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I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for

by soneca 13y ago

I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for one I learned to have patience for the other I learned to ignore. I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences. But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and mentors, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they know what is your problem, and they know what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale". TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off. But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.

rfnslyr 13y ago
edit: lol im banned, wonderful, thanks HN
edanm 13y ago
Do you mind explaining why you think such advice is BS? I assume there are at least some people who are exerts, or who have experience, who're worth talking to?
- soneca 13y ago
  Not with a 10 minute talk. The point is the one the OP learned. Talk about their own lessons learned. When you read Paul Graham and Steve Blank you read someone who has passed through a lot and spent a lot of time thinking about it. So when you read one of these essays you can understand how that apply to your business. Is the same when you start a conversation with someone and he says "When I tried to sell to big corporates I did this and worked and I did that and that didn't work". That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author. But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts. I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    The objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy This is an interesting formulation, and I think there is something to it. "Fake" experts are (all to often) merely people with "too much self-esteem" and too little comprehension of context. "Expertise" is too often a crutch for those looking to assert some sort of claim to social rank or status. Or, polish their "brand" for future 'business opportunities'. The flipside of the analysis, however, is the juxtaposition of "objective" with "lacking empathy". Both are two ways to de-emotionalize a subject, and it is a good rule-of-thumb to ask if what you are seeing is one or the other. Also, to make sure you have enough resolution to distinquish the two variations. After all, it is quite common empirically for people to become emotionally attached to home-grown ideas,[0,1] and this is in fact quite common with startup founders [2]. What is juxtaposed here are insiders and the outsiders both of which are fighting for credibility and influence. And ultimately, the prize of "being right". There are times when having high-powered incentives and/or low-powered incentives either work or don't work in bringing to bear a new light on the subject. Ultimately one needs to be a ~visionary (not run of the mill), or truly from left-field. [0] "Not invented here syndrome" [1] There is an emprical behavioural bias about "switching" opinions, even on trivially important positions, provided that the information on the position has bee made public to a peer group. [2] Which, if unchecked, classically leads to the installation of a new CEO.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    This is why I always try to make a business case when filling out feedback forms. If I don't understand the business enough to know the ugly details of implementing the suggestion, I'm probably wasting their time with something they already rejected for non-technical reasons.
    - tesseractive 13y ago
      If you mean a form for user feedback, I think that's a different case. The point of a company soliciting user feedback is for them to gather information about what people who use their product want, so that they can make better decisions. The baseline presumption with user feedback is not normally that you should build whatever any user suggests, but that you should treat requests as raw data that needs to be aggregated, considered, filtered, and prioritized. When I use a product, whether it's a blender or a website, the producer's business goals aren't really my problem. If I communicate to them at all as a customer, my only relevant area of expertise is how I use their product. (And possibly how I would like to use their product, if it were improved in some way I would prefer.)
mathattack 13y ago
I like the term "Idea Fairy" - people who toss ideas that cost you time to analyze and refute, but who don't actually provide anything like time or money to implement them. It is good to keep an open mind, but if you pay too much attention to too many Idea Fairies, you'll never get anything done.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
krmmalik 13y ago
I've not had this experience personally. The odd start-up maybr but if i generally dont know the answer i'll be very honest about the advice i give. Most people i've mentored it's been either that they've never even heard the idea before or they've heard it but want someone to confirm it to stop them from going insane from their own doubt. Mentoring isn't just about knowledge expertise it can often be about helping people gain perspective. Last week I had a call with a new start-up founder. I didn't tell him anything new but the fact that i was able to be there for him to bounce ideas with him and help remove doubts or confirm trains of thought was invaluable for him and he wants to come back for more.
sycren 13y ago
So as someone who helps with website optimisation, If I said that perhaps you should increase the size of your font on your site from 13 to 14 if not 16 to make it more readable - http://conversionxl.com/9-key-steps-to-improve-website-readability/ http://conversionxl.com/9-key-steps-to-improve-website-reada... Is that advice you would ignore or should I instead show you experiences or link to other sites who do something similar?

by soneca 13y ago

rfnslyr 13y ago

edit: lol im banned, wonderful, thanks HN

edanm 13y ago

Do you mind explaining why you think such advice is BS? I assume there are at least some people who are exerts, or who have experience, who're worth talking to?

