As a founder of a startup, it is important to seek advice from various sources. However, it is equally important to be careful about who you take advice from. All advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and you need to analyze why someone is giving that advice and if it is good advice to follow.
In the startup world, some advice can be like golden nuggets while some can be like land mines. Sometimes, golden nuggets may look like ordinary rocks and need to be uncovered a little more to realize their true value. On the other hand, land mines may appear to be valuable advice at first glance, but if you don’t analyze them carefully, they can lead to disaster.
When seeking advice, it is important to consider the source. If you find yourself hearing a consistent trend from many different people, it may ring true. However, as a founder, you probably have a deeper understanding of your startup than the people you are trying to sell the idea to. Therefore, you need to take all feedback with a grain of salt and evaluate it based on your knowledge of your business.
It is important to remember that not all advice is good, but also not all advice is bad. You need to absorb any and all feedback and reflect on it and where it is coming from. Some of the best advice I have received I initially fought back on and dismissed as a bad idea. But the next day, when I analyzed it and broke it down, it turned out to be a golden nugget.
Many venture capitalists (VCs) are experts in their fields but may have limited knowledge about your field. VCs make a living by investing a large amount of money in a company that is going to succeed and grow. It is also in their best interest to buy as much of the company as possible for as small a price as possible while still ensuring that your company gets enough money to succeed. Therefore, their advice may be influenced by their investment strategy and not necessarily by what is best for your startup.
Sometimes people don’t even realize they are giving feedback that can be interpreted as feedback. I’ve seen it before when startups go to VCs too early in the journey and the feedback they get was the basic soft letdown like “We love the idea but you are just too early for us so when you have more customers lets talk” and it easy to misinterpret that as “if we go from 50 customers to 500 customers we can get investment” but if you haven’t found product market fit or if your business strategy doesn’t pass muster than you are setting your self up for a hard lesson of how to waste time and money.
Founders need to understand where they are strong and where they are weak and play to their strengths and have a mentor guide them through the rest. Blindly taking advice from others is exactly how 90% of startups fail. I have massive respect for VCs but most don’t have a great track record of winners as an overall percentage.
