getting started and so forth, as you suggest, is a good idea. But unless I have some way to know whether I am currently planning too much or executing too soon, I don't know whether to follow his advice or not. If I knew that generally potential entrepreneurs are too timid, than leaping ahead would be great, if trivial, advice. But that's not clear at all. We can't know how many people are merely thinking about starting companies but held back by timidity, because thoughts and planning are largely invisible. There are certainly plenty of companies that get founded by headstrong entrepreneurs that end in ruin. Maybe I'd find the article useful if the advice were restricted to low-risk startups (and a web startup is a good example of that). For something like a hardware startup, I think "just do it" is close to the worst advice you could receive. (Maybe "don't worry about manufacturing " would be worse.)