I felt this way going through YC - sometimes different partners gave conflicting advice, and that felt confusing. It took a while for me to look back on the experience and realize it was a feature not a bug.
[edit - disclosure: I was one of the presenters in this series.]
What’s the point of having access to a ton of great advisors if they’re constantly all telling you conflicting things? Is the answer just to go with your gut? If so, why do you need the advisors? Is it more to prime your decision making with possibilities? Or is it more for tactical execution advice once you decide on a direction? Or something else?
> What’s the point of having access to a ton of great advisors if they’re constantly all telling you conflicting things?
Here’s my conflicting bit of advice. ;)
The point is to get the best head start you can, and to get it by knowing many ways other people succeeded. They will share some common themes on how to succeed, and maybe more importantly, common themes on how to accidentally fail.
You’ll always get conflicting advice no matter what the context is. The same thing happened to me before and after getting my startup funded- advice was all over the map. And it has also happened in academics and at jobs and among my friends and family. Ask 5 people anything, you’ll get 5 answers. People simply have different points of view, and there are usually multiple right answers.
It’s a feature because it’s important to understand that there isn’t a right answer but a continuum of possibilities that you get to influence. It’s important to understand how people construct and use narratives about their successes. It’s important to see clearly that there’s some luck involved, even if nobody admits it.
Customers, by the way, will give even more wildly conflicting information, so being able to sift through conflicting information is a good skill to have.
Going with your gut will only work if your gut knows how to make good business decisions, which a few people have but not everyone. Software engineers, for example, have guts that tell them that writing awesome software is the one thing that will do the trick, the product will sell itself. Advisors will all tell them that marketing is more important, but they will all disagree on how & where to do the marketing.
There are other side benefits to advisors, including: having influential people rooting for you publicly, having help meeting new investors, getting tactical advice on business and management problems, having a support group of people who’ve gone through some of tough things you’re going through because friends and family don’t understand. I think there’s more but you get where I’m going...
It’s important to talk to people who actually had success summoning the airplanes and getting them to bring food. Otherwise you’ll just guessing. Amalgamating and synthesizing that advice will maximize your odds of a successful airplane summon.
Soliciting advice and feedback from different sources, and then synthesizing and sifting through that sometimes conflicting feedback to make your own conclusions, is a very common and useful "business" skill
It's how investors do technical diligence, it's how executives of large companies make decisions, it's a part of the peer review process in science.
Advisors don't exist to tell you how to do your job. If that was the case they'd be your boss, not your advisor. They are there to help you see the full picture, and assess different perspectives, and challenge your thinking. But ultimately you make the call
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (and 90 of the 100 biggest districts) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be a full-cycle marketplace where schools can identify, purchase, integrate, and evaluate the hundreds of educational apps they're using.
We’re a team of about 115 (35 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (and 90 of the 100 biggest districts) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be a full-cycle marketplace where schools can identify, purchase, integrate, and evaluate the hundreds of educational apps they're using.
We’re a team of about 110 (35 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Python and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Clever (YC S12) - San Francisco - onsite
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of about 115 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Clever (YC S12) - San Francisco - onsite
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of about 115 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of about 115 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of just over 100 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after five years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of just over 100 (~40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after four years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of just over 100 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
Right now the market for educational software is a mess. It’s incredibly difficult for developers to get their products into schools, and it’s even harder for them to scale. School districts spend tons of money on learning applications, but they have no way of knowing if students are even using the apps they’re purchasing. Teachers know there’s great software out there, but relatively simple challenges like getting 30 students logged in at once make using it impossible.
At Clever, we’re working to change all that. We provide schools with a free API and single sign-on solution that makes using educational apps a breeze. We’ve grown fast: after four years, half of all schools in the US (68,000 schools) are using our platform. Our goals are much bigger than that, though. We want to be two things:
-a single place where schools can easily integrate, manage and analyze all the software they’re using, and
-a single identity that students can use to see everything they’ve learned across multiple apps.
We’re a team of just over 100 (40 engineers) based in downtown SF, and we’re looking for engineers who enjoy working in (or would enjoy learning) Golang, Node and React. More generally, we want people who are sharp, adaptable, and passionate about improving the way education works for everyone.
[edit - disclosure: I was one of the presenters in this series.]