The Driver's Seat

A founder friend told me investors aren't super helpful beyond a certain point. I had never thought about this before. Isn't Peter Thiel always right?

If you've spent 3 or more years honing your skills and collecting experience every single day, fitting yourself to your company's problem space as the founder, you quickly become a world expert. After you've compounded your business week over week, month over month, you can see all the bottlenecks and strategy clearly.

You can always ask trusted advisors whom you value for their input, especially if they know you deeply or have a perspective on your industry. But you'll have to filter their advice heavily and at some point the model flips.

Steve Jobs tells the world we need the iPhone, not the other way around. Peter Thiel is right about this too: "Founders Fund" is named for getting out of the way.

When you're at the wheel of a race car, your coach cannot tell you exactly how to make the turn on lap 349. You can debrief it after the race is over, analyze together, and perhaps learn something. The history books and pundits will tell you if you were right or wrong. Most of all, you will tell yourself.

Anyone offering unsolicited critique must be nitpicking by definition. They are trying to ship perfect rather than good enough at the cost of progress. They ludicrously disagree with the idea that the driver is the driver. Let's ignore the haters and take the turn.

Mistakes sometimes must be made. I'm not advocating here for moving fast and breaking things, nor am I against it. Rather, I'd like to look past this saying at the basic premise: the driver has to take the turn as best he can on lap 349. Nobody can do it for him.