Most Startup advice isn't for startups

Post 20241121.1 - Most advice for startups really only benefit well funded startups who have traction, or startups that haven't yet launched, there's limited knowledge share about the gap in between

… its for scale ups, or very early inception

search for startups on any platform and you will find a ridiculous amount of information out there, from a variety of sources, of a variety of quality. Some, whilst practical, you will notice is purely theoretical, others maybe anecdotal.

But what you’ll find is that if you’re a startup that hasn’t launched, you’ll find plenty of creative focused advice on ‘ideation’ and getting you to launch, things covering customer interviews, things to do with MVPs.

On the flip of that you’ll also find plenty on scaling, A/B testing, rapid experimentation, etc.

but if you’re a startup focused on Product Market Fit, focused on that 0 Revenue to 1mil ARR window, theres a big gap.

The root of the issue

I think it stems from a gap expertise sharing their knowledge - a lot of the super early knowledge comes from the original funders, and whilst its true they have seen their startups at multiple stages of the business, what you’ll notice is most of them are more on the technical and product side, not the business side. So naturally a lot of the advice and commentary you get will be on that focus. On the other side, focus on the scaling and growth side, you also get a load of superstar growth experts and product leads, again their advice and experience can be some of the best in the world, but the downside, few of them are employee number 10, most tend to have come in when the startups were already as some scale (postA mostly) and had the resources to not only support these superstars but also provide them with the resources needed to do their job.

I came across a quote recently, though i can’t recall the source, it was 2nd hand advice from a Billionaire.

Seek advice incrementally.

The logic of this quote was, you can’t really take advice from those who are miles ahead of you, since there are many factors that mean that advice may not have the same benefit or impact for you as it did for them. A good example of this is Gen Z taking advice from Boomers on saving, boomer advice in this regard consists of work hard, stop drinking starbucks and eating avocado toast, buy a house. but out of the social, economic and generational context this advice is almost useless.

Incremental advice in this context, refers to seeking out advice from those who are marginally ahead of you, i.e. within the reach of your next step, so as a founder seeking to get funding, it doesnt make sense to speak to a founder who recently IPO’d, instead you want to speak to the founders who just closed their A rounds. the advice will be more ‘fresh’.

so what

If you’re reading this substack, then you’ve come to the right place, I’ve spend the majority of my career focus on the pre-A stage, and continue to support companies at this stage, so theres the relevancy fit, i encourage you to seek out other mentors and founders at this stage and see out their advise (screening for believability and competency)

I would say that whilst mentors who have spent their entire careers in corporate settings can be beneficial, take their advice with some context, most don’t need to worry about their business dying in 6 months, and most are used to having plenty or resources and structure to support them… if they need to review a contract, they will have a team of lawyers to do it for them, if they need to integrate tracking, IT is a phone call away, when they need marketing materials the design department is down stairs.

When you see advice on youtube, make sure you contextualise the stage and type of company, you simply can’t cargocult your way to success.