The business community is great at giving advice.
I’m terrible at taking it.
I’ve always struggled with feedback. I’m sure there’s an experience in my childhood a psychologist could use to figure out why I am the way I am. See that spot right there? That’s where Kevin started ignoring instructions.
I don’t hate instructions. I hate ultimatums. Absolute solutions. My-way-or-the-highway sentiments.
It’s probably why I haven’t gotten along with scientists that I’ve met – many are set in their ways of seeing the world and they don’t easily recognize newer, scrappier solutions to old problems. I’m an engineer, so problem solving is part of the fun.
A specific incident with my college chemistry professor sticks out as particularly frustrating.
My chemistry professor finished grading an exam once and handed it back to me, marking one question wrong despite having the right answer. When I approached her about it, she told me that despite having the right answer, I followed the wrong process to find it.
Let me backup a little.
Up to that point, I skipped most of her lectures because I already knew the material courtesy of Mr Batterman in high school. The additional chemistry I was doing for other classes in my engineering degree didn’t hurt either – sitting in a lecture hall wasn’t helpful.
My engineering education taught me to think about solutions in a different light. For any problem, there is:
- A set of knowns
- One or more objectives to reach
- One or more paths to a solution
I’m convinced the complexity of the world guarantees that most problems can be solved in more than one way. Getting bad marks on the exam despite having the right answer irked my understanding of how we find solutions.
Infuriated, I responded that my process was entirely valid (it was) and there’s no way I could have stumbled on an answer to a question like that. I didn’t handle it with a cool head or very much emotional control, so I never got credit for the answer, but the experience stuck with me as an important lesson about life:
There are often multiple, equally valid ways to solve a problem.
My professor – a scientist and an educator – made the mistake of testing whether we could follow a checklist of steps instead of whether we could arrive at the correct answer with sound scientific principles.
People who love to give advice but hate when you don’t follow it fall into this trap too. It happens with teachers, parents, and friends – assuming the way they got to where they did is the only way to do it when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I consume my fair share of business content since I’m aware of how little I know about building a company. The most common advice includes ideas like:
- Find a co-founder
- Raise money and scale quickly
- Niche down as far as humanly possible
- Post content on every single social media platform
- Deploy crappier versions of the product for feedback
- Invest in marketing more than product when you start
- Build an extremely differentiated product to stand out
- Find people to pay for your product before it’s built to prove there’s demand
If I were to go before the Business Court of Judgment with my business plan and strategies, I’d be kicked out of the entrepreneur club and sent back to working a 9-5. I’ve ignored most of the advice commonly shared for people in my position. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes by circumstance.
Here’s a quick play-by-play:
| Topic | Common Advice | Tetheros |
| Founding team | Never go in alone. Find a cofounder. | Solo founder. |
| Fundraising & growth | Raise money or join an accelerator and get to market as fast as you can. | Bootstrapping the company and staying small as long as possible, |
| Target market | Find the smallest possible audience you can serve and serve them well | Address collaboration as a holistic opportunity for anyone on a team instead of pretending it’s limited to one segment of the professional market |
| MVP | Deploy something small, but functional, as a precursor to the bigger idea. | Build a fully functioning product and take bets on features that solve problems |
| Product vs marketing | Focus on marketing more than product | Focus on building a product worth marketing for |
| Differentiation | Have an extremely unique offering for the product. | Find a blue ocean over time, but start with doing the fundamentals of collaboration very well |
| Early customers | Get people to pay to validate the idea, even if the product isn’t ready | Provide white glove, free and open beta to clients with a continual discussion about platform expectations and developments |
Tetheros didn’t launch as rapidly as I expected, but it’s growing in a healthy, sustainable way. I can’t guarantee it will be a smashing success and that all my dreams for the company will come to fruition, but I can honestly say I’m happy with the stability and capabilities of this awesome technology platform I’m building.
There’s more than one way to win, and I’m happy to buck against the Right Way To Do Things when there are more appealing alternative solutions in play. Assuming advice from a book or someone successful is the only way to solve a problem is a massive risk because it forces you to think the process matters more than the outcome.
Success forges its own unique path. Find yours, and don’t be discouraged when it looks different than what the spectators expect you to follow in your personal arena.
If you believe the common advice of many business books and gurus, Tetheros is on a nosedive toward complete failure. Fortunately, I’m going to continue marching to the beat of my own drum, discovering the playbook of my journey, and putting my best foot forward.
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I hope some of this was helpful, insightful, or even inspiring!
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