Sean’s blog

Early stage companies are a noble pursuit - they solve a problem for customers, sometimes  REALLY BIG problem and they have the prospect of creating jobs and economic value.

As a result people like to help early stage companies.  There are lots of ways to do that — invest money, help make connections, find customers, or employees, or cofounders, find a bug on their website, use the product and point out issues that might be hurting their customer satisfaction or conversion rate, etc. 

One thing that startups usually don’t need, yet observers always want to give, is general advice.  This kind of advice sounds like “Have you thought about hiring a marketing guy?” “What about customers like xxxx?”  “Have you thought about charging more for the product?” “Have you thought about a partnership with XXXX (insert big company’s name)”.  That’s just not helpful.  Don’t do it.  It might make you feel good and let you express yourself, but ultimately doesn’t help the company at all.

Now, if you actually know a customer like XXX, or know the perfect marketing guy or can make an introduction to the great partner, DO IT.  The company you are trying to help will be benefit, be grateful and you will feel good. 

General advice encourages exploring a general idea (notice how all the examples above include “have you thought about”) which startups already spend too much time doing.  Startups should spend their time executing on ideas they already have since most startups have too many general ideas and not enough specific plans for execution.