- Founders often struggle with deciding who to listen to for advice
- It is important to choose one or two people to listen to, rather than seeking advice from multiple sources
- Spending too much time seeking advice can distract from actually building the company
- Shopping for advice or averaging multiple opinions can lead to mediocre results
- It is beneficial to have an advisor who can provide nuanced advice and has experience with different situations
- It is important to choose an advisor who you get along with and enjoy spending time with
- Evaluate advice based on its merit, rather than the person giving the advice
- Good advice should be listened to and considered over time.

YC Partner and Tutorspree cofounder Aaron Harris on who founders should listen to for advice.

https://twitter.com/harris

***

Topics
00:00 - Who should founders listen to for advice?
00:55 - Your job as a founder is to build a company not just get advice
1:35 - Pick someone and "Make for yourself a Rabbi" - https://blog.ycombinator.com/what-to-do-with-too-much-advice/
2:25 - Pick an advisor who gives nuanced advice
3:25 - Pick an advisor who's seen the game multiple times
3:55 - Pick an advisor you get along with
4:20 - At the end of the day you need to evaluate the advice on its own merit

We get a lot of questions from founders who are trying to figure out who they should listen to for advice.

Now this happens with founders that are in YC, founders that are out of YC.

It's kind of weird because they're saying, Oh my God, there are too many people trying to help me.

And I read all these articles on the internet and I watched all these videos on certain YouTube channels telling me what to do.

How do I figure out what to do with this mountain of advice?

So look on the 1 hand this is kind of a good problem to have.

It's better that there are a lot of people trying to help startups versus no 1 at all.

1 of the things that I like to tell people is that you're going to have to pick.

You're going to have to pick a person that you listen to.

Because if you try to listen to a lot of different people and just keep asking everyone for advice, well you're gonna get lots and lots and lots of advice and you're gonna spend all of your time getting advice and not a lot of time working on your startup and remember your job as a founder isn't to get people's advice, your job as a founder is actually to build a company And what people do almost naturally when they get a lot of advice, well, they do 1 of 2 things.

1, they either just ask for advice until they get the answer they want, which is something called shopping for advice, which is pretty silly because if you know what you're gonna do, stop asking and wasting time.

The other thing they do is they just ask a lot of people, they get answers here, here, here, and they just take the average of all the advice they get.

And startups don't work when they're average.

And when you start averaging advice, you just end up in the worst of all possible worlds.

So you should pick someone, 1 person, maybe 2 people, and you say, you know what?

This is the person that I'm going to listen to.

There's actually a line in the Jewish oral law that you should make for yourself a rabbi.

Pick the person that you're going to listen to.

Because if you pick that 1 person that you're going to listen to, well, now you have someone to really bounce ideas off of.

And if you go back to the same person again and again, they start to build the kind of context that is necessary for them to actually give you good advice.

People with no context on what you're doing and no understanding are generally going to give bad advice.

So when you're thinking about who this person is that you should choose, I think there's a pretty simple framework in deciding who that person is.

First of all, and this is a little odd, you don't want to pick an advisor who gives you very very clean yes and no answers.

You don't want someone who's going to be prescriptive with you about what you should do because that's your job.

You're running the company, you're doing the thing, you don't want to go to someone who's going to tell you every step of the thing to do, because then they should do it themselves.

I've also found that people who give really firm yes and no answers, answers that lack nuance, tend to not actually know that much.

If you see enough startups go through bad things and good things, you start to see how many different ways there are of achieving the same goal.

And you start to recognize just how little you can tell people as an advisor about the absolute right way to do things.

So the more runs of an experiment you see, the more nuance you can get about giving advice about it.

The other thing you want to find which is related to that is someone who's seen the game more than 1 time.

If you pick an advisor who's only ever seen 1 company do thing in 1 very particular way, you're going to get very specific advice that only really relates to that context.

And it's not really gonna apply to you that well.

So, someone who gives nuanced advice and isn't prescriptive, someone who's seen a bunch of iterations of problems similar to yours, and then maybe most importantly, someone you get along with.

It's no fun to pick an advisor who's a big deal who's an asshole.

