There are good pieces of advice in founders’ self-reported experience, but it needs to be taken as a distorted data point rather than absolute truth.
Founders tend to rewrite history in ways that benefit themselves presently. It’s human nature, but it’s finely honed in founders who are pitching their personal brand on social media. Even the humble, self-deprecating anecdotes are usually carefully filtered in ways that make them look good in the present, or as something they can wear as a badge of honor for overcoming.
I worked for a small startup that nearly died because one of the founders made some really bad decisions. That same founder now writes a lot of Medium thinkpieces about how to be successful, including advice to do some of the things that were clearly not at all beneficial to our startup.
Founders tend to rewrite history in ways that benefit themselves presently. It’s human nature, but it’s finely honed in founders who are pitching their personal brand on social media. Even the humble, self-deprecating anecdotes are usually carefully filtered in ways that make them look good in the present, or as something they can wear as a badge of honor for overcoming.
I worked for a small startup that nearly died because one of the founders made some really bad decisions. That same founder now writes a lot of Medium thinkpieces about how to be successful, including advice to do some of the things that were clearly not at all beneficial to our startup.
Take everything with a grain of salt.