soneca 13y ago
Not with a 10 minute talk. The point is the one the OP learned. Talk about their own lessons learned. When you read Paul Graham and Steve Blank you read someone who has passed through a lot and spent a lot of time thinking about it. So when you read one of these essays you can understand how that apply to your business. Is the same when you start a conversation with someone and he says "When I tried to sell to big corporates I did this and worked and I did that and that didn't work". That is a good thing to listen to from an expert. I should have maked explicit in my comment that I thought it was a great thing to do from the author. But the key point is that is always BS when the person you are talking to thinks he knows better about your business than you. And that there are some obvious thing you should and you aren't doing it that will fix your startup. This could happen with random people too - the same way an expert can be humble as the author new attitude - only is more common with experts. I think the objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy. If someone is sure about what your problem is, it is probably because he didn't actually listen to you, he is picturing you as a straw man and giving advice to it.
- 001sky 13y ago
  The objective answer of why I think is BS is that an arrogant interlocutor, almost by definition, lacks empathy This is an interesting formulation, and I think there is something to it. "Fake" experts are (all to often) merely people with "too much self-esteem" and too little comprehension of context. "Expertise" is too often a crutch for those looking to assert some sort of claim to social rank or status. Or, polish their "brand" for future 'business opportunities'. The flipside of the analysis, however, is the juxtaposition of "objective" with "lacking empathy". Both are two ways to de-emotionalize a subject, and it is a good rule-of-thumb to ask if what you are seeing is one or the other. Also, to make sure you have enough resolution to distinquish the two variations. After all, it is quite common empirically for people to become emotionally attached to home-grown ideas,[0,1] and this is in fact quite common with startup founders [2]. What is juxtaposed here are insiders and the outsiders both of which are fighting for credibility and influence. And ultimately, the prize of "being right". There are times when having high-powered incentives and/or low-powered incentives either work or don't work in bringing to bear a new light on the subject. Ultimately one needs to be a ~visionary (not run of the mill), or truly from left-field. [0] "Not invented here syndrome" [1] There is an emprical behavioural bias about "switching" opinions, even on trivially important positions, provided that the information on the position has bee made public to a peer group. [2] Which, if unchecked, classically leads to the installation of a new CEO.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  This is why I always try to make a business case when filling out feedback forms. If I don't understand the business enough to know the ugly details of implementing the suggestion, I'm probably wasting their time with something they already rejected for non-technical reasons.
  - tesseractive 13y ago
    If you mean a form for user feedback, I think that's a different case. The point of a company soliciting user feedback is for them to gather information about what people who use their product want, so that they can make better decisions. The baseline presumption with user feedback is not normally that you should build whatever any user suggests, but that you should treat requests as raw data that needs to be aggregated, considered, filtered, and prioritized. When I use a product, whether it's a blender or a website, the producer's business goals aren't really my problem. If I communicate to them at all as a customer, my only relevant area of expertise is how I use their product. (And possibly how I would like to use their product, if it were improved in some way I would prefer.)

mathattack 13y ago

I like the term "Idea Fairy" - people who toss ideas that cost you time to analyze and refute, but who don't actually provide anything like time or money to implement them. It is good to keep an open mind, but if you pay too much attention to too many Idea Fairies, you'll never get anything done.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

krmmalik 13y ago

I've not had this experience personally. The odd start-up maybr but if i generally dont know the answer i'll be very honest about the advice i give. Most people i've mentored it's been either that they've never even heard the idea before or they've heard it but want someone to confirm it to stop them from going insane from their own doubt. Mentoring isn't just about knowledge expertise it can often be about helping people gain perspective. Last week I had a call with a new start-up founder. I didn't tell him anything new but the fact that i was able to be there for him to bounce ideas with him and help remove doubts or confirm trains of thought was invaluable for him and he wants to come back for more.

sycren 13y ago

So as someone who helps with website optimisation, If I said that perhaps you should increase the size of your font on your site from 13 to 14 if not 16 to make it more readable - http://conversionxl.com/9-key-steps-to-improve-website-readability/ http://conversionxl.com/9-key-steps-to-improve-website-reada... Is that advice you would ignore or should I instead show you experiences or link to other sites who do something similar?