You actually want someone you want to spend time with.

You want to find someone that you get along with that you want to call, that wants to take your call, that you enjoy being with because it'll make the advice better even if the advice is really hard to hear.

At the end of the day you need to evaluate the advice on its own merit and not by the person giving it.

It's so tempting to say, oh this is a big famous person their advice might be right.

Don't just listen to a title or a history.

And if the advice is good, listen to the person more.


Speaker 0: We get a lot of questions from founders who are trying to figure out who they should listen to for advice. Now this happens with founders that are in YC, founders that are out of YC. It's kind of weird because they're saying, Oh my God, there are too many people trying to help me. What do I do? And I read all these articles on the internet and I watched all these videos on certain YouTube channels telling me what to do.

How do I figure out what to do with this mountain of advice? So look on the 1 hand this is kind of a good problem to have. It's better that there are a lot of people trying to help startups versus no 1 at all. But it is pretty challenging. 1 of the things that I like to tell people is that you're going to have to pick.

You're going to have to pick a person that you listen to. Because if you try to listen to a lot of different people and just keep asking everyone for advice, well you're gonna get lots and lots and lots of advice and you're gonna spend all of your time getting advice and not a lot of time working on your startup and remember your job as a founder isn't to get people's advice, your job as a founder is actually to build a company And what people do almost naturally when they get a lot of advice, well, they do 1 of 2 things. 1, they either just ask for advice until they get the answer they want, which is something called shopping for advice, which is pretty silly because if you know what you're gonna do, stop asking and wasting time. The other thing they do is they just ask a lot of people, they get answers here, here, here, and they just take the average of all the advice they get. And startups don't work when they're average.

Startups work when they're outliers. And when you start averaging advice, you just end up in the worst of all possible worlds. So you should pick someone, 1 person, maybe 2 people, and you say, you know what? This is the person that I'm going to listen to. There's actually a line in the Jewish oral law that you should make for yourself a rabbi.

Basically make for yourself an advisor. Pick the person that you're going to listen to. And it's true, right? Because if you pick that 1 person that you're going to listen to, well, now you have someone to really bounce ideas off of. And if you go back to the same person again and again, they start to build the kind of context that is necessary for them to actually give you good advice.

People with no context on what you're doing and no understanding are generally going to give bad advice. So when you're thinking about who this person is that you should choose, I think there's a pretty simple framework in deciding who that person is. First of all, and this is a little odd, you don't want to pick an advisor who gives you very very clean yes and no answers. You don't want someone who's going to be prescriptive with you about what you should do because that's your job. You're running the company, you're doing the thing, you don't want to go to someone who's going to tell you every step of the thing to do, because then they should do it themselves.

I've also found that people who give really firm yes and no answers, answers that lack nuance, tend to not actually know that much. If you see enough startups go through bad things and good things, you start to see how many different ways there are of achieving the same goal. And you start to recognize just how little you can tell people as an advisor about the absolute right way to do things. So the more runs of an experiment you see, the more nuance you can get about giving advice about it. The other thing you want to find which is related to that is someone who's seen the game more than 1 time.

If you pick an advisor who's only ever seen 1 company do thing in 1 very particular way, you're going to get very specific advice that only really relates to that context. And it's not really gonna apply to you that well. So, someone who gives nuanced advice and isn't prescriptive, someone who's seen a bunch of iterations of problems similar to yours, and then maybe most importantly, someone you get along with. It's no fun to pick an advisor who's a big deal who's an asshole. You don't want that.

You actually want someone you want to spend time with. You want to find someone that you get along with that you want to call, that wants to take your call, that you enjoy being with because it'll make the advice better even if the advice is really hard to hear. And I think that's the final thing. At the end of the day you need to evaluate the advice on its own merit and not by the person giving it. It's so tempting to say, oh this is a big famous person their advice might be right.

No no no no no no no. Right? Don't just listen to a title or a history. Listen to the advice itself. Think about it logically.

Is this good advice? Is this bad advice? And evaluate that over time. And if the advice is good, listen to the person more. Thank you.

You

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Who Should Founders Listen To For Advice? - Aaron Harris