Be less ambitious I donât have a huge sample size here, but the founders Iâve spoken to since the âEA has a lot of money so you should be ambitiousâ era started often seem to be ambitious in unhelpful ways. Specifically: I think they often interpret this advice to mean something like âthink about how you could hire as many people as possibleâ and then they waste a bunch of resources on some grandiose vision without having validated that a small-scale version of their solution works.
Founders who instead work by themselves or with one or two people to try to really deeply understand some need and make a product that solves that need seem way more successful to me.[1]
Think about failure The âinfinite betaâ mentality seems quite important for founders to have. âI have a hypothesis, I will test it, if that fails I will pivot in this wayâ seems like a good frame, and I think itâs endorsed by standard start up advice (e.g. lean startup).
Of course, itâs perfectly coherent to be ambitious about finding a really good value proposition. Itâs just that I worry that âbe ambitiousâ primes people to be ambitious in unhelpful ways.
Two days after posting, SBF, who the thread lists as the prototypical example of someone who would never make a plan B, seems to have executed quite the plan B.
Reversing start up advice
In the spirit of reversing advice you read, some places where I would give the opposite advice of this thread:
Be less ambitious
I donât have a huge sample size here, but the founders Iâve spoken to since the âEA has a lot of money so you should be ambitiousâ era started often seem to be ambitious in unhelpful ways. Specifically: I think they often interpret this advice to mean something like âthink about how you could hire as many people as possibleâ and then they waste a bunch of resources on some grandiose vision without having validated that a small-scale version of their solution works.
Founders who instead work by themselves or with one or two people to try to really deeply understand some need and make a product that solves that need seem way more successful to me.[1]
Think about failure
The âinfinite betaâ mentality seems quite important for founders to have. âI have a hypothesis, I will test it, if that fails I will pivot in this wayâ seems like a good frame, and I think itâs endorsed by standard start up advice (e.g. lean startup).
Of course, itâs perfectly coherent to be ambitious about finding a really good value proposition. Itâs just that I worry that âbe ambitiousâ primes people to be ambitious in unhelpful ways.
Two days after posting, SBF, who the thread lists as the prototypical example of someone who would never make a plan B, seems to have executed quite the plan B.