> Ship. Ship. SHIP. The overwhelming failure case among people who read interviews like this one is that they spend 98 units of effort reading about running a business for every 2 units of effort running a business. Flip that on its head.
I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs actually spent time reading advice blogs when they were starting.
That aside, I think a lot of this is relative to where one is at in terms of education, network, support structure, access to capital, and a raft of other factors
Eg, if you're an MBA with a deep and narrow understanding of a certain niche, you're not going to lean on startup blogs in the same way an enterprising trucker from Wyoming is who's fuelling the hustle with Youtube tutorials on Java and epub torrents.
Entrepreneurship is a very long and lonely road, so it's perfectly reasonable that many of us look at these sites to (re)validate our decision to take a risk and steer off-course in our career choices from the rest of our peers.
I suffer from this in many ways, not just shipping a product, but even when just starting a dumb side project it is easy to get sidetracked with simple decisions, such as language, framework, etc.(the infamous JS fatigue)
So forget about perfect and just do it. Once you start moving it is easier to get going. You will get a chance to improve things later on.
I can't stand reading about startups, advice, etc. I regularly watch my friends, people on HN or Reddit fall into the folly of discussing different strategies or trying to create the "perfect team" or "perfect business" prior to launch.
I create products regularly, and many of them make a profit (not a ton yet, but all growing). My consumer facing apps include https://easy-a.net/ or https://projectpiglet.com/ both are (clearly) boot strapped together, but I launched as soon as I had anything resembling a product. What I will caution is that I did wait to launch the products until they were stable and easy enough to use. Sure, they don't look pretty, but it works.
I think advice (blogs or otherwise) are one of the largest hurdles an entrepreneur has to over come. Starting a business isn't about other people, it's about yourself and your business. Even going through things like YC's Startup School can be a detriment, because they fixate so heavily on various components of the business. Often, you just have to tune it out and do what's right. In this case, that's building something, speaking to customers, and improving.
Ironically, I think even this article is the same rehash of the 30 other stories I've seen (assuming the quote you took is from the article, as I didn't read it).
That being said, I do see value in interaction. Which is why I post comments like these on HN or discuss an idea. It's generated tons of leads and that is much more valuable.
Those people are also my target customers though, so it makes it easy.
When "marketing" to companies, a cold call, email, or intro from a friend usually can pique their interest. Then you just need a really good demo / app. Even then, they likely wont bite; hence I'm moving away from that business and mostly to consumer apps.
Of course this is useless advice if you are doing a one-person business. :)
The best advice I got was to: Just Do It and Learn While You Go.
I'm a pretty analytical person, so I havent made any gigantic mistakes, but I've made mistakes.
Learn from it, and move on. Most of the stuff people told me or I read either is- Baseless Opinion, or not useful and I forget it.
I think I enjoy reading about writing more than actual writing.
Exactly. I believe Paul Graham actually uses this example on one of his early essays.