Entreporn: learning vs doing vs wasting time – swombat.com on startups.
While a bit harsh, this article has some “truth” in it in my opinion. I say “truth” because as the article outlined, truth is subjective. I often tire of articles explaining how to run your business in the best way. What defines the best way? Getting the biggest profits? Success too is subjective, so hearing the story behind a company getting some VC funding really doesn’t have much to do with you, does it? Sure you can pick up a few details here or there but everyone’s story is unique, and truthfully you can’t replicate it.
I find some parallels with our culture’s fascination with weight loss. If there really was a short list of things to do to lose twenty pounds in twenty minutes, we would have stopped seeing those headlines every day about ten years ago. It’s different for everybody, so it’s important to not get too hung up on the details of how they did it.
I don’t mean to say that articles about business should be completely ignored, not at all, it comes down to the perception of those articles and the omitted details about the uniqueness of their situation that will ‘likely never apply to your situation so take everything with a grain of salt’. It’s really important for you to implement your own spin on things based on your experience. You can’t simply follow someone else’s playbook and expect to have the same outcome as them, you need to think on your feet and do things in such a way that makes sense to you.