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Comment by pace | Hacker News Reader

Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can feel. His words are counter-productive, destroy motivation and are just wrong in many regards (e.g. MVP, etc.).

Those who can, do -- those who can't, teach.

Why should we listen to him?

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Why should we listen to him?

Because he spends a lot of time looking at new products and technologies. He really tries them out. He does fantastic interviews with founders, often asking quite good questions about the products.

He's built a huge network of people who consider him a credible source for new product recommendations. Getting featured by him can be huge for an early stage product.

Just because someone is a blogger, it doesn't make their advice useless.

Programming is not the only valuable thing in the world. Learn to respect other professions. You're not going to make it without them.

Everybody can

- spend a lot of time with new products and tech (no achievement)

- try them really out (no achievement)

- do interviews and they are not fantastic (no achievement)

- nowadays build a huge network w/Facebook, G+, LinkedIn (no achievment)

It is no achievement to blog while sitting for years at Microsoft doing some wishy-washy corporate job. But it is an achievement to build a startup, get traction and raise money w/empty pockets and a family to feed -- and that's just more than "programming". Don't get me wrong but this is a different psychological level than blogging from your safe job.

So you only have binary states for achievement? Blog:0, Startup:1?

@revorad

> So you only have binary states for achievement? Blog:0, Startup:1?

We talk past each other. Blogging is fine and it's a achievement with a certain scale. But he is blogging from a safe job (!!) -- that's something completely different to starting a venture after you have burnt your boats. And he is giving advice about something he doesn't have a clue of.

If he didn't have his "safe" job, you'd probably dismiss him as just another unemployed blogger! Ad hominem is a slippery slope.

Everybody can - in theory. But few people do and make the results freely available.

I'm a not a big Scoble fan, I find him verbos, and sometimes smug and self-regarding. I dropped him from my Google+ circles due to the sheer volume of marginally useful stuff.

However this article is decent.

He hasn't been at Microsoft in years, and has taken positions at 'upstart' type companies or divisions within larger companies (podtech and rackspace spring to mind).

His 'blogging from his safe job' involves a fair amount of travel, disruption to routine home/family life, and an insane amount of work that goes in to his productions (hint - he does a lot of video, not just 'text blogging').

All that said, I think he (and most of tech journalism) has given most startups a bit of a free pass, and glad to see his current stance (although it feels about 5 years too late).

Either you start a start-up or you don't -- just being employed by an startup doesn't make you a good advisor for founders -- again Scoble never founded something, he is just blogging while having a safe job.

If "founders" are that selective and narrow about who they take advice from, they're going to have much bigger problems down the road.

That accountant they use? Never built a startup.

The lawyer who's managing all their contracts? Never built a startup.

The bankers at Goldman Sachs who's taking them public? Never built a startup.

Yeah - to hell with all of them - they've never been a "founder" so what the fuck would they know about "founding" something, right?

Everyone can, but almost nobody does. He's walking encyclopedia when it comes to this sort of thing.

I watch 33,000 of the world's best users and if they aren't using your app I probably will delete it after a few days and forget it

Laughable. The world's best users. How do you qualify for that? By adding Scoble to your Facebook graph?

That's a logical fallacy. Someone who has never been a stock broker in their life can still validly point out that a stock broker sucks when the broker squanders everything that person had on a foolish speculative investment regardless of how much blood, sweat, and tears the broker went through in losing their money.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how tough the journey is if the product you put out at the end of the process sucks. I don't think it takes an entrepreneur to call out various "me too" social/mobile/local clones for being derivative and void of innovation. The world is a harsh place and effort has never been rewarded; all that matters is results.

Not going to discuss what he had to say, just the logic of your statement. Because those who can teach well, teach well. There's a reason why many superstar athletes turn out to be horrible coaches, but many non-superstars turn out to be amazing coaches. I imagine the same isn't impossible in the startup world. If one is a good teacher, why not listen to him, whether or not he's had personal success?

I think this idiom refers to something different: it's not about the "pedagogical" skills -- everybody who wants to teach or to transfer knowledge needs to be a good "pedagogue" or should have some basic skills. Those who do have much, much more experience than those who never did -- latter take their wisdom just from books and experiences from others. But if you want to be really good you have to do it yourself, you have to fail, you have to make mistakes to learn from them. Those who stay with teaching, never tried, never made mistakes and so on.

Look: if you want to get a lawyer who managing your transaction with a VC. Who would you take? A guy you did +50 transactions and know the entire village or somebody who took all his wisdom out of a book, let's say Venture Deals and is blogging like Scoble?

OT, just as a remark on that muscled but empty one-liner:

I noticed that people who can't teach what they are doing mostly suck at it.

most successful vcs never done any startups themselves yet very good at picking winners. he has nice taste and energy in trying out new things and blogging about them.

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