Interpreting startup advice

I signed up for YC's Startup School, mostly to see if there's anything new to learn that could be relevant for my current projects.

Scanning through the syllabus I realised something I feel like I've realised all along, but it's become a bit more clear now. Let me know if this sounds familiar...

Some of SV's, YC's and Paul Graham's startup advice doesn't seem to apply to, say, technical founders that want to start a bootstrapped business. Some of it certainly does (and it's gold), but some of it really doesn't.

Here are some examples that I don't think transfer well:

"Everything else we associate from a startup follows from growth."
http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

"The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas" from
http://paulgraham.com/swan.html

I think there are plenty of Indiehacker examples of ideas that sounded worthwhile from the beginning and others that grew slowly.

---

Jason Cohen in his IH interview mentions something that I think helps here. He says that when you hear advice you should take into account the person that's giving it, what their experience was and if that is compatible with yours (or something along those lines).

I think that's key.

Part of the YC / SV experience is transferrable to the IH domain. Advice like "do things that don't scale", "create a product improvement engine", "talk to your users" and "scratch your own itch".

But if we take into account who the advice is coming from, and who it's intended for, then it's easier to disregard some the parts that don't transfer well.

Thoughts?