Why most advice is useless and reading entrepreneurial "Success Stories" is toxic self-flagellation
This is not my post, I came across it on Reddit and I tend to agree, at least in part with the sentiment.
Indiehackers was inspirational for me to go start my own thing. It is also incredibly beneficial when it comes to "How to" questions with specific answers.
While I get value from "How to do X/Y" posts even now, I invariably loathe posts "How I made $5,000 in 8 mins", "Start to sale in 3 months", etc. A modicum of success seems to make people into gurus. Even a singular success gets people to start dishing out wisdom. If you can not repeat it, is it really a skill ?
Perhaps part of my reaction is rooted in some kind of jealousy and status-seeking behavior too. Nonetheless, I just wanted to illuminate survivorship bias :)
Full post here -
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/jb38yj/why_most_advice_is_useless_and_reading/
I look at these stories a little bit like recipes on the internet...I’m intrigued by how other chefs do stuff, but not every recipe is relevant, interesting, or tasty for me. I’d like to see folks talk more about why their steps worked for them, as there may be some neat underlying principle that is helpful.
I dig the chef analogy.
I think the problem with that is casual reductionism. That is, "things rarely happen for just 1 reason. Usually, outcomes result from many causes conspiring together. But our minds cannot process such a complex arrangement, so we tend to ascribe outcomes to single causes, reducing the web of causality to a mere thread." - a wise one on twitter
I think the only underlying principle we can all agree on is that your best chance for success is just showing up everyday.
I agree with you 100% on this. The point I was hoping to make, but maybe didn’t get it across, is that I find little value when people say things like tweet a lot to build a mailing list. Why did tweeting a lot work for them? What other combination of forces and situation existed for them that made tweeting work?
Very well put!
Reading entrepreneur success stories itself is not toxic.
Believing that you can follow the advice like-for-like and enjoy the same success - that's the toxic part.
As long as you read all this stuff through the lens of "YMMV", I still think there is huge value in reading about how other people have been successful, whether it is some kind of one-off overnight sensation or a slow strategic grind. IH milestones are a really excellent resource for this - you can literally follow someone's evolution from idea to profitability.
The only reason I am where I am right now (running a profitable indie SaaS startup) is because I was motivated by success stories to keep trying.
I understand where you are coming from. It is the success stories that made me think - If this person can, then so can I. When I often see the "How I grew X", "How I got Y users with one line" posts, I can't help but get weary.
I guess it is clickbait that bothers me as much :)
Most of the successful people I know rarely get value from these internet articles. To me it seems like the real value is in the 90% you don't hear about and the other 10% is just hype to get clicks or sell seminars.
It's also really good to learn how to identify entreporn, and cut it out of your life:
I've just read the full story. I have to say I agree with it 100%.
Another sentiment I don't agree with, and I see it everywhere here: the "what have you accomplished today/this week", "what are you going to do today/this week/this weekend", etc. -- this somewhat unconsciously enforces the "look what the others have done, and me, I've just accomplished 25% of feature X -- I must be doing something wrong", and the "I need to finish something as quickly as possible" mentality.
While I do agree we should do stuff quickly, I do think we need to somewhat balance that with a reality check -- some features are actually really hard to implement and take time, and that's life. So stick with it, and have patience, and you will get things done. Not today, not this week, but maybe by end of the month - and that's ok.
Or of course, maybe that's just me :D
I just read Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin. Talks about his journey from print/web agency to SEO agency, to SEO products, through venture capital and pros/cons of the different industries. It's refreshing since it's not all woohoo success. Just lessons learned on how some things went right, others went bad, providing insight on the scenarios to help you build your own Knowledge.
You won't have the the same skills, the same experience, the same path as anyone else; and you can't build the knowledge necessary to succeed over night. It's a journey and you learn what you can on the way.
Another great read about bootstrapped SaaS and "good problems to have": https://www.outseta.com/posts/the-unspoken-hard-bits-of-bootstrapping
Yeah, I tend to agree. A large part of the reason behind a company being successful has a lot to do with luck - but that isn’t quantifiable and guru’s can’t write a book or seminar about it.
No one can predict the market. No one.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Startup advices are rarely good for what to do, but they are almost always good for what not to do.
Even I share your view. Initial days at Indiehackers were really good and the first few articles with the title like "How I made $5,000 in 8 mins", "Start to sale in 3 months", etc were informative. But after that, they were all saying the same thing and the contents were more or less the same. Only the money, product, and domain names were changing. There should be some moderation to avoid this.
These type of stories should probably not be interpreted as a HOW TO guide but more of an indication of what's possible.
I think those success stories are mostly useless for one reason. They usually are told by the actor and they are not objective.
I remember seeing lots of videos from successful founders and when they are asked: "why are your business successful?". The response, most of the time makes me think: "that's probably not it the top 3 main reasons."
People are pretty good at post-mortem and tell you why they failed. But, when it comes to why they succeeded, it's totally different.
I don't believe the world is black or white. Like a gun, by itself it's neutral, but who you give it to and how it is used - that makes all the difference. Same with success stories, they are not bad in itself, depends on what you do with that information.
These kinds of success stories are why underdogs inspire me more than unicorns.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
That's a great video. Thanks for sharing!
And I also believe that a lot comes down to luck. Take Pieter Levels as another example. He got lucky by jumping on the Digital Nomad hype train. Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a skill component involved and you need to do the work. He certainly deserves all the success he has with Nomad List and RemoteOk. But I'm not convinced that he's figured out some secret. All projects he started afterward were not nearly as successful (VR stuff, hoodmaps, ideasai, ...)
